Page 124 of X's and O's
Whip glanced over my shoulder and then pointed at a name halfway down the page that read:Wyatt DeLeon. “That’s me.”
I touched the name below his. “Mine.”
We both shared a grim look. I would have bet anything the other names belonged to Ace, Torch, and Trigger.
Whip shifted his gaze to George. “Who gave you this?”
He shrugged. “Was just in my mailbox a few days back. Came with a hundred-dollar bill and the promise of more if I tracked down the names on that list and took them out.”
Something niggled at the back of my mind. I wavedthe knife in George’s direction. “Put your hands over your ears and sing.”
“What?”
“Put your hands over your ears and belt out the chorus to ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Deon.” I waved my weapon again. “Hurry, George! My knife here wants a show!”
George slapped his shaking hands over his ears and started warbling, “Near… Far… Wherever you are…”
I ignored him and turned to Whip, now that George couldn’t hear us. “What are the odds we just randomly picked the one guy the killer hired to target us?”
“One percent, if that,” Whip answered. His mouth drew into a grim line. “He’s not the only one with a copy of this, is he?”
“Seems doubtful.”
“Fuck.”
My list was burning a hole in my back pocket. “If whoever is targeting us sent our names to everyone on our list…”
“We’ve now got just over a hundred criminals hunting us down.”
“And financially rewarded to do so.”
“Fucking hell. I’m worth a hundred bucks dead. They’ll write about me in the history books,” Whip said without humor.
I hadn’t even thought of that, but now that he’d brought it up… “Wait, is it a hundred each? Or a hundred to take out all eight of us? Shit, that sucks. That makes our deaths worth like…’ I screwed up my face, trying to do the mental math.
“Twelve fifty each,” Whip filled in for me.
Well, that was fucking insulting.
As was George completely butchering a Celine Deon classic.
Whip kicked George’s hands away from his ears.
He clearly hadn’t heard what we were saying. His piss-soaked leg bounced anxiously, and he clutched the arm Whip had put a boot to. “So you won’t test that gun, right, Officers? We have a deal?”
I squinted at him. “Did you read the fine print on that deal?”
George paused. “There was no fine print.”
“There’s always fine print,” Whip said condescendingly. “Not our fault if you didn’t read it before you signed on the dotted line.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t sign anything!”
I widened my eyes at him. “You didn’t? Oh, then I guess we had no deal?”
George looked thoroughly confused.
Whip leaned on the porch pole. “Just put him out of his misery, X.”
