Page 54 of No Small Sin

Carson making a beeline to the bathroom, snatching TK’s straw from her drink and pocketing it on the way by.

Fuck.

This couldn’t be happening.

I wouldn’t let it.

Ijah would help me. He had to.

Realizing now that I should have told him everything sooner, I spilled my guts.

“Fuck.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I should’ve known it was something like this with the ways you’re head over heels for someone right out of fucking nowhere. Of course, she’s just as fucked in the head as the rest of us.”

“What do I do now?” I willed my hands to not shake. I felt desperate.

Ijah sat silently in contemplation. Each second that ticked by set me more on edge.

He had a way of keeping his cool when everything went to shit that rivaled my own ability to do the same, especially now.

The urge to scream at him to speak — to say anything — bubbled up in my throat.

I slammed my hand hard onto his desk, the sound reverberating around the room.

He didn’t react, only looked at me seriously. “I’ll call Mattia. I don’t know that he will agree to set her up at the safe house or do anything to help, but if you’ll allow me to explain the entire situation to Hunt, I think she would be more than willing to help convince him.”

“Why do you think that?” Hunter and I had barely spoken two words to one another in the years I’d known her. She had no reason to want to help me. Though, she may be willing to help as a favor to Ijah.

“She has a weak spot for tragic love stories,” he smirked.

He would know. I fought the urge to roll my eyes at how ingenuous he could be.

“Fine. Tell her everything. I don’t care. I just need to keep TK hidden long enough to give me time to figure out what to do about this long-term. A few days at most,” I said, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples in a circular motion to try and ease the tension I now held there.

I shoved down the feelings of franticness that threatened to overcome my thought processes. I had to clear my head. I needed to figure this out.

“I’ll make a few calls. One of them being to your girl. Never thought this would be how our first boss/employee check-in would go.” He released a long breath, standing and pulling his phone from his pocket.

His fingers ran over the screen.

“Wait,” I said, my mind finally catching up to the sequence of events. “How did you even notice this on the footage?” I asked. “What made you think anything of it?”

His focus left his phone and he dragged his eyes to my face. “Shit. I almost forgot.” At least I wasn’t the only one slightly addled.

Though, it was more than just slightly for me.

He slumped back in his chair, fingers drumming incessantly on the corner of his desk.

I wanted to snap each one of them to stop the sound of it.

I clenched my teeth.

His eyes were fixed intently on the screen as he scrolled through a video clip, and he gestured, indicating for me to come see.

But once he clicked play, I didn’t need to see anything. I would have recognized that voice anywhere. Something inside me recoiled at the pitch of it.

It wasn’t made common knowledge to the employees at LC that our surveillance also records audio. You’d think the thought would cross their mind considering the particular environment they work in every day, but it was actually astonishing the number of times we’d gone through footage and come across an employee saying shit that would eventually cost them a lot more than they’d anticipated.

And it almost always involved someone being hard up for cash, willing to do some sketchy, desperate shit for a little money.

---