Page 7 of Double Down
“—need to secure the entire east wing,” Conrad is saying as he moves around the room like a caged animal. Anger simmersunder his skin, barely contained. My gaze drops to his hand, where he keeps flexing and releasing his already bruised and battered knuckles.
This has always been his problem. He can be cold and calculating when he wants to be, but the second things get to be too much, he gives in to his baser instincts. Strategy evaporates and that rage that thrums in his veins takes over.
Conrad needs to get it out. Honestly, he needs to hit something. He needs to find an enemy he can actually see and rip them to shreds with his bare hands. That instinct is why we were forced to take a year off school in the first place. Why finish our MBA’s when we have something to work toward, right?
He itches for impact—a wall, a jaw—anything that answers back and gives him the excuse he craves.
The fucking barbarian can’t think past his hair trigger, and one day it’s going to bring us all down.
“—we need to get the rest of the floor under control before?—”
“We already did that,” I interrupt, not looking up from my black screen. “Twice. The front desk has been told not to check anyone into another suite on this floor—upgrades are being comped. Housekeeping’s been told to leave the penthouse for today.”
He ignores me, still pacing.
I have to remember this is his thing.
This is how he feels in control. He needs to know where all the pieces are, even when the board is on fire. Macho alpha bullshit with just enough paranoia to make him dangerous.
What pisses me off most is that he’s not wrong. He’s just late. His orders arrive fifteen minutes after I already issued them. If I were to show him my phone log, he’d already see the calls he’s telling us to make.
The first thought I had when I saw the body—Sarah’s body—was that it could have been Phoenix. I should want to wrap my arms around her and take her far away from this. I should want to make sure she’s okay, that she wouldn’t see this, that she would never be the one laid out like a message. I should want to do any number of things to protect her.
But I already know there’s something broken in me. Because I knew it was already too late. She was the first to see the body.
I can admit to myself, where I’ll never have to face the truth, that I wanted to hold her. To be her strength, but that’s not who I am in our merry little band of fuck ups. And Storm was already there. He was holding her, and while I may not know what to do for Phoenix, I can see clear as day that she helps him with her presence.
He shouldn’t be part of this conversation, anyway. It’s too messy. Too full of rage and recklessness for the gentle soul he holds. Storm knows how to kill, how to protect, and how to hold. But politics? Logistics? This isn’t his game. Ask him for the clearest way through a problem, and he’ll draw his knife, not a map.
There are too many places for him to get lost, and the last thing we need is Storm wrestling his own demons on top of everything else.
So it’s me who gets to stay in this room with the corpse, trying to answer the unanswerable and to keep Maverick and Conrad from making everything worse.
Me who’s been drawing that kind of short straw all our fucking lives. And I’ve been okay with it—until I saw Phoenix’s expression, and something in me wanted to be the one who got to make everything better.
I suck in a deep breath, taking that stray emotion and shoving it down, deep somewhere I can’t access it. Developing feelings for Phoenix would make things…complicated. Right now we can not afford complicated.
The game with Phoenix has been a fun distraction, but we need to keep in mind that’s all she is—a distraction at best, a liability at worst. She gets to walk away when this is over.
And that’s going to wreck Conrad, and Storm. Hell, maybe even Maverick at this point.
“We can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Conrad snaps.
Maverick leans back in a leather chair that he dwarfs like he’s watching a particularly boring episode of someone else’s breakdown. Fuck his constant nonchalant attitude, like nothing ever matters. He flicks lint from his cuff and studies the ceiling as if that’s more interesting than the body.
“Can’t we just…I don’t know, call the cops? We didn’t actually kill her. We weren’t even here,” he says. “Phoenix, and the cameras all over the place will support that. Built in alibis and all that shit.”
I press a finger against the edge of my eyebrow. A migraine is building behind my right eye, throbbing hard enough to blur myvision. Light halos at the edge of the room, and the screen in front of me grows fuzzy around the edges.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and breathe through my teeth. “Jesus H. Christ. Please be a little smarter, Mav.”
“What?” Maverick shrugs. “I’m just saying…if we didn’t do it, maybe acting like normal fucking people for five seconds isn’t the worst play.”
“And then what?” I snap. “We calmly explain to the cops that no, we didn’t kill this girl because we were too busy feeding two mafia enforcers to sharks in international waters?”
Both Maverick and Conrad go silent for a beat too long.
“Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds kind of bad.”
