Page 36 of The Hangman's Rope

Every once in a while, there would be some petty volleys tossed back and forth, but for the most part everyone was in a sort of uncomfortable harmony and things just kept on trucking along like a well-oiled machine.

“You fuck that up, the historical society is gonna have my fuckin’ nuts in a vice,” I complained.

“Relax,” he said. “I doubt they’re going to complain about a one-hundred percent, fully funded and operational state-of-the-art security system for their upcoming gift shop. We’ll get it cleared and handled downstairs later – no one will even be the wiser this is even up here until the gift shop is done and I come back to do up here at a later date.”

He gave me a wink.

“Syn already pulled the strings with Enocha and the gang?” I asked.

Requiem snorted, “Of course, he fucking did. He’s always ten steps ahead in the game – you know that.”

“Probably why this whole thing is driving him nucking futs,” I mused aloud.

Requiem snorted, “You got that right.”

“I’ve been more than a little occupado, my brother. I’m afraid I’m in the dark on most things,” I said and I’d dropped my tone so as not to be overheard by the sweet girl out in the living room on my couch.

“We’ll get you all caught up tonight,” he said, putting a screw to the bit in his drill to mount the camera the rest of the way up in the hall.

“That just tells me what an absolute clusterfuck shit is,” I said.

He snorted again and shook his head with a sigh, “The likes we’ve honestly never been in before. Whole situation is confusing as all get out and fucked up. Mostly it’s just trying to figure out if she’s going to fuck us over if we let her loose back out into the wild.”

I shook my head, “If she did, I’d be surprised. She doesn’t honestly seem the type.”

“Trust is a precious commodity in our world,” Requiem said, staring down the hall, his gaze damn near burning a hole in the wall so he could see through to where Lorelai sat in the corner of my couch lost in her own reverie.

I nodded, and sighed, “It goes both ways, bro.”

He looked at me like I’d said something interesting and nodded.

“She’s scared,” he said and while it didn’t sound like a question but more like an observation, I answered it anyway.

“Fuck, wouldn’t you be waking up in a morgue with Reaper’s dick in your hand?” I asked.

He barked a laugh then and I grinned.

“Touché, fucker,” he said, jacking Lainey’s phrase.

“She’s scared,” I affirmed.

“Doesn’t seem to be around you,” he said. “What’s that about?”

I gritted my teeth a second and tersely answered, “A lot of hard work slogging uphill, no thanks to Syn,” I muttered.

“I feel that,” he agreed. Out of all of us, Requiem tended to butt heads with our fearless leader the most – then again, he andSyn had more interaction and thus room for disagreement than the rest of us usually did.

“What would you do?” I asked.

“Morally or pragmatically?” he asked.

“Both,” I reasoned I’d like to hear both his answers, even though I already knew what the pragmatic one would be.

“Pragmatically? Off her and disappear her – mercifully and quickly, of course,” he said.

I nodded and one look at my face probably told him I didn’t want to hear the answer even though I already knew what it was.

“Morally? Find the fucksticks that victimized her, and off them and disappear them slowly and as painfully as possible. Still not sure what the morally correct answer is wheresheis actually concerned… that’s a whole Gordian knot of different colliding issues.”

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