Page 18 of Conflicted Lies

“You know who has the best aim out of all of us?” Hawke says, and I’m surprised he’s willing to give anyone else credit. “Jewel. That woman…” He whistles. “She could shoot you from a mile away.”

“That doesn’t help me,” I seethe. And while it might be great to spend some time with Jewel, I doubt her husband, the mafia head, Eli, is willing to loan her to anyone. Besides, I think this is good for Hawke. Not that he’ll ever admit it.

But everyone is slowly starting relationships. They’re maturing in ways I don’t think Hawke and I ever will.

I’m certain neither of us has ever seriously considered being in a relationship. I eye my cousin from the side. He’s texting someone, most likely a woman. I definitely don’t have to ask him because I already know the answer.

He pockets the phone and then starts to pack up the guns. “I think that’s enough for today. I don’t want you to feel discouraged. It was your first day.”

“You’re not a good liar.”

He smirks. “You were fucking awful, and I think you should give up now. But I’m willing to entertain it for a few more practice sessions until you come to that conclusion yourself.”

I sigh. “Thanks for trying to lie to make me feel better.”

“Why don’t you ask your father to train you at home? He’s a great shot.”

“No.”

Hawke doesn’t look in my direction, but I can hear the teasing in his voice as he says, “Little miss independent now, I see.”

No way am I asking my father to teach me to shoot. He would be curious why I have interest in it all of a sudden, and he would do everything in his power to delve behind the reason as to why.

The burner phone in my bag buzzes. I take it out, making sure Hawke can’t see the message from the unverified number. I smile when a crime scene photo appears, showing a man who was drowned to death. He’s pale, and I study the complexities of his lifeless body, immediately inspired as to what I’ll be creating next.

I have a hobby that I’ve never told a single soul about. Something I know is morbid, twisted, and fucked up. I create sculptures of the dead.

It excites me.

It challenges me.

My curiosity started after I saw my first corpse. The body was being removed from my aunt’s house by a couple of her men. He had a stiletto heel puncturing his throat, his eyes wide open. My father belatedly ushered me into another room, most likely terrified of my mother finding out. It became our little secret. I was ten years old at the time, but instead of being frightened, I was curious.

It’s not hard to find a dead body when you live in the world I do. I would take sneaky photos here or there when my family wasn’t so quick to cover my eyes.

I see the world in shapes and forms, and the dead weight of a lifeless body has a beauty about it. It’s nothing but a vacant shell. The remains of where a soul once resided. And each death has a story.

I can’t have anyone discovering this guilty pleasure. Not only is it incriminating, but people would see a part of me that’s best left in the dark. They would look at me weird and it’d most likely ruin my career. So I stick to my socially acceptable sculptures for the public eye, and in my spare time, when no one knows where I am or what I’m doing, I capture the beauty of the dead.

When I was fifteen, I started learning glass sculpting but never pursued it seriously. Not for my sellable pieces, anyway. But that skillset is mostly a secret. My parents know I had a tutor for three months, but I let her go and taught myself thereafter. I’ve kept this little part of me to myself. Until last night.

Granted, I didn’t expect the homicide detective to assume I was the one who left the gift in his apartment. Maybe I was too confident in having my friend Ivy hack his surveillance, and something went wrong.

But I wanted to toy with him, just as he’s been toying with me. I was hoping it might even spook him a little. That’s why I hired someone specifically to hack into the police’s systems and send me photos of bodies.

I just wasn’t expecting Braxton to clue in so quickly, especially when he clearly has no hard evidence. But it intrigues me how his mind works. Denying my talents and not taking credit for my work can sometimes be hard, and he’s the first person I’ve ever shared my secret art with.

I’d thought,why not dance with him a little before I put a bullet in his brain?

Or not, maybe. Considering how shocking it would be that I actually hit my target.

“Little red, you know you can always hire someone. Hell, tell me who the detective is, and I’ll do it for free as an early birthday present,” he suggests as we walk back to his car.

“No, this one, I need to deal with myself. It’s personal,” I tell him. He opens the trunk and loads the cases inside. The sound of sirens reaches our ears, and I freeze as Hawke draws one of the guns. I’m quick to hold down his hand as he tries to point it in the direction of the sleek black sedan coming toward us with its siren blaring.

“Don’t,” I hiss.

My blood boils. Fuck, Braxton is persistent.

---