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“Too busy to return a text or call, but you can find time to stalk me to find out where I am?! That doesn’t make sense, Asher! Nor does it make sense that you never mentioned you and Amanda wanting to move here. And why thehellare you still paying her phone bill? To throw me off? To make me think she’s still alive?!”
“To hear her voice!” Asher blubbered, breaking down into tears. “She left the phone, when she left. I’d always paid the bill for her, since college. Even though we broke up. I… I call to hear her voicemail message sometimes.”
Creepy motherfucker.
“Where is she, Ash?” Monica said, her tone much softer than before, letting me know she was actually falling for this bullshit. “Is Amanda alive?”
“I don’t know. I don’tknow,” he insisted, and Monica lifted her eyes to mine.
“What about Kim?” I asked him, still holding those shears, and ready to finish the job with his pinky. “How are you involved with her?”
“I’m not, I swear.” He shook his head. “I don’t know her.”
Immediately, Monica raised her hands, motioning for me not to touch him. “Asher, you know that’s a lie. You met her when you toured the company before I was even in the building I’m in now. And over the years, you’ve seen her, talked to her, at least a half-dozen times. Please… don’t lie to me.”
“Okay, we’ve met, but I don’t… I don’t know her like that. I haven’t seen her, I swear. Please, I need to go to a hospital.”
“I don’t believe a word out of this motherfucker’s mouth,” I said, grabbing his hand and positioning my scissors again, ready to finish the job. “He’s going to tell us what he knows, one way or another.”
“I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything!” Asher started screaming, fighting against his restraints so hard that the chair bucked, at the same time that Monica came at me, trying to get me to stop, and next thing I knew… homeboy’s pinky finger was on the floor.
“Hey… this shitisn’tmy fault,” I said, as the whole room went silent – Monica and Asher in shock, Harrison and Savannah in thinly veiled amusement, turning away, trying not laugh.
“What thefuck?!” Monica screamed at me, at the same time Asher started yelling his head off again.
“It was an accident! I was just trying to scare him, but you tried to grab me, and his dumb ass moved the chair, and… snip snip. My bad!”
“Your bad?!” Asher and Monica asked, in unison, just before Asher’s head tipped to the side, passed out from either fear, pain, or blood loss.
Always cool under pressure, Savannah shook her as she stepped past me, going for the fully stocked first aid kit she knew I kept under the kitchen sink. “I got it. Somebody pick his finger up, and put it on ice. Harrison, go next door and get my bag. You cut through the joint, right? Not the bone?” she asked, and I shook my head.
“Not the bone, I would’ve had to snap.”
She nodded. “Good. Get your lady out of here and talk to her before she passes out too.”
Knowing Savannah was right, I turned around to do just that after dropping the shears down on the counter, but Monica immediately shied away, staring in disgust at my hands.
They were covered in blood.
I turned to the sink to wash them, but when I looked back, Monica was gone, and there was only Asher left in the kitchen, with Savi bent behind him, carefully cleaning his wound. I didn’t have the medical training that she did, so I left her to it to figure out where Monica had gone.
“What thefuckwas that?!” her voice sounded, as soon as I turned into the foyer, where she was walking back and forth. “Tell me what is going on!”
I grabbed her by the shoulders to stop her pacing, turning her to face me. “I know that probably looked like a really bad—”
“Probably?!Probably?! You justcut his finger off!With fucking… kitchen shears, like you were deboning a chicken!Oh my God!”
“It’s reallynotthat big of—”
“Oh don’t youdare!” she hissed. “Not a big deal?!” She shook her head, then took a deep breath in what seemed like an attempt to calm her nerves. “I… so… you weren’t exaggerating, about what you did for the CIA… were you?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Monica… even if I’d cut his finger off on purpose – which Ididn’t– it would honestly be pretty low-level, on the list of things I’ve done.”
She swallowed hard. “Right. I guess the CIA doesn’t exactly hand out hangnails.”
“No. They don’t. So… what… you’re scared of me now or something?”
Her eyes came up to mine, and I gave her the respect of not shifting my gaze, even though the way she was staring had me uncomfortable as hell until she finally answered. “No. I’m not. But… you have to understand if I don’t really feel like I can trust my gut right now. I never thought Asher was capable of being involved in this, and yet… here we are.”
