Page 37 of Dark Reasons

"I wouldn't—" I start to argue.

"Fine," Jamison talks over me. "I'll pay extra. Now, we're trying to find out anything we can about a man named Caruso Oakley. Only thing I know is he was the boss of someone named Sanford Grecko, who is now deceased."

"Saw it on the news. Your handiwork?" Rory asks with a sneer.

Jamison is cold and still as a statue. "Yes."

My heart skips at the reminder of what I watched Jamison do yesterday. Rory isn't fazed, he leans over his keyboard and begins typing. "This could take a few minutes," he says. "Grab yourself a soda or something from the kitchen."

Jamison nods at me. "Want something?"

"Uh, sure," I say.

He turns his back on us, heading into another room around the corner. I can't see him, but he's close enough that I hear the telltale noise of a fridge being opened.

"You're nuts, you know."

"Excuse me?" I ask. Rory isn't hunched over the keyboard anymore, he's reclining in his chair, hands behind his head. The monitor makes his yellow glasses glow like car headlights.

He pushes the lollipop to the other side of his mouth. "Letting the Silencer spend the night at your place."

"The Silencer?" I laugh derisively, but Rory watches me calmly. My skin starts to crawl and it's a fight to sound bored. "I guess every hit man needs a grim nickname."

"You don't know." He doesn't ask, he states it.

Winding my arms around my chest I stare down my nose at him. In my guts, I know I have to act calm. I can't show fear. I can't be afraid when I'm in a den of people who sell murder for money. "What don't I know?"

Rory pulls the candy out with a grotesqueplop."Jamison kills anybody who crosses him. And I meananybody.His first client got drunk while at a little shit-hole bar in Bakersfield, blabbed to the whole room about hiring him. Jamison got wind of that. Wanna know what he did?"

My nails dig into my upper arms to the point of pain. "I guess he killed his client."

"Ding ding ding!" Rory wags the lollipop with a grin; his teeth are stained red from the dye. "But he didn't stop there. He sliced up every single person in that place."

The way my stomach twists around has me crunching myself together. "You're lying."

"Swear to god."

"How would he hide all of the bodies?"

"That's why he's called the Silencer," he nearly sings it. "No trace left behind, no one knows he was even there. But you didn't ask about the most fucked up part."

I don't want to know... and yet... "Tell me."

"The now-very-dead client that set the massacre off?" Rory leans closer, hands on his knees, looking like some monstrous owl with glowing eyes. "It was his own sister."

"How's it going in here?" Jamison asks as he comes around the corner with two cans of Sprite. I fall against the wall, using it to stay on my feet, hoping against all odds I don't look as pale and awful as I feel. Jamison glances at me, but if he notices, he doesn't act like it.

He moves purposefully over to me, passing the soda. I take it, drinking quickly to hide how I'm shaking. Jamison smiles gently. He doesn't have the kindest face I've ever seen, but in this moment, he looks as normal as anybody I'd pass on the street.

He goes to Rory, the computer making his tan skin ghostly. He stands casually, talking, none of the words reaching my ears. I can't hear anything. I'm sinking into the floor, the world shifting around me, changing by the second.

He killed his own sister.

I think I might be sick. Could Rory be lying? Just telling a far-fetched story to freak me out? The guy doesn't seem to like me, that's obvious. It's very possible. Yeah. It's just him fucking with me.

So why is my neck slick with sweat? The trembling in my knees continues, ignoring how many ways I'm rationalizing the info Rory cursed me with. My vision pin points on Jamison... on the side of his face, his jaw as it moves up and down, the way his Adam's apple vibrates with his voice.

It's not fair for him to be so at ease while I'm fighting a panic attack.

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