Page 64 of Wild Card (Advantage Play 1)

She’s not who I was expecting, but something feels off.

“Um. Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”

Her labored response sets off the warning bells in my head.

“What’s wrong?”

Silence.

“Ace, talk to me.”

If it were anyone else on the other end of the line, I’d hang up and go searching for my sister, but it’s Ace. And she doesn’t sound right. My senses are on high alert, knowing something is wrong.

“I didn’t know who else to call,” she confides.

“Talk to me. Now.”

I hear a soft sniffle before her raspy voice echoes through the speaker. “One of Burlone’s men came to see me—”

“What’d he do?” I cut her off because the possibilities are made of nightmares. I need to find out how much she knows, and who’s going to pay for hurting her. This call pushes me over the edge, and my grip tightens against the phone until I’m sure the plastic will crack from the pressure. My chest tightens as I wait for her response. The sooner I have names, the sooner I can slice their skin from their pathetic bodies. Inch. By inch.

She sniffs again but doesn’t reply.

I check the time on my wristwatch and keep my tone even as I ask, “Where are you, Ace? I’m going to send someone to come get you.”

With a soft whimper, she says, “Yeah. Um...I think that might be good. I’m uh, I’m at the liquor store by my apartment. On the corner of—”

“I know the one,” I interrupt. “Be there in ten.”

Hanging up the phone, I bark my orders to Diece who seems to have followed me.

“Where the hell’s Reggie?”

I don’t know why I bother to ask; I already know the answer.

D forces a swallow. “His phone is dead.”

“Fuck!” I scream, finally snapping and hitting my fist against the desk. Reggie’s dead. I have no doubt in my mind, though it makes my stomach churn to think about it. Death might be a relatively common occurrence in my world, but it doesn’t get any easier when it’s my own family.

Reggie. Ace. Regina. What started out as a successful night just turned catastrophic, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to carry the weight of it all. Then I remember who I am.

I’m the only one who can.

“Send someone to track him down with the GPS on his phone. If they find a body, have them call in the clean-up crew.” He nods as I continue, “And I need you to go pick up Ace. Now.”

A brief rap of his knuckles against my desk is all I get before he disappears down the hallway and to the garage. How the hell did everything get so screwed up?

And how am I going to fix it all?

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Kingston

I feel like this night is never going to end. There are so many questions and not enough answers. With my elbows on the desk, I rest my head in my hands, scouring my memory for any information I might have to Regina’s whereabouts when my office phone rings. Looking at the screen, I can see I’m being paged from the security room. Answering it, I hear Lou’s voice echo through the speaker in my office.

“Hey, Boss?”

“Yeah?”

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