Page 19 of Cruel Pawn
She tried to kill you, and you want to kidnap her?
MostArdently:
She’s mine. Duh.
CameoSawConquered:
do not and i repeat DO NOT kidnap that woman
MostArdently:
Fine, I won’t.
CameoSawConquered:
i mean it arden
MostArdently:
11
Priya
Freddo was a predictable man. Rich and pretentious, but ultimately boring. He got up at the same time every morning, spent the same hour at his home gym, and moseyed to the kitchen in his 6-bed estate on the edge of Oxford for a protein shake, white toast, and a sad looking egg. I knew because he’d made me the same limp breakfast, and it went down my throat as palatably as slime.
After his bland breakfast, he drove half an hour to ‘the office’ where he proceeded to fuck around and not really accomplish much while his team scurried about correcting any messes he made for the media company. Then at five, he drove home, arriving at four minutes past six exactly. Which made me frown when the surveillance around his estate showed no movement.
We had a date tonight at a charity gala, and I wanted to know how much time I had left before he came to pick me up. I was right in the middle of something and didn’t want to be disturbed.Plus, it’d be a little hard to explain to my new boyfriend why I was obsessively staring at photos of a car crash where two mangled bodies were visible inside. I needed to remember why I was doing this, why I got close to Freddo, and why it was vital that I schmoozed the details of his daddy’s money from him tonight.
I already knew his fortune was split between three offshore banks, and that one was in Switzerland. All I needed to know was whose name it was under, because the Lynches’ search had turned up nothing. It wasn’t in Freddo’s name or his mother’s or any of his siblings. That was all I needed—a fucking name, then the experts could do the rest, and I could finally rid the world of slimy breakfast eggs and even slimier kisses. And the idiot thought I was going to sleep with him? I’d literally rather fuck a fish.
(Nope. Changed my mind. The vision was making me retch. And the thought ofthe smell—)
“Come on,” I muttered, scowling at the camera footage of Freddo’s gates. He had the whole place rigged up with CCTV which made my job a whole lot easier. He was just asking for someone to stalk him. “Where the fuck are you?”
It was ten past six now, and there was no sign of him.
By twenty past, I recognised it as a true break in his schedule and frowned. Was he balls deep in some poor, unsatisfied woman right now? I scanned the traffic alerts but found no reason he might be slowed down. And he had gone to work this morning, right? I skipped between camera feeds just to prove to myself he had left, and his car was clearly—
“Oh, that’s not good,” I muttered, staring at his sleek silver car. It was parked in his garage, as if it had been there all day. Freddo never left.
A pit opened in my stomach. If he’d done something stupid and got himself killed before I could end him and claim mymoney… I didn’t know what I’d do. I couldn’t come this close and fail. Again. I needed that name. I needed justice for my parents. Ineededit. It was what I breathed for, what I worked for, what I devoted my whole life to.
I kept flicking through the feeds, jumping from his garage to the gardens to the pool to the gym to—
“Huh.” I frowned at the feed for his living room. All it showed was static.
I hunched over my laptop, clicking buttons I didn’t even know the purpose of, trying to activate the camera from within Freddo’s systems. It took me two frustrating minutes to come to the conclusion that the camera was fucked. Or the line had been physically cut.
A trickle of unease went down my spine as I stood, already moving to my room, where a false back in the wardrobe revealed my Kevlar-reinforced jacket and trousers, and two dozen weapons.
I took whatever I could feasibly hide on my person and dressed quickly, throwing a flowing red sundress over the top of the pants, stepping into soft brown boots and completing the ensemble with the jacket. Hopefully no one would look at me and think contract killer first, fashion second. I needed them to think I was a fashionista then wonder about the leather. I could get away with this in Camden, but Oxford was a harder sell.
Maybe if I had a beret…
