Execution Style (17 page)

The doors opened, and I stepped onto the elevator, waving at Silas as the doors closed. His eyes studied me the entire time, and I let out a relieved breath, going weak in the knees, when he didn’t stop me from leaving.

However, I managed to stay upright when the doors opened again, emitting a laughing couple.

They were so lovey-dovey with each other that I wanted to puke.

Fuck my life.

“Will you put me some Dr. Pepper in a beer mug? I want it in one of those big ones,” I said, gesturing towards a beer mug that was about the size of my thigh.

The waitress smiled. “Sure, honey.”

I fed my first quarter into the slot machine I’d commandeered, and pulled the lever.

Seven-seven-star.

I repeated
it. Over and over.

This wasn’t near as much fun as the advertisements made it look.

“Please tell me,” a deep voice said from behind me. “That you’re not seriously drinking beer.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Silas, and grimaced.

“What are you doing here?” I asked tiredly.

“Nothing,” he said, taking the seat beside me, feeding a quarter in, and immediately hitting three cherries.

Quarters started to pour out of the machine, filling up the tray. Alarms started to sound and people tittered excitedly.

I gave Silas a disgusted look when he scooped the entire booty up, and deposited it in my rapidly deteriorating bucket.

“How’d you do that?” I asked, gesturing to his machine.

He shrugged. “The power of observation. The old lady that was sitting here before me had been here since this morning when I went to bed around one. She left with her single cup she’d come with, which meant she didn’t win anything or she’d have had more. It was bound to happen. These things wouldn’t be so popular if one didn’t pay out every once in a while to keep the crowd interested.”

I blinked, stunned by his words. Power of observation indeed.

“So what are you doing here?” I
asked, feeding in another quarter.
“How’d you find me?”

7-7-cherry.

Fuck
.

I glared at Silas as he, once again, hit a winning combination and more quarters poured out before he answered.

“Followed you,” he answered mildly.

I lowered my eyebrows at him. “How? You were still up on the floor when I got to the ground level. And that’s got to be the slowest elevator on the planet. How’d you find me?”

He gave me a droll look. “You’re in the casino in the same hotel we’re staying at. If you didn’t want to be found, you wouldn’t be here.”

I scrunched my nose up at him, and pulled the lever again.

Cherry-cherry-two cherries.

Shit.

“I’m in the back of the casino; I’m being inconspicuous,” I spat.

He snorted. “Whatever you say, dear. I know better than to argue with a pregnant person.”

“How’d you know I was pregnant?” I asked
accusingly.

He raised his eyebrows. “Having to go pee every thirty m
inutes.
Almost throwing up at the
smell of an airport. Sleeping nearly the entire plane ride. Eating a brownie fudge
sunday with French fries as a side? If that doesn’t spell pregnant with a capital P, I don’t know what does.”

“Humph,” I sighed. “Whatever.”

We played in silence for well over an hour before I started to wonder why he was still there.

“Why are you here, again?” I asked curiously.

“Because you’re sitting at my slot machine,” he said, raising the beer the waitress had just brought over for him to his lips before taking a drink.

“Well, looks like you got the better one, anyway,” I muttered, pulling down the lever.

7-7-7.

Alarms started blaring, confetti dropped from the fucking ceiling, and people started to crowd around me.

Instead of being excited, I got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people that I started to freak out.

Silas’ reassuring hand at my shoulder, though, stopped my overreaction in its tracks, and I was able to smile as, instead of dropping me quarters, a printed receipt started to print out of the machine.

“What the hell is that?” I asked in confusion.

“You won more than the machine had to give. So they gave you a printed receipt that you’ll have to take up to the corner,” Silas said, gesturing towards the wall where a glassed in receptionist stood taking tickets just like mine.

“Hmm,” I said, sitting back down as the people started to disperse.

“You were saying about not winning?” Silas growled.

I bared my teeth at him. “Shut it.”

We went another ten minutes or so when I was finally found by Foster and Trance.

I tried to duck down behind Silas, but they spotted me easily and started walking hurriedly towards me.

“Dude,” Foster yelled. “What the fuck?”

That had been directed at Silas and not me, luckily.

“What?” Silas asked, feigning innocence.

“We’ve been looking for her for two hours. If you knew where she was, why didn’t you tell us?” Foster asked with barely controlled patience. “And you,” he directed his gaze to me. “Do you know what the point of a cell phone is?”

I raised my brows at him. “Yes.”

“And what, pray tell, is that?” Trance rumbled, accusing eyes locked on mine.

I ignored them and fed another quarter in. “To play Angry Birds, of course.”

Silas snorted as he tried to hold in his laugh, but it made him sound like he was choking on his own spit.

I turned to him. “Did you know they were looking for me?”

He shrugged. “No, but then again, none of them called
me
. How was I supposed to know they were looking for you?”

Trance snorted. “You stayed for a reason, old man. And the fucking police at Miller’s door wasn’t a good
way
to start his morning. He had to go down to the station
with them to explain what happened last night.”

“Explain what?” I asked, standing in alarm.

“That fucker from last night was killed,” Foster said eloquently.

I blinked, turning to Trance for him to translate. “What?”

“Faris Blue was killed,” Trance translated.

I blinked in surprise
. “Why is Miller
at the police station?”

“He had the flight information, as well as our names written on a piece of paper beside his office phone,” Trance explained. “They’re just following up with him and would like to speak with you, too.”

“Alright,” I walked past them. “Let me cash in my winnings and go talk to them.”

“Miller said for you to stay here; he’d tell them everything they needed to know,” Trance explained at my back.

Of course he would, because he had to take care of me, after all. I was a poor, pitiful woman who was incapable of taking care of herself.

“Whatever,” I said. “I’m going down there. Either you can go with me or get out of my way.”

Surprisingly, or could I say luckily, I missed Miller by a matter of seconds.

Trance had tried to call him, but the reception in the hotel we were staying at was terrible, making each call Trance placed to Miller practically worthless.

Now Trance was leading us into the depths of the Las Vegas police station so we could speak with the same man I’d met with last night, Tony DeRoy.

“Don’t say anything you think you shouldn’t,” Trance said as he reached the door.

I gave him an annoyed look. “Yes, father.”

He glared at me. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, little girl.”

I snorted. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“Alright,” Foster said, pushing the door open and walking between us. “Now that you’ve each measured your dicks, let’s get this over with before the reunion that starts in two hours.”

I didn’t bother telling him I wouldn’t be going. Especially since his parents were going to be there. That really was the last thing I wanted to do today.

“Mine’s bigger,” I whispered to Trance as I passed.

He snorted, but nonetheless followed me in.

“Tony, let’s do this. The reunion starts soon,” Trance said, ignoring me for the time being.

And that was how I realized that I wasn’t allowed to leave the state, because I was a suspect in the death of Faris Blue.

Hard times will always reveal true friends. Why? Because those fuckers will be downing shots on the stool right next to you.

-Life Lesson

Mercy

“She’s told you this fifteen fucking times, Tony. Goddammit. How many more times does she have to tell you?” Trance asked, running his fingers through his hair roughly.

He was so cute, getting all defensive over me.

“Why are you still here, boyo?” Tony asked, sneering at him.

I just shook my head. They’d literally done this no less than five times now in the last hour.

I was really ready to get out of here. Not to mention that my baby that was the size of a
lentil was somehow, miraculously, pressing on my bladder to the point of pain.

Needless to say, when Miller burst into the room a minute and forty seconds later, because, seriously, I was watching the clock while the two blockheads argued, I was more than happy to see him.

Except he didn’t look in the least bit happy to see me.

“Tony, you promised me you wouldn’t bother her,” Miller growled, turning his scowl on my captor.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I also agreed that if she came to me, like you said she wouldn’t, that I’d talk to her. Which she did, and I did. I’ve just got two more…”

“You’re done. Get up, Mercy. It’s time to go,” Miller said, stopping Tony’s explanation in its tracks.

“Hey!” Tony snapped. “I know you’re my friend and all, but this is a murder investing-”

“Now,” Miller growled.

I shrugged and stood, walking out the door, not waiting for Miller nor Tony to protest.

In fact, I ducked into the employee bathroom before either one could say a word.

Miller, obviously, didn’t see me enter the bathroom, because the moment I finally got to relieve myself, he was yelling the police station down.

“Mercy!” Miller bellowed loudly.

“I’m peeing!” I screamed at the door.

Goddamn.
Couldn’t a woman pee by herself?

“You need to chill the fuck out, dude. I haven’t peed in four hours,” I muttered.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when he opened the door. The locked door. But I was.

He just barged in, and slammed the door shut behind him, billowing air like he’d run a mile at a dead spring.

“Jesus,” I said, turning my back on him as I yanked my pants over my ass. “What’s your freakin’ deal?”

I was still mad. Which was why I was being so mean.

I knew he was worried. Hell, I’d been worried about him, too. But he needed to back the fuck off. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his overprotective streak that verged on the brink of irrational.

“What the hell’s your problem with me? I just saved you,” he asked, stunned that I’d snapped at him.

I whipped around to face him. “My problem?”

He blinked. “That’s what I just asked, wasn’t it?”

I moved into his space. “My problem,
mister
,” I punctuated that word with a poke to his chest, leaning forward so my nose was level with his chin. Sure, I had to stand on my tippy toes, and I had to lean slightly on my finger that was poking into his chest for balance, but it was the threat that counted. “Is that you need to stop throwing your weight around. I’m not your pet project. I can’t be fixed by you babying me all the damn time.”

He blinked, brows furrowing in confusion. “Pet project?”

I nodded, poking him again. “Yeah, your pet project. The poor little girl that can’t take care of herself. The poor little woman who was raped in front of East fucking Texas. I don’t need you. I don’t need your pity,
either.”

Okay, I was being harsh, I knew. I
didn’t
know his side of it, but what his parents had said earlier had made sense. Too much sense, in fact. A man like Miller couldn’t like me.

Not plain Mercy Diane Shepherd. The girl that had no curves, boobs, or
bounties of any kind. I was plain Mercy. The girl who was raped. The girl who had more in common with a man than a woman.

I was the woman who burned if I was out in the sun too long, and could eat fifty donuts and have nothing to show for it but being more attractive to mosquitoes. I was the woman who walked in front of a crew of construction workers in my sexiest get-up, and never got a single freakin’ whistle.

His eyes caught on mine and he cornered me against the wall.

“Is this about what you saw yesterday?” He asked, taking his hand and running it down the side of my neck, then further down my side to settle on my hip.

“What I saw yesterday
? Do you mean what
I
heard?” I asked in confusion.

He shook his head. “What do you mean what you heard? I was talking about what you saw when I beat the shit out of Faris.”

I blinked. “Uhh, no. I was talking about what I heard your parents say this morning.”

Confusion clouded his features. “I don’t remember hearing my parents say anything that upset you.
In fact, I haven’t even seen my parents today.
What did you hear that made you leave and disappear for hours?
Which, might I add,
scared the shit out of me.
”

Since he looked so genuinely confused, I took pity on him.

Lips thinning in trepidation, I explained what I’d heard his mother and father talking about when I’d gone to breakfast that morning.

“I’m going to fucking kill them,” he said, pushing away from my body and throwing the door open.

I ran and jumped on his back, wrapping my arms around his throat.

It didn’t stop him in the slightest. He kept walking as if an extra hundred and ten pounds hadn’t just been added to his weight.

He didn’t have far to go, however.