Page 33 of Hard Game

Maddox watches me before shaking his head. “I’m taking you for a coffee, and I’ll tell you about your sister. Not everyone is corrupt.”

My hands fly to my mouth. “You know about Sara?!” It hurts saying her name. My heart can’t take much more. Dizziness strikes again, and my breathing turns shallow. I rub my clammy hands against my pants and try to stop shaking.

“Yes, I know about Sara,” Maddox says. “Please, just be quiet until we get there.”

“Get where?” I demand, pissed that all these men seem to know about my fucking sister and insist on making demands of me. “Tell me now, Maddox! Please!”

Maddox pulls the truck over and reaches over to me, his large hands cupping my face in his. “She’s gone, Little Fox.”

The air leaves my lungs, and a ringing fills my ears. It’s so loud I can’t hear anything he’s saying, but I can see his lips moving. Flashes of words make it to my brain, words like ‘snuff movie’ and ’trafficking.’

I knew it. I knew it all those years ago, and I know it now. My sister was taken from me.

“—Snatched, we’re trying to find out by who.” Maddox is saying, his eyes desperately searching mine. “Say something, Detective.”

But my throat is a tunnel of mush, the air barely able to slip through the swollen flesh as I try to breathe. I feel like I’m underwater and can’t swim or breathe.

My beautiful sister.

“Detective,” Maddox growls, forcing me to look at him. “We’ll get them.”

My world crashes down around me at his words because I know that my life just tilted on its axis, leaving me in a dark, unfamiliar place that’s burning. The law failed Sara, and it has failed her ever since. Crooked cops and corrupt detectives, I knew they existed, but I didn’t think for one second Taron had been any part of it. A man I’d loved then hated. He’d known about it all and left me because I took the case too seriously. My sister had been taken and murdered; he’d known and called me out for delving too deep. My hand claws at the door handle, and I vomit onto the ground, the seatbelt holding me firmly in place. Tears blur my vision, and my throat burns.

But then a hand moves my hair back and whispers in my ear. “I promise you that we’ll get them.”

I clutch at his hand and sob like a baby, not knowing if I want him to be right so I can kill the people responsible or send them to jail for a very long time.

“Can you prove it?” I choke out, and Maddox nods his head.

“I don’t want to, but I can.”

I know I’ll want to see whatever evidence he has. But first, I need to know who the fuck Maddox Moreno is.

17

MADDOX

Detective Diess studies me through puffy eyes, her raven hair spilling around her trembling shoulders. She keeps taking deep, steadying breaths in between sipping her coffee, and I want to murder Taron Karpe again. The mind fucking boggles how people like him exist, or in his case, existed. Bent cops are the fucking lowest of the low; at least criminals don’t pretend to be something else; they just are. But no, they want a slice of the glory pie, to earn respect where it’s not due from civilians, these heroes who risk their lives daily to protect them.

Not today, Detective Karpe.

I sip my coffee and wait for the torrent of questions I know sit on the tip of Detective Diess’s tongue, ready to spill over those plump lips. Lips that I can’t stop imagining on my dick, her tongue rolling around the tip as she stares up at me?—

“Who are you?”

Here we go, question one of a million more, no doubt. She’s asking the hardest one first, for my identity is something only Tassa and I know about. But something about the woman before me makes me want to fall to my knees and spill everything for her to know me in a way only Tassa does. In a different way. I want her to judge me.

“You know my name, but it’s a fake identity,” I say, glad I chose somewhere deathly quiet to have this conversation. The diner in question sits on a dirt road miles from the nearest highway, so I’m not worried about anyone popping in for a drink. Neither is the server, Brad, by the looks of it. He’s got his feet up on a stool behind the counter, his headphones on as he bops away to music only he can hear. He looks about eighteen, and I doubt he takes this job seriously. I wouldn’t. The cakes look like they’ve been on display for over a year.

“Why a secret identity?”

I take my time with this one. It’s complicated because I’m talking to a fucking detective, one that isn’t bent or corrupt, and I could land myself in a world of shit. So I tread carefully, dusting the truth with white lies. “I was in danger, Detective, so I changed my identity.”

She arches a brow. “You changed it?”

Shit. I should’ve said I was in witness protection or something because now she knows I changed it, she’s going to ask many more questions.

But she doesn’t, so I shrug. “Yep.”

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