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“No, it’s Ziggy.”
Ziggy. The woman who’d gotten them all into this mess. Oh, he’d like to reach through the phone and— “Where have you been? I’ve been calling for days.” He cut his voice low and stepped back outside. “We were nearly blown up. And almost drowned. And did you know that one of Iris’s fellow officialsdied? They think he might have been poisoned! How big is this thing, Ziggy? What have you gotten us into?”
Silence. And for a terrible second, he thought she’d hung up.
Then, “Sorry, Hudson. I really am. I’ve been trying to track down the person who killed your friend Abe, because yes, according to my contact with the Orphans, there was a contract on Abe. He was murdered.”
“Assassinated, you mean.”
“I think that’s the same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing. Murder is…personal. Assassination is a job.”
“Point taken. Okay, assassinated.”
And her saying that aloud only made it weirdly worse.
He was getting looks from people emerging from the event, waiting by the valet stand for their cars. He leaned against the building, breathing in. Out. In.
The last thing he needed was a heart attack. Or an aneurysm.
“So, before or after Iris’s?”
“What?”
“Was Abe’s contract listed before or after Iris’s?” And he couldn’t believe he was asking this. What world did he suddenly live in?
“Abe’s contract was listed and bidded out after you went missing.”
He stilled. “What does that even mean? Is the same person after Iris?”
“I don’t know. And the bounty on Abe hasn’t been picked up yet, so we don’t have a name.”
No name. He stared out into the dark city, where her car had vanished.
“Hud?”
“I’ve made a terrible mistake, Ziggy. And I have to figure out a way to fix it.”
Six
Aglorious afternoon for a football game, and the familiar fire had already lit inside Iris.
She emerged from the private bathroom, gave herself a once-over in the mirror. Her uniform wasn’t made for the curves of a woman, but on the field, she was simply an official, neither male nor female, one of the crew that kept the game fair.
Which meant that Hud wasn’t even a blip on her radar.
Zach sat on the bench, lacing his cleats. Roque and Milos had already left for the morning meeting, Jakub and Yannick walking the field for any anomalies before the game.
She grabbed her cleats, then slammed her locker door. “The Vikings have a new running back, transferred from the Panthers. He’s a little sloppy, so keep an eye on him with the short passes.”
“Stay up all night doing homework?” Zach said, picking up his water bottle.
“Maybe.” She sat on the bench and pulled on her cleats. “I just want to make sure we have a clean game.”
“The meeting with the NFL officials got under your skin, didn’t it?”
She finished tying her shoes. “It just irks me a little that they have to ‘approve us.’” She finger-quoted the last words. “We’re every bit capable of reffing the Lauchtenland game, and just because it’s against an NFL team doesn’t mean we’re not going to do a stellar job.”
