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She shoved another piece of paper at me. I squinted at it, then heaved a sigh as I forced myself to focus once more. My brain, apparently picking up on the fact that she was going to keep doing this, shoving evidence at me for me to scan, decided not to obey.
If I ever told anyone that the letters danced and weaved around the page as if they were on mushrooms, I knew I’d never hear the end of it.
Forcing myself to focus helped sometimes, but I’d pay for it at the end of the day with a killer migraine. Thanking God for text-to-voice tools that let me keep up the charade of reading with ease, I stared down at what I came to realize was Jurkavic’s autopsy report.
"You already knew about the sword," I accused, once I’d figured out what I was reading.
She smirked at me. "I just wanted to see if you’d be honest with me."
"Did I pass the test?"
"You didn’t fail."
"Damn me with faint praise, why don’t you?" I mocked, but I steadfastly ignored the way her cheeks blushed as she laughed. God, she was pretty. When I reached the Toxicology section, I frowned. "They doped him up with Rohypnol?"
"Fitting, don’t you think? Considering, at that time, they were the biggest peddlers of date-rape drugs in the Tri-State area."
"Definitely fitting. So, Da skewered a drugged-up nemesis." My lips curved. "If only I could tell him that. He’s rather proud of his abilities with a sword." Her cheeks blanched, and as I picked up on that, I decided to state the obvious. "You’re scared of him? Probably a very smart thing to be. A lot smarter than trying to get into contact with him to write his biography," I pointed out.
She flushed. "It seemed like a smart idea at the time."
"If you don’t mind bringing predators to your door, then sure it is."
I stared at her, long enough for her gaze to dart from mine and down to her notepad. It was a dickish move, but staring contests were a surprisingly painless way of establishing dominance.
We weren’t dogs, but we still found ways to submit to those who were bigger, meaner, and nastier than us. For all that Savannah undoubtedly thought she was the top dog in her world, in mine? She was a gnat.
Pursing my lips, I murmured, "So, the Albanians sacrificed their leader the second they could?"
She nodded. "Pretty much."
"Interesting."
"That’s not all."
Of course it wasn’t.
I tipped my head to the side and made a motioning gesture with my hand for her to continue.
"Would you say your uncle was a fit man? Physically and mentally?"
Scowling in contemplation, I replied, "Well, yeah. He was younger than I am now, and he was always healthy. The O’Donnellys have strong genes." Go figure. And they said that only the good died young...
That last year, though, I remembered Paddy well. He’d hauled that fucker McKenna out of the church on his shoulders like he was carrying nothing more than a bag of potatoes.
"He was a big guy. No discernible health issues, but they wouldn’t have told us boys if there’d been a problem."
She passed me another round of papers which made everything inside me cringe.
"What am I looking at? Specifically?"
"Firstly, just read the stats."
A squint at the sheets had me discerning that I was looking at yet another fucking autopsy report. "You’ve had a really cheerful day, haven’t you?"
"I’m quite a morbid person. It didn’t faze me."
No, I could tell it was quite the opposite. Savannah was clearly in her element.
