AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ethan
After Abby died, I promised myself I would never take on a criminal case again, and I haven’t. For a long time, insurance fraud became my area of expertise. Then Camille Roberts contacted me. The truth is, I was bored with insurance work and workers comp claims. And more than that, I couldn’t afford to turn Camille down. Even if I’d wanted to. So I took the job. What I wanted, aside from not being a complete and total public failure, was one last great criminal case. Proof that I still had it in me.
I don’t know if that’s what this case will turn out to be. The only thing I do know is that Camille is difficult. She’s the kind of woman who throws a wrench into all your plans and finds satisfaction in the undertaking. But she pays well. She’s a woman on a mission, and I have to respect that. It was Camille who said that no stone can be left unturned, and that is exactly how I find myself in the car, driving toward my house with a woman I met on the internet, a woman that could be responsible for the murder of not just one man, but several.
I consider the odds that Ali Brown killed Donovan Roberts or any of the other men. It’s probably not a very smart game plan to come right out and ask. She has several strikes against her. For one, she has offices in two of the four cities the victims lived in. Two, I did copy almost word for word the bios of the previous victims, hoping to catch the killer’s interest. I try to come up with a third strike and can’t. At least not yet. It doesn’t help that all I can think about is the beautiful woman in my passenger seat, wearing the best dress I’ve ever seen, who is probably most likely going to have sex with me and, well, I can’t force myself to care about anything else.
What I can do is call Nadia and relay my current situation, just in case I fail to turn up at work in the morning.
When we get to my house, I’m relieved Ali asks to use the bathroom. I call Nadia. Three rings in, I pray she picks up. She doesn’t on the first try, so I frantically call again. She finally answers on my third call, out of breath and annoyed. “This better be good—”
“Ali Brown is in my bathroom,” I whisper-scream into the phone.
“What?”
“The woman you set me up with from the app. She’s here.”
“At your house?”
“That’s right.”
“What the fuck, boss?” There’s a brief pause and when I don’t answer she adds, “Thinking with your dick is going to get you killed!”
All women say that, but this time Nadia has a point.
“I picked up the file from Max.” She lets out a quick sigh. “Let’s just say you should not be alone with this woman. If I were you, I wouldn’t be alone with any woman from that app. Not so long as you’re plagiarizing the bios of dead guys.”
“Wait. Max gave you the file? On the senator’s kid?”
“Lucas Bennett. Yeah, why?”
“Really?”
“You know I have a way of getting what I want.” Anyone else’s voice would be proud, but Nadia’s is void of emotion.
“Wow.” I’m scared to ask what she did to get Max to hand over the file. Max has gotten itchy lately, with good reason. We all know he can’t keep compromising himself the way he has been.
“He—”
“No, it’s okay. Stop there, I really don’t want to know.”
I hear the toilet flush and the faucet turn on. “Listen, I have to go. I just wanted you to know who I’m with in case—”
I don’t finish my sentence because I spot Ali’s handbag lying on the chair in my living room. I walk over to it, the phone pressed to my ear. I lean down and open the flap, knowing full well that she could come out of that restroom at any second. “Gotta go,” I say into the phone. “Fingers crossed, I see you tomorrow. Don’t forget the file.”
“Don’t do it,” I hear Nadia say right before I end the call. I shove the phone in my back pocket and rifle through the contents of Ali’s purse. Inside there’s a wallet, a tube of lipstick, a tampon and—what the fuck?A handgun.
Chapter Twenty
Ethan
My heart starts racing. My palms grow sweaty. Fight or flight kicks in. I have my Glock on me and years of aikido at my disposal and still my throat sticks. This woman is a possible murderer, and she’s in my house.Fuck, what am I going to do?
I could just ask her to leave. I could tell her I’m not feeling well. But no. That would make too much sense, and at the moment I still want to get laid. I have a gun, she has a gun. I’m not a killer, she might not be a killer.
Just in case, I need a “Plan B.” So I go into the kitchen, take the bottle of sleeping pills prescribed to me by a doctor I never see, pills that I never touch, and crush one into a million tiny pieces, until they’re finer than a grain of sand. I fetch two wineglasses from the cabinet, glasses I never use, and open an old bottle of red. I fill the glasses, dropping the powder into one of them. Remnants of the pills float at the top, so I stick my finger in the glass and stir like mad.
When I hear the creak of the bathroom door, I take the glasses in my hand and round the bar into the living room.Right hand, I live. Left hand, I die.
