Page 36 of Bastard

It took me a minute to bring Riddick up to speed on Todd’s request. He said fuck a lot. Just the word, sometimes fuck me, sometimes fuck him, and occasionally fuck everything. It was cathartic.

“So what’s the job?”

“You don’t want to know.” And I sure as shit wasn’t saying it on a sidewalk. “I’ll bring Todd up to speed. Here’s what I need from you. Find out who the man behind the curtain is.”

Riddick didn’t reply right away. “What makes you think there’s someone behind the curtain that isn’t named Feyereisen?”

“A hunch. When I left someone dove into the office behind me. I got a vibe. An evil fucking vibe. Look, I’m not saying the brothers aren’t in charge and as awful as they seem. But with people like that…”

“There’s always someone worse. I feel ya.” He sighed and groaned. “Kind of reminds me of a problem of our own. Knife fits the same bill.”

“He done something else?”

“Not yet. Just can’t stand to be on the same planet with him. He’s slippery though. Never alone.”

“We’ll get him. Dig in on the Feyereisen thing for me, okay?”

“You got it, boss.”

Sam was still locked in with Georgia so I went to Sam’s office. I spent the next hour on the secure laptop going through Stroman personnel indexes hoping to see someone familiar. I only got a glimpse of the side of the man’s face, but it was distinctive. A mustache, heavy brows, the kind of lips that always seemed to be frowning. Plus he just had that overall rumpled look to him that you would think would jump out of a photograph.

It wasn’t until I startled awake that I realized I’d fallen asleep.

“Hey,” Sam said softly. “You okay? It’s not like you to nap.”

“Come here.” I tugged until she fell onto the couch beside me. “I haven’t slept real well. Guess my body decided enough was enough.” Plus the relief of getting the meeting out of the way. It was like having that one thing on your to do list that never seemed to get done, so it starts to feel impossible, but then you finally do it and it turns out it was easy as shit.

Hiten Feyereisen wasn’t easy as shit, but it cleared some massive hurdles from my path, and that felt good.

Kind of like Sam.

She felt real good.

“I don’t have time for a nap, Jace.”

I pulled her in closer, buried my nose in her hair until I found her neck. “Just lay here for a minute. Just one.”

“Okay fine. I guess this does feel nice.”

The couch was just wide enough to spoon her comfortably. I kicked off my shoes. They hit the ground with a thud.

Sam did the same thing. “Okay, this feels really nice, actually.” Then she snuggled into my bicep and sighed. “I guess I’ve been tense for the last few hours.”

“That was a big meeting. Did it go well?”

“Yeah actually. I think I’m going to land a couple of effective punches.”

“And I know what those feel like.”

She elbowed me in the ribs. “Not the same thing.”

But it kind of was. Didn’t matter if a hit was physical or emotional, just that it made an impact. “Just keep shining that light of yours until there are no shadows left.” Hopefully I could catch a few rats and cockroaches as they fled the sinking Feyereisen ship.

Sam sighed again. “Wow. I needed to sit. Thank you, Jace.”

“No problem. I figured if I was this bad off, maybe you were too.” Except all I really wanted was to touch her. My motives were selfish, they just happened to work out for both of us.

She wiggled her ass.

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