Page 70 of Poisoned Pawn

“Please…oh fuck!”

I roll my eyes, then raise my blade so it’s visible to him. The tip glistens with a rich, shiny red and the copper tang of Brian’s blood taints the air.

“Please… I don’t know his name”—I lower the blade again, and he follows the movement with his eyes— “no, no, wait. Please.” He lets out a sob, and my patience is running low. “I only know him as the Rook.”

The name hits, scattering over my skin like a thousand tiny blades that slash through my flesh. It takes everything in me to hold my position, to not give away my shock at hearing a name I’ve not heard in three years.

“How do you contact him?” I growl, my jaw clenched tight and my blade now hovering over Brain’s jugular.

“It’s all there…a secret folder—”

“Passwords. What are your fucking passwords, Brian?”

Brian reels off two different passwords, and I force my mind to pay attention.

“Again, Brian!” I shout, piercing the skin just to the right of his jugular. He winces, panic rising and making it hard for him to speak coherently.

He fumbles over the passwords a second time, stuttering out each letter and number.

“I’ve got them,” Zak says beside me, but I barely hear him. “Carter, I’ve got them,” Zak says a second time, louder and firmer. And this time his words make it to the conscious part of my brain.

Without pausing for breath or to acknowledge I’ve understood, my blade sinks deeper into Brian’s flesh then slowly glides along Brian’s neck. At the first nick of his jugular, blood spurts out, showering me in tiny droplets, then transforms into a river freely flowing down his front as the flesh parts.

By the time I step back, Brian’s body is drenched in blood. His head is tipped back, throat split open like a macabre second mouth, revealing muscle, fat and bone.

“Carter?”

I hear Zak, but right now I’m too lost in a memory. Rapidly going over that night and trying to see how what Brian is claiming can possibly be true.

It can’t.

He must be wrong.

Hehasto be wrong.

“Hey, Carter!”

A hand lands on my arm, and the touch finally snaps me from my thoughts. The bloodied knife still in my hand finds its way to Zak’s neck. His hands go wide, palms out, telling me he’s no threat.

“It’s just me, man.”

I lower my hand and step back from him.

“You okay?” Zak asks as I look around the rest of the living room. “Do you want me to call a clean-up crew?”

“Yeah. Yeah…a clean-up crew would be good. Too much evidence to come back and bite us on the arse otherwise,” I say finally getting my head in the game and out of the past. I don’t usually bother with a clean-up crew as I’m more prepared and careful. Not this time. My mind fights to focus on what I need to do while arguing against what Brian told me,

Zak pulls his phone from his pocket and makes the call while I look back to Brian. Turning away, I clean my knife on the bottom of my already ruined t-shirt, then collect up the laptop and Brian’s phone, which I saw earlier sitting beside the ashtray.

I swipe the screen and hold it in front of Brian’s face then switch off Face ID so I can get into it later. Zak comes back into the room a minute later.

“Clean-up are on the way. You wanna explain to me what the hell that was about?”

“That was about a ghost.”

“Someone you know?” Zak asks, watching me as I stare at Brian.

Pulling my gaze away from the bloody mess that is now Brian, I say, “No, Zak. Someone Iknew. Rook is a guy I killed three years ago.”

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