Page 69 of Texas Hold Em'
She walked around the bed and stopped on her side, where she opened a nightstand drawer. “If I was going to kill you for real, I’d keep the gun here. Somewhere within reach. I would plan on shooting you as soon as you came into the bedroom, maybe after brushing your teeth.” Her eyes danced around the room, seeing a movie neither Brody and I could as she played out the fictional scene in her head, imagining the story she’d concoct for Bates in its entirety. “You walk in, and I hesitate. The gun is still in the drawer.”
“I get undressed,” I continued, moving to my side of the bed.
“No, you turn the lights off first,” she said, pacing. “When it’s dark, I grab the gun and put it under my pillow. Then you get undressed and slide into bed beside me. I can’t risk you finding it, so I have to act sooner rather than later, and I need to make sure you can’t manhandle the gun away from me. Like you said, if things escalated and a fight started, I would lose.”
“So you shoot him as he gets into bed?” Brody asks. “We stage the photo with him lying on his side, a bullet in his head?”
“No.” Carrie climbed into bed and motioned for me to do the same. It felt like I was back at a crime scene all over again with my badge on my chest. Brody watched us from the foot of the bed withpuzzlement. Carrie rolled over to face me and slid a hand under her pillow as if grabbing her gun. “I flirt with you,” she continued, “to throw you off. You, drunk on tequila which we’ll leave out in the kitchen, fall for it hook line and sinker.”
I’d fall for it hook line and sinker whether tequila was involved or not,I thought with a smile.
“Is something funny?” Carrie asked rather sharply.
“No,” I said hurriedly.
She rolled her eyes. “It would still be a huge risk for me to pull the gun out on you while we’re lying face to face like this. I’d want more leverage. More control.” She pushed herself up on one hand, swung a leg over my waist, and leaned to the side until she pulled herself up on top of me. I resisted grabbing her ass, knowing Brody’s eyes were on us.
She hovered over me and ran her hands up my chest. “I’d play coy until I could get my hands on the gun and you were good and distracted.” She leaned down, her breasts grazing my chest, and it worked.
I forgot we were role playing. Her lips grazed mine and I lifted my head from the pillow for a kiss, and that was when she revealed the fake gun in a flourish, pressed her finger to my chest, and whispered, “Bang.”
I winced. “The chest? Really? That’s cold, woman.”
“It will be the most convincing,” she said with finality. “We’ll make sure you’re covered in fake blood. I’ll have to be, too.”
Brody cleared his throat. “You’ll have to sell them on this, Carrie. Act like it bothers you. Like you can’t wait to wash it off. I have people in the ER all the time who come in covered in someone’s blood and sometimes they scratch themselves raw trying to get it off.”
Carrie nodded. “Noted. Did you bring the fake blood?”
Brody flashed a smile. “Of course I did. I’m not a rookie.”
“Grab it,” Carrie said. “Let’s get this over with so I can finally breathe again. Oh, and Tex? Take your clothes off. We’re doing this in just your boxers.”
“Come again?” I asked. “Can’t I have some dignity while you’re all poking and prodding at my corpse?”
Carrie lifted her chin. “We’re trying to tell a convincing story. If I shoot you after you come to bed, you have to be dressed for bed. Strip.”
We spent the next half hour working to stage the scene. We ruined Carrie’s yellow bedsheets with fake gore. Or rather,theyruined it. I was ordered to lie on my back in the bed while they used some of Carrie’s eyeliner and lipstick to create a fake bullet hole in my sternum. Once they poured fake blood on it, it looked freakishly convincing. She splattered some on the wall above the bed before resuming her place straddling my lap. Her thighs felt good wrapped around me and I savored the feeling, knowing soon enough I wouldn’t be able to feel a damn thing.
Carrie looked down at me after flicking some blood on my face. “There. I think this will do.”
She was covered in it. It stained her shirt, the inside of her legs, her stomach, her hands. And I had to admit, it looked pretty fucking convincing.
She pushed off of me and scrambled off the sheets, messing them up at the end of the bed and leaving smears from her hands and knees on the yellow fabric. That too felt authentic, like she’d really panicked to get away once she’d murdered me.
I didn’t move an inch.
Brody handed her the flip phone. Her hand shook as she held it up to take a picture of me.
“It will be blurry if you don’t still your hand,” Brody said.
“I can’t help it,” she hissed.
He shut his mouth about it.
She snapped three pictures and looked down at me. “Are you sure? Once I send these…”
“Do it.”
