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The man swipes the knife across my cheek so quickly, I didn’t see it coming. It burns as the blood runs down my cheek, drips off my chin, and splatters on my thigh.
He crouches down and puts his face mere inches from mine. Squeezing my knees with bruising force, his face inches so close that his hot breath fans across my perspiring skin. He still looks unfamiliar to me, and yet, I can’t help but feel a familiarity in his voice. “You’re obviously a novice. But you’re going to tell me who you’re working for, and then I’ll dispose of you.”
He stands suddenly, and I let out a mangled sob. How could I have been so stupid?
“Let’s try this again.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out a pen. “Why did you plant this in Rowan’s house?”
“A pen?” I say, my lip trembling.
“We found this in the guest bedroom a few days after the holiday party. A partyyouattended.”
The guest bedroom? That was… that was months ago, when Lorenzo and I…
I squint at the pen, trying to understanding why it would matter if it was left in the room. How does he even know I was in that room? Does that mean he knowswewere in that room?
“That’s not mine,” I finally say with a little more bravado. If this man is going to attack me while I’m obviously clueless and afraid, I might as well try to be courageous. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know, Katherine,” he says, wiping the knife clean with a rag he pulls from his other pocket. He tosses the rag onto the floor before looking at me with an evil gleam in his eye. “If you would just confess, this would all be over a lot quicker.”
“I have nothing to confess to!” I shout. My voice is getting stronger even though my throat is drier than ever. “I was noticing weird things around the office, so I decided to investigate. I had no idea what was in that hotel roo—”
A sharp, agonizing pain rips through my thigh when he slices the knife across it. I let out a piercing scream as my eyes fixate on the deep gash, blood seeping into the torn fabric.
“I’m a busy man, Ms. Appleton, but my schedule is cleared for this. I can guarantee that I’ve got a lot more stamina than you.”
“Sir,” I say, my voice shaking. The bravado lasted point-five seconds. “I wish I could help you. But I don’t know anything. I went to the hotel to try and find out.”
“Who is it? Another runner? The Feds?”
My thoughts are going a mile a minute, desperately trying to piece together what’s going on.
Lorenzo.
His friends. One of them isrelatedto Rowan, while Lorenzo himself is related to Marco.
The drugs.
The cash.
Rowan and Marco’s lack of involvement.
Their trust in their employees.
The cheap housing.
The cash discount.
The audit ding.
The pieces of the puzzle snap together all at once.
It’s a front.
It’s a drug front.
And this psycho in front of me thinks I was working against them.
The epiphany sinks a rock in my gut as the man touches the tip of the knife to my stomach, and I know he’s only a moment away from twisting it through my insides. I rack my brain for something—anything—to say to make him stop. Fuck Lorenzo and fuck my gut feeling. I open my mouth to tell him the truth, but he speaks first.
