The Master (The Game Maker #2)(13)

At the door, I detected perfume and heard my husband and a woman speaking.

“This is taking too long,” the woman said.

“You have to be patient and trust me.” That was my husband’s voice—but now he spoke with a British accent.

Who the hell was in my bedroom with my husband, and why had his accent changed? My fists clenched, my unruly temper about to blow. My first impulse was to bust inside and start cussing, but somehow I forced myself to bite my tongue and listen.

“I usually am patient,” the woman said, her accent also British. “But you can’t let her leave for these races, Charles.” Charles? “You need to be working on her constantly.”

Working on what?

“Her training is the ideal cover, darling,” my husband continued. “Poor Ana-Lucía’s going to collapse after one of her long runs.”

I rocked on my feet. They planned to . . . kill me? These motherf*ckers were going to kill me.

This. Is. Not. Happening.

“It will work seamlessly,” Edward said. “Oh, if only my poor wife hadn’t taken amphetamines while marathon training in this heat.”

Amphetamines? He’d given diet pills to me, saying, “Maybe you should lose a pound or two. Honestly, Ana-Lucía, your clothes scarcely fit across your backside. It’s only fair, since I do make an effort to keep myself in shape for you.”

I’d nearly told him I would lose weight in my ass as soon as he gained weight in his dick, but he loathed curse words. I used to admire that he was such a gentleman. It’d gotten old.

Edward said, “With that combination, no one will suspect another drug.”

“Will she take them?” the woman asked. “She might be young, but she isn’t malleable like the others.”

The others? They’d done this before?? Serial killers were in my room, like snakes loosed inside!

“Give me more credit than that,” Edward said. “Once I work my magic, she’ll be choking them down. Julia, I vow to you that I will be a widower by the holidays. Shall we go to Aspen to celebrate?” He had a smile in his tone.

A horrific thought struck me. Por Dios, had they killed my mother? She’d had a degenerative disease, but her actual passing had been sudden. The floor wobbled.

Had they killed my mother?

Had they killed her?

This Julia wasn’t swayed yet. “If she suspects you . . .”

“I always have an ace in the hole, darling. A pressure lever. If there’s one thing I know about my wife, it’s that she would do anything to avoid prison—”

Lightning flashed outside my apartment, thunder rattling the window. I was jolted back to the present before I got to the confrontation about his ace in the hole, before I recalled too vividly the feel of blood coating my face and body.

Maybe that was a good thing. I didn’t want to spur even more crimson-drenched nightmares.

The storm intensified, rain pouring. My roof would soon leak like a colander. Depending on the duration of the storm, I could be up all night emptying the pots. If I didn’t, my apartment would flood.

I pinched my temples. Edward had been right about me—I would do anything to avoid prison; even live in this shithole.





CHAPTER 7




“Listen up, folks, the final is next Monday at seven sharp,” Ms. Gillespie, my econ instructor, told the class. She was a tall, graying brunette, with a no-nonsense demeanor. “And yes, I know it’s cutting into your holiday break. Take it up with the active hurricane season.”

Three classes this fall had been cancelled due to tropical storms; with each storm, my apartment had taken on water like a sinking ship—just as it had last night.

After no sleep, an early morning run, and a hard day of work, I’d had to drag myself to class. Despite my windfall, I’d been coerced by Mrs. Abernathy to clean her mansion. When I’d tried to quit, she’d told me she would report me to Immigration if I wasn’t there. My no-undue-attention rule forced me to show.

“We’ll spend tonight and Friday reviewing,” Ms. Gillespie said. “So let’s get started. I’m going to give you terms that might be on the exam. Define them and imagine real-world scenarios.”

Luckily this was a lower-level econ course. I’d done all the heavy lifting for my degree in my first two years; all that remained was this last straggler class.

I took out my notebook and pen, determined to focus on this—and not on the Russian. For the past two days, I’d tried to put him from my mind, as he’d so easily done with me.

Ms. Gillespie started writing on the board, and I dutifully scribbled my definitions.

Final goods: products that end up in the hands of consumers. (Like my breasts. If I continued as an escort.)





I stifled a chuckle, earning a look from a few of my classmates, among them two guys who’d asked me out. Unfortunately, I’d had to turn them down, but their interest had puzzled me; I always showed up to class in to-the-knee cutoffs, old 5K T-shirts, no makeup, and my hair plaited into two braids. I wore clunky running shoes and usually reeked of Pine-Sol. A far cry from a glamorous escort.

Deflation: a sustained and continuous decrease in the general price level. (Or what would happen to an escort’s rates with age.)