Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Jean had no idea how they made it from that room to the parking lot. He didn’t remember the elevator. He didn’t know if Andrew had to sign out at the front desk. He was just suddenly aware that his hands were planted on the hood of Jeremy’s car as he fought to suck air into his collapsed lungs. Every breath seemed to snag in his throat. Maybe he’d suffocate out here and finally be free of this wretched existence.
Andrew’s fist came down on the square of his back with a solid thump, and Jean finally managed to take a deep breath. Andrew listened to him breathe for a few moments before saying, “History,” with such a ferocious edge Jean knew he was mocking someone else’s poor word choice. Fingers in his hair forcibly turned his head so Andrew could see the bloodied marks on the side of his throat, and Andrew demanded, “Did Johnson ever touch Neil?”
Jean didn’t want to talk about Grayson, but that beast was the only thing big enough to smother the bone-deep ache of his shattering family. Hannah knew about Elodie, but how much did she know? Did Le Monde report her missing, or did they know she was—
“No,” Jean said. Andrew only stared him down, weighing the veracity of that simple refusal. Jean took his sister and shoved her as deep as he could go, feeling how it tore his heart asunder to bury her again. “No. It would have been an inappropriate punishment for someone like him. His unforgivable crime was his willfulness and defiance in the face of his betters.”
“Implying it would have been appropriate under other circumstances.” Andrew’s stare was heavy enough to crush him. Jean knew in a glance it was less concern for Jean himself and more a visceral reaction to the violation. Perhaps Andrew’s nerves were still raw this close to the trial, but Jean assumed Neil’s imagined near-miss was the more likely culprit. Andrew’s tone when he said, “Enlighten me,” was steady, almost bored, but Jean wasn’t fooled.
“You of all people should not have to ask.” Jean dug his thumb into Andrew’s wrist and slid it up the length of his arm toward his elbow.
Andrew snatched his hand back, and Jean was finally able to straighten. He rubbed the new ache from his neck before smoothing his hair with unsteady fingers, and he didn’t miss the way Andrew’s gaze flicked to his throat once more. Jean, in turn, dropped his stare to the arm bands Andrew never went without. He missed the days he hadn’t even noticed such ridiculous accessories.
Jean remembered well the thick satisfaction in Riko’s voice as he told Jean what he’d dug up in California. Who, rather: a long-lost brother who could feel the law closing in on him and would do anything to break free of the investigation. Getting him to South Carolina was easy, and Drake Spear knew what to do from there.
Destroying the goalkeeper Kevin was so fanatically invested in had sustained Riko for weeks. After the news of Andrew’s assault broke, Riko obsessively collected every article he could find on the attack and hung them over his bed. Getting a full report from Proust in January had made him even happier. For a moment Jean felt a razor taking ghost-thin strips off his back; Riko’s hungry “Read it again from the top,” was so loud at his ear Jean automatically looked for him over his shoulder. The memory of fingernails biting at his scalp, pushing his face closer to the dreadful file, was sharp enough Jean checked his hair for blood.
He couldn’t stay in these thoughts, so he said, “You stole Kevin from us.”
“He stole himself.”
“You called him yours to Riko’s face. ‘My things’,” he reminded Andrew. Jean hadn’t gone to Kathy Ferdinand’s interview, but the distance hadn’t saved him. The long hours back to Evermore had done nothing to soothe Riko’s fury, and Jean had missed two days of practice to recover. “You had no right to covet him. I could have—” Somehow he bit off told you how that’d end just in time. Jean clenched his hands into fists and forcibly refocused on Andrew’s cool expression.
The silence that settled between them felt brittle, and then Andrew said, “Spoil the surprise for me. Did Neil kill Johnson while he was in town?”
It was an untimely reminder that the Foxes knew the truth of the Moriyamas through Kevin. Jean shouldn’t be surprised that this fair-haired rat would know Neil’s secrets, too, but he still cast a wary eye at Andrew as he weighed how to respond. Lying was the only sensible response, but it wouldn’t get him anywhere here.
At last he grudgingly said, “He hired his uncle’s people to handle it.”
Andrew didn’t have the good sense to look at all concerned. He turned away and dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Jean swiped at them, but Andrew moved out of his reach just in time with a calm, “Your one and only warning: you will lose the hand if you try again.”