Page 17 of A Life Betrayed

Noah gestured at Rayan’s face. “Just expected something else, I guess. Not that it’s a bad thing or anything. I mean, you’re stunning.” He gave Rayan a rakish grin that didn’t seem out of place among this group of mouth-kissing, bohemian-looking kids.

Rayan didn’t reply and instead turned his head to listen to the increasingly tedious prattle at the other end of the table.Discussion had turned to politics, and Lily was spearheading a spirited takedown of the new government. He knew the right-leaning party in power had been making things difficult for the country’s criminal groups, even in Quebec—a province that typically avoided the full scope of federal attention.

“It’s cyclical,” Lily was saying, punctuating the air with her hand. “They crack down on crime through a series of dubious measures until the next government gets voted in and repeals everything, and then we’re right back where we started. You need to get to the root of why people offend.”

“Why do people offend?” Rayan asked, unable to remain silent. Her confidence had rankled him.

The table turned its attention to him, and Lily grinned. “I promised no philosophy.”

“It’s not philosophy.”

“Sure it is. Look at Nietzsche’s view—that criminals are the result of society’s suppression of man’s animalistic drives. Society domesticates man, inflicting itself upon him, and the criminal is simply ‘the strong man made sick.’”

“Or he’s just hungry or poor,” Rayan countered. “Less a philosophical tug-of-war and more basic economics.” After he spoke, he realized how hard his voice sounded.

Lily gave him a curious look. “You seem pretty passionate about the subject.”

“Excuse me,” he muttered, getting to his feet. “I need to find the washroom.”

In the men’s room, Rayan stood in front of the sink and stared at his reflection in the mirror. When he and his brother had conned kids at the group homes out of their money, or when they’d started stealing cars, or when Tahir began using, people like Lily had sat around theorizing about why they did it, turning to Nietzsche to justify their moral failings. But then, he’dtold Professor Hofstein that a good argument could explain any number of sins.

The door opened, and Noah slunk in, giving Rayan a slow smile. “I figured it was code.” Eyes glazed, he stepped over with a drunken wobble and placed a hand on Rayan’s chest. “I can’t keep my fucking eyes off you.”

Then Noah was kissing him, and it was as though Rayan was observing himself from across the room. The movement was oddly mechanical, flesh against flesh. He’d never really thought about how strange the act was when utterly devoid of feeling. With Mathias, it always felt like he was being swallowed whole, stripped to nothing but sensation.

Rayan jerked his head back. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Noah laughed softly and jutted out his chin. “I have a pretty good read on these things.”

Rayan shoved him backward. He had to focus carefully to rein in the instinctual clench of his fist, ready to make impact. They still caught him off guard, these ingrained reactions wired to another reality. When someone cut in front of him in line or bumped into him as they passed, he flared with the need to correct the slight and ensure that he wasn’t seen as weak. But this world was different. In this world, confrontation was to be avoided at all costs.

“You don’t,” he growled and moved to the door.

Rayan strode out of the bar. As he stalked down the street, he scoured the last hour for clues that he might have given the man, ways in which he’d inadvertently outed himself. Maybe Noah, drunk and arrogant, had simply projected whatever he wanted onto Rayan. A familiar fear gripped him. After a life spent being so careful, when had it started to show on his face?

Chapter Eight

The only place Truman would agree to meet her was at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton on the night of a home game. Frances hadn’t picked him for a Bulldogs fan—let alone a hockey man—but he hadn’t exactly proven easy to pin down. The stadium was packed. Rowdy fans in blue-and-white jerseys, with giant cups of beer in their hands, jostled past her as she followed the signs to the second floor Club Level.

Frances had little in the way of a traditional hockey education, and everything she’d learned about the game came from her male colleagues. Her father had been more interested in Hitler’s tactical advances than the NHL. While she could talk her way through a conversation about stats and scoring with passable accuracy, she wasn’t planning on wasting any of her precious time with the Reapers’ head discussing sports.

By the time she reached the marked VIP area, the throngs of people had largely thinned out. She stepped through a set of heavy doors and found herself in an elevated section overlooking the rink. Lights flashed overhead, and the boom of an announcer’s voice was intersected by pumping music and spontaneous cheers from the crowd. The seats in the VIP area were more spaced out than the rest of the stadium, and spectators dotted the rows in twos and threes.

In the far back row, sitting alone, she spotted a large man swigging from a plastic cup of beer. Frances approached him carefully, not sure he’d seen her. She didn’t know why, but she’d expected him to be wearing his cut—the black leather vestwith a distinctive scythe motif that she’d seen detailed in police documentation. Instead, the man before her was dressed in faded jeans and a forest green sports jacket.

Truman looked over when she was several steps away, his eyes crawling along her body before they reached her face. Frances felt her skin prickle. There was something possessive about his stare, as though she was there for his viewing pleasure.

She recalled the heft of William Truman’s file, which included a substantial section on the trafficking and prostitution activities linked to the Ontario Reapers chapter. Her attempt to penetrate Mathias’s defenses by way of a honey trap had clearly been off the mark—she still smarted at the condescending way he’d spelled that out to her. But Frances got the sense, from the way Truman’s gaze lingered on her chest, that he’d be more susceptible to such a ploy.

When he was done examining her, Truman gestured to the seat beside him, where he’d placed a cup carrier crammed with three more beers. “I would offer you a drink, but it’d be wasted on the likes of you.”

“Pity,” she said, cresting the final step and sitting down two seats over, the beers between them. “I am on the clock, after all.”

“They let broads do more than pick up phones now? Guess a decent pair of tits can get you all sorts of places.” His thin lips curled on his fleshy face.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Frances shot back. She’d heard it all before. Something about a woman with a badge had the effect of rustling a man’s feathers. “But enough about me,” she continued, tiring of the predictable banter. “Border Services was kind enough to refer us a case they’ve been working on—a string of gunrunning activities over the past year that they believe are connected. Over twenty thousand illegal weapons smuggled into Ontario from across the southern border. While CBSA wasable to confiscate a portion of that number, the rest is largely unspoken for.”

Truman took a swig of beer, apparently unaffected.

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