Page 49 of Boneyard HEA

“So…”

“No, you’re not going to run up to him and look at his dick.”

“I was not quite asking that, but now that I know what sort of people Nathan associated with, and how powerful and famous some of them are…” My mind is churning. “What if Riley upset one of them?”

“How would she?” Tomás asks.

Mr. Loxland has been typing, fast. “Oh shit. I never checked what Riley does. Stupid omission. We may have a link?” He exhales. “What was her last assignment?”

“I don’t know. That’s two years ago.” I twist some more to see his face, but Tomás taps my arm.

“What did she do?”

“She was a journalist,” Mr. Loxland snaps. “And she has covered some touchy people. Small blogs, mostly. One article in HuffPost. She has…had a YouTube channel too. This has to be it. Just one problem. Zasha has no fame, no anything you could tear apart in a report. He’s rich and it probably came from crime, but I don’t see how she would have unearthed anything. Juniper?”

I shrug. “I don’t know either. You must have known about this being Russian, days ago?” Silence. “Yes?”

“I was in no hurry before. The sooner I told you things, the quicker you’d be to leave.”

“That wasn’t very⁠— ”

“Nice? I never said I was nice all the time. I am the opposite, no?”

He is a fucking sadist, though I can see that as a positive. I’m sure I’m looking thoroughly disappointed. I am trying to see things from his perspective.

“But now I have you,” he adds quietly.

I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad confession. Which is why I decide I should say my own piece of awful information, because if I ever have him wrong-footed, it is now.

“I did something wrong too.” I suck in my bottom lip, sink my teeth into it.

“Go on.”

“Yes, do tell us,” Tomás screws his hand into my hair until it pulls at my scalp.

“Ouch.” I’ve never before been more aware of my hair being a way to control me. If I didn’t like it…

I’m struck by how Mr. Loxland’s awful act gets glossed over while I’m put under a microscope.

I glance from one man to the other, worrying again. I chose to do this. “I sent a copy of a conversation to a friend the first time we showed Tomás the video. Told her not to look unless I was missing.”

Which…I want to smack my own head now…was dumb because I have been that already.

“Sorry?” I say meekly. “I can text her and say delete it?”

“Hmmm. What should we do to her, Tomás?”

“Tie her to that tree tonight, like you said. Leave her there for the sharks?”

“Yep. Okay, this is the next suspicious thing.”

He’s changed subject in a flash. What is this? Why? He’s running another short sequence of the video, and my stomach churns again, only because I can see part of Riley there too.

Something is off here, and I jump on the best explanation and blurt it out. “You knew!”

“Of course we did.” That hand in my hair directs me to look at Tomás. The man is grinning. “He deleted it before it was read, within minutes of you handing back the phone.”

“You think I wouldn’t check, knowing you?”