Page 52 of Master of Lies

Resisting being pushed around and commanded ran deep in my personality, but I was really hungry, and the food was hot. So I sat down and scooped up some lasagna.

We attacked the food, eating staggeringly large helpings of each steaming dish. No dinner conversation. It was fabulous. All of it.

When we reached the smears on the bottom of the pan, I licked my fingers and decided I had the energy for one more go at him. After all, what did I have to lose? His trust? His good opinion of me? Hah.

“So,” I said. “Who’s Mickey?”

CHAPTER20

Jed

Istared at Freya, motionless. My mouth still filled with potatoes. The hell?

This girl was sharp, yes. She was a Masters, after all, and her brothers were whip-smart, way smarter than me. But this was superpower scary. She could look right into my mind and effortlessly pluck stuff out with a pair of tweezers.

Like that image of Mickey in my head, curled up and bleeding on the floor, that I just could not un-see, and probably never would. It would always be with me.

I forced myself to finish chewing and swallowing the food in my mouth, with difficulty. It tasted as dry as sand, all of the sudden. “What are you talking about?”

“The guy with the mask,” Freya said. “He wanted to know what Mickey told you and who else he might’ve told, remember? Is Mickey the inmate you were trying to make a deal with? He’s the reason you went to Kalaharee, right?”

I cleared my throat, staring down at my nearly empty plate and wondering how much I dared to tell her.

“Yes,” I said finally. “And it’s true, what I told Boer. Mickey didn’t give me any info. He wanted me to break him out first. But Boer will never believe that. He’ll keep coming at me, and I don’t want you to be with me for our next encounter. I need to stash you someplace before that happens. Because he will find me. Or I’ll find him.”

“I’m not a thing to be stashed,” she said. “Tell me more about Mickey.”

My body clenched up like a fist. “He’s nothing to you,” I said. “He’s out of the picture. Forget him.”

Her dark eyebrows snapped together, a little frown between them. “He seemed pretty relevant to the masked guy.”

“Boer, you mean,” I said. “He was relevant before. Now he’s dead.”

She leaned forward, eyes bright with curiosity. “When did he die? And how?”

I wondered if these revelations would come back to haunt me later. “Yesterday,” I said. “Right before I left the prison. That blood on me? Most of it was his.”

Her eyes got big. “Ah. I see. But…you didn’t…” Her voice trailed off nervously.

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t kill him myself. Boer organized the hit. I was supposed to die, too. They’ll keep trying to finish the job. They’ll never stop trying.”

“Was Mickey a friend of yours?” she asked hesitantly.

I turned away from her worried gaze. Yeah, Mickey had been a friend. Before they chopped him into pieces and left him to bleed out alone on a filthy bathroom floor.

Some friend I was to him, though. I was the one who’d put him there. I’d baited the trap with the promise of freedom from those mobsters who held him down.

I had admired and respected Mickey. He hadn’t ever bitched or whined or felt sorry for himself, in spite of his shit luck. He’d been up for anything if it gave him a chance to not be used by Adriani anymore.

He hadn’t let me bully him, either. He drove a hard bargain, and I respected that.

Mickey had deserved better. His reasoning was, if he had to be on the lam for the rest of his life, at least he’d have a life.

Now he didn’t. And that was on me.

Freya was still waiting. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, he was a friend.”

“What happened?” she asked softly.

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