Page 74 of The Deeper Game
I complied, mind whirling with fear.
He grabbed my purse and rummaged through it. Going through my purse. Oh, I wanted this guy todie.
My heart raced as I discarded one idea for vanquishing him after another. He had me hostage in the worst way. He could bring us all down so fast.
He pulled out a stick of lipstick and handed it to me.
“You’re going to write a message,” he said. “On the rearview mirror.”
“What?” I asked, horrified.
“I can’t take it anymore. I’m sorry,” he dictated. “I’d have you write more, but the space is a bit limited.”
Just like their first girlfriend, Venus—she’d written that lipstick message on the bathroom mirror just before she went off and killed herself. “I won’t do that to them.”
“I think you will.”
“Fuck you,” I hissed, thinking lavishly of the guns strapped up and down my leg.
“That’s exactly what Venus said.”
My mouth fell open in shock.
He made a big mock frown, more a smile-frown. “All this time, the poor tortured gods.”
My heart pounded.
Robert Manning had killed Venus? She hadn’t killed herself after all? My guys had felt responsible for her death. It had nearly broken them—especially Zeus. All those years of guilt over her suicide. I wanted to gouge this asshole’s eyes out of their sockets for what he’d put my guys through.
“They know I’d never write that. They won’t buy it.”
“That’s not the point I’m trying to make to them. The point, the lesson I have for them, is that they could’ve prevented this if they hadn’t let their emotions get away with them. If only they’d been paying more attention,” he said mockingly. “If only they hadn’t been so focused on vengeance.”
The horror sunk in deep. Thatwaswhat they’d say. They’d blame themselves.
“They let vengeance blind them,” he continued, “even as their precious Isis begged them to pull their heads out of their asses. Vengeance never sleeps. Can’t even take a nap apparently.”
So he’d wired the truck.
He pressed the gun against my arm. “Write it. Or do I have to move to plan B?”
The chess moves between us became preternaturally clear at this point. I’d write the message to buy time and keep him from raising the alarm about my guys inside the bank.
He’d make me go somewhere with him in his vehicle, leaving the empty SUV with the message in it. And I’d go, just to get us the hell out of the area. Because the alternative was getting my guys busted and probably killed, and we were a pack. We watched out for each other.
We protected each other with everything.
And it wasn’t as if I was helpless; I was pretty dramatically armed. But Manning would know that, too. He was smart—obviously smarter than any of us had realized. He had tactics, being a SEAL and all. And insider information.
But every one of those moves was the lesser of two evils. It was a decision tree, and I had to follow it his way if I loved my guys.
So I wrote the lipstick note to buy time, hands shaking with anger. I got out of our big tinted-windows Navigator and walked with him a half a block down to his pickup truck, even though getting into a bad guy’s vehicle is the worst thing you can do, odds-wise.
But he didn’t know me. He’d always looked down on me. He would underestimate me. That was my ace in the hole.
He made me take the driver’s seat, his gun trained at my head. “Drive natural, or you are splat,” he said.
I snorted. “A creepy thing that a creepy guy says. That’s what that is.”
