Page 7 of Room Nine: Masters of Control

“Am I under arrest?”

“By us, no. But I’m sure the Feds are going to want to talk to you. You did blow up a house,” the guy sitting next to me says.

Another guy pops his head into the room. His eyes spark to life when they land on me. One look at his face, and all the air is sucked out of my lungs. He’s beautiful in a runway model kind of way. His skin is darker than the other two, his hair too, but his eyes are a mesmerizing golden green.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

“I’m Dem.”

“Kyra.”

He blinks rapidly to break the spell between us and then looks at the big guy that is standing up. “EMS is on site, and the flames are controlled. I give them another thirty or forty minutes. What did you tape to the propane tanks?”

“Fireworks.”

Dem looks at me with a raised brow. “Fireworks?”

I shrug. “I’m not an explosive expert. I wanted to scare Bobby, not kill him. Hurting someone is the last thing I want to do. I figured he’d come to the house, the heat would be out because the gas was out. He’d see sticks that look like dynamite strapped to the propane tank, know someone was trying to kill him, and he’d spend his time focused on the threat on his life and not on me.”

“So, you weren’t trying to blow up the house?” The hottie sitting next to me quirks his brow.

“Do I need a lawyer?”

Dem chuckles. “We’re not cops.”

“Who exactly are you?” I point to the other two. “They won’t tell me.”

He frowns. “You haven’t introduced yourself to the woman who gave you that beautiful black eye?”

“Fuck you.” The guy sitting next to me offers me his hand. “I’m Kerr; this is O’Dell. We’re private contractors working a joint operation with the Feds. We’ve had the house under surveillance for months, waiting.”

“Waiting? Waiting for what?” Now I’m angry. I’ve only been tracking Bobby for two weeks, and I already watched him pick up a girl—if she was eighteen, she was a day—and bring her to this house, watching her leave with someone else. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going on in this house. “How many women has Bobby run through that house in the months you’ve beenwatching?”

All three men look away from me, shame painting their demeanors, deconstructing their confidence.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Look, Bobby is a layman—a henchman with one specific job in a much larger organization,” Kerr says gently. “It’s been torture watching and doing nothing more than reporting to authorities—who pick and choose who they save, but Bobby is our ticket to the head honcho. He’s desperate to prove himself and move up the ranks, and while Bobby boy is a piece of shit, we need him to get to Joey DiFallo.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know who that is.”

“Doesn’t matter. With the house gone, our job is done. We’ll head back to Chicago tonight,” O’Dell says.

“How’d she blow up the house if she didn’t set a trigger?” Dem look at his two friends, effectively eliminating me from the conversation.

Not that I have an answer, but when they all turn to me, I shrug and spill the details. “I researched online how todraina propane tank by damaging the pressure valve to let all the gas leak out. To hasten the process, I opened all the burners on the stove and then cracked a couple windows so it would vent out.”

“Did you turn the heater off?”

“No?” I frown at O’Dell. “Why would I do that?”

They smile, obviously figuring it out before I do. “Open windows cooled the house down, heater kicked on, electric ignition provided a spark to a house full of gas. Kaboom. It’s actually kind of brilliant—no incendiary device.”

“No evidence except for the fireworks,” Dem says. “I don’t suppose you used gloves handling them?”

“For the most part, I think so.”

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