Page 126 of Forbidden Fate

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, right.” She pulls out some gray sweatpants and throws them at me. “These are huge. Put them on.”

“For the love of⁠—”

“Put them fucking on!” She turns back to the dryer. “And…?”

“I swear. I don’t know what secrets he was talking about.”

“Whatever.” Robin finds a better-suited pair of sweats and pulls them on.

“But I do know they were about Vega and…”

She finds socks. “And…?” she says again.

I exhale. “Vega…and your father.”

She inhales sharply, dropping one sock. “My father?”

“Yes.”

She bites her lower lip for two seconds. Then, “I told you to put those damned sweats on. And keep talking.”

I take off my bloody jeans and pull on the sweats. They’re roomy. A john must have left them here. “My job was to observe this person.”

“This person.”

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

I don’t answer her question. Instead, “I watched him for several days. Learned his routine. Where he went. When he was alone. Who checked on him. When he was vulnerable.”

She puts on both socks and then roots around again in the dryer. For what, I don’t know.

“I was told not to kill him,” I say.

She groans. “Very generous.”

“I was told to make it look like something it wasn’t.”

“What?”

“An overdose.”

Robin rises quickly, nearly hitting her head on the dryer door. “An OD?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

I don’t want to say it.

I say it anyway because the sooner I do, the sooner we’re out of here.

“I measured out a quantity of narcotic. Enough to incapacitate. Enough to create a scene that would be interpreted a certain way by anyone who already knew his history.”

“His history.”