Page 17 of Wild Devil

“Were you able to track down that reporter?” I ask a figure lurking at the back of the room. Skinny, with a mop of black hair, he looks at home seated before a mess of computer equipment that seemingly appeared overnight. I can’t imagine him holding his own in an arena, but I’ve heard the rumors. His speed and size are two weapons he’s adept at using to his advantage.

“Almost,” Lex replies. “He’s a squirely one, and he knows how to cover his tracks. The bastard’s been posting status updates to social media but using an IP spoofer to disguise his?—”

“I think I can follow, but you might want to dumb it down for the others,” I interject.

“Yeah.” The man laughs. “It means that he’s a tricky fucker to pin down. He has a listed address registered with the paper, but I doubt he’d be lying low there. No, if it were me, I’d be hiding in plain sight. The only way to hook someone like this is to draw them out. We need bait.”

“Why can’t we just say that we got his name from Frey?” I suggest.

“A guy this wound up? He probably won’t believe it,” Lex counters. “We gotta lure him to a meeting—and it’s gotta be juicier than a simple meet and greet. Something he’d risk his life over.”

“What about knowing what went down during Heywood’s little get-together last night?”

He winks. “That’ll do it. But how to set the bait? If we’re hunting him down, you can bet that Silas and Heywood have already caught on. They could be trolling the same fucking database, ready to ambush any meeting we might set up. Plus, this dude is far too paranoid to take a risk without knowing there’ll be a payoff. We’ll get one shot at messaging him, and we gotta make it count.”

“Fuck that. I don’t do cloak-and-dagger shit. We lay it on the table, and maybe we can kill two birds with one stone.”

“So what do we do?”

“We send them a fucking picture.”

He raises his eyebrows. “That’s not exactly subtle.”

“We send a message. One so juicy that the reporter won’t be able to resist, and if Heywood and his goons are watching, they won’t be able to ignore it, either. All we have to do is wait and see who comes to nibble.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call that a smart plan,” Lex says. “But it’s crazy enough to work, if only to get us all killed. Count me in.”

“And what should we do in the meantime?” Ben asks. “Just in case we all don’t die, and this turns out to give us the leverage we need.”

“Well then…” I shrug, thinking it over. “Then times up, and if Frey isn’t free by then, we’ll blow that fucking church to hell and back. I don’t give a damn.”

“That’s the Day I know,” Ben says, chuckling. “I thought I’d lost you there for a moment. But there is one more thing we need to worry about,” he adds. “Something that, if you don’t take care of it now, might kill you before Silas or anyone else gets the chance.”

“And what is that?”

He shrugs and raises an eyebrow as if to say, what do you think? “Your sister.”

She’s lived in the same house for the past ten years, and it’s fucking easy to break into. All you have to do is find the spare key under the mat in the backyard and unlock the door.

Usually, I could sneak in through the kitchen and help myself to whatever leftovers she had in the fridge before she ever noticed I was there.

Today seems no different. The place is unguarded, and when I enter the kitchen, I’m tense at the silence I hear inside. The TV isn’t on, and I don’t hear Sam’s usual chatter. Then I feel the pressure against the back of my neck, and I realize the awful truth.

I’ve fucked up.

“I’m going to warn you bastards one more time,” Lyra snarls. “I don’t know where the fuck Daze is, and if Silas wants to look for him, he’s more than welcome to come pull up a fucking chair, but the next time he sends some fucking stranger into my house, I won’t be so nice?—”

“Thank fuck,” I say, holding my hands up in surrender. “You aren’t entirely goddamn stupid. You kept the gun.”

She scoffs and pulls back. I turn to see her holding a shotgun—one that I bought for her years ago and one she’d sworn she’d gotten rid of. It looks well maintained, and I can tell it’s loaded. Good.

“Daze? Have you lost your fucking mind? Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m sorry. How’s Sam?”

“Terrified,” Lyra admits, her voice soft. “He keeps saying that it’s his fault ‘Ms. Lady’ had to go away. How the fuck could we ever let him get involved in this mess?” She clutches her forehead and leans against the counter for support, still holding the gun in her other hand. “It was supposed to be different with us, you know? We were going to break the cycle and all that shit. You were meant to end up off the streets and out of jail, and I was…” She tilts her head up toward the ceiling and sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe a doctor or something. But look at us. You got your druggie girlfriend knocked up after three months of dating, nearly got your ass thrown in prison, and I got pregnant in my first semester of community college. What a pair we make, huh?”

“A pair of fucking warriors,” I say. “Look at us. Life hasn’t beaten us down yet.”

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