Page 74 of Tear Me to Pieces
Becca squats, grabbing the guy’s shoulder as she leans back, managing to shift him just enough I can slip free. “Pretty sure there’s no walking going on.”
I get to my feet just as Simon races in, Butch hot on his heels. Both men skid to a stop, their eyes dropping to the pile at our feet.
Butch looks from me to Becca. “What the fuck just happened?”
Simon grabs me, pulling me against his chest. He holds me tight as Becca starts explaining.
“We thought these were the movers bringing Myra’s couch, but then this guy grabbed me and the other one tried to get?—”
“There’s another one?” Butch steps over the lump still sporting an extension cord necklace. “Did you kill him too?”
“Well…” Becca’s voice drifts off. “If I did, it wasn’t on purpose. Totally.”
Simon kicks the front door closed before dragging me down the hall behind Butch and Becca. He stops in the doorway of the family room he worked so hard to finish, eyes caught on the red-faced man sprawled across the floor. The collapsible step-stool I stood on to hang the curtains lay across him. Like the guy at the front door, his neck looks a little…
Not right.
“You’re two for two, Bec.” I thought slapping Simon with her shoe was the worst the tiny woman standing next to me had to dish out. Guess I’m not the only one harboring a little extra feminine rage.
“I’m not fucking around.” She crouches down, digging into the pockets of the also probably dead man. “These pricks have my sister. I meant it when I said I was going to kill them all.” She pulls out his phone, waking it up before holding it in front of his face. When the facial recognition does its job and the screen unlocks, she shakes her head. “Idiot. Shoulda used a code instead.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t expecting to be boiled alive before having his neck snapped.” Butch steps in close, looking over her shoulder as she swipes across the screen.
Becca goes still, eyes widening before lifting to me.
“What?” I pull out of Simon’s grip and shove Butch to one side so I can see what she’s looking at.
It’s a picture of me.
26
SIMON
“You still thinkwe shouldn’t call Zeke and his friends?” I look over the bodies of the two dead men we pulled out of Myra’s house. “Because it’s not as easy as it used to be to get rid of these things.”
I don’t know what happened between Butch and the guys at Alaskan Security, but he immediately shoots me down.
“Absolutely not.” He scrubs one hand over his face and starts pacing across the warehouse floor. “Fuck.” His voice echoes around the large space. “Fuck.”
“We can’t help you if you aren’t honest with us.” Tate stands beside me, looking just as perplexed as I am by Butch’s refusal. “You said yourself, the cops are still watching us. You think they’re not going to get suspicious at some point? We’re lucky we got these fuckers here without getting caught. How in the hell do you think we’re going to dispose of them without attracting attention?”
“I’ll figure something out.” Butch continues pacing.
I meet Tate’s eyes, guilt brewing in my gut over what I had to do.
What we all agreed had to be done.
At one point we all thought Butch was one of us. That he was our brother.
We were wrong.
He told me I couldn’t trust anyone, and I believe him. Unfortunately, that includes him. But I still want to avoid betraying him entirely at all costs.
“It’s not just these pricks. How in the hell do you think we’re going to get rid of a big, bright red fucking box truck?” I need him to see there’s only one way out of this. That our only option is to call in Christian’s friend Zeke. The company he works for—Alaskan Security— can make all of this go away. They can help us track down the men responsible for those fuckers coming after Myra.
And that’s who they were after. Not Becca.My Myra.
After digging through everything on their phones, we were able to piece together a little more of the corruption happening around us. It’s not pretty.
