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“You sure? Because I felt a premonition glide through the room. I think maybe you need to ask Big Nuts here who paid him to set you up?” Iris didn’t shift position. The warning still registered with her like an itch on her skin. She kept her gaze moving from the shifters she could see back to the velvet curtains and the two women ready to reopen them on command. Each stood with eyes wide and panicked.
Connor’s voice once more rolled through the space. “So, Gary, why did you set me up?”
“It was all in fun. I sent Tammy out there myself just to give you a hard time. No one else had a hand in it. This is on me.”
Iris didn’t hesitate to share her thoughts. “He’s lying.”
~ ~ ~
Connor loved that Iris was as deeply engaged in the process as he was and he could feel her witchness as she stayed connected to his arm. She’d also brought the real issue to the forefront, exactly where it needed to be.
He began again, holding Gary’s gaze tight. “Now, why do you want to lie to me? Haven’t I always been fair with you? When was the last time I raided your establishment?”
“Never.”
“Exactly. So, why the runner?”
Big Nuts released a heavy sigh. “All right. Someone wanted you to kill her. He was sure you would. Said you had a habit of putting innocent women in the grave.”
Clearly, whoever was after him knew the worst parts of his history.
“And how did you know Tammy? She was too thin to be one of your big women.”
“She came to me pregnant and knew I hired a few women who could sport the belly. She did good for a while but she pounded down blood flame like you wouldn’t believe and I had to let her go. When I was approached with a boatload of cash, I knew Tammy would do whatever I asked. I was right.”
Connor grew uneasy, though he wasn’t sure why. Something in the room didn’t feel right to him either and not because Iris was feeling it. But he couldn’t put his finger on the problem.
Then it hit him. There was a theme going on here. The woman he’d killed all those years ago had been pregnant. Tammy had been as well. And Big Nuts used pregnant women as part of his sex club. But none of this would get him the answers he needed.
Yet, as he recalled the woman he’d killed a decade past, guilt drove a spike through his heart all over again. The moment he’d realized the pistol had been strapped to her wrist, he knew he’d been set up, maneuvered to kill the woman. But he’d never known why, never gotten to the bottom of it. Even back then he couldn’t find anyone willing to talk.
The event had changed him, made him cautious, more careful than he’d ever been before.
Now here he was, facing a low-level sex club owner who had sent Tammy out to repeat history. “I need to know who set me up. That’s all. Then I’m out of here.”
He felt Iris tense up once more. “We should leave,” she said quietly.
He took in the field once more. Five shifter bodyguards and Big Nuts. Two women by the blue velvet drapes. Iris’s gun and her witch powers, his own weapon still in its holster. His sword at the ready.
He made his move and brought his gun into his hand. He was fast and even Big Nuts’s eyes widened.
Big Nuts held up both hands. “Let’s calm down.”
“Let’s not. Iris, start making your way to the door. Gary, you should let us go.”
“See, it’s this way. I can’t. I was told to hold you and these were orders I couldn’t refuse.”
“Whose orders?”
“Can’t tell you that either, except to say it wasn’t one of the big three.” He lifted both arms in the air and with his index and middle fingers pressed together, waved to his troops. It was a signal of some kind.
Connor fired up into the air and the women at the velvet curtains screamed and ran out of the room. The bodyguards, however, froze in mid-motion like playing statue, but he wasn’t sure why. Gary with them.
Then he felt Iris’s witch energy all around him, though how she was doing it he had no idea. She seemed to be employing some form of enthrallment, a spell maybe. It was on a massive scale, something most witches couldn’t do. So who was Iris anyway?
Connor kept shifting his gaze from Big Nuts, to his men, and back.
“Iris?” He didn’t dare take his eyes off the men in front of him, though he feared more guards may have already arrived at the entrance. If they had, he and Iris were screwed.
