Anarchy Found (SuperAlpha, #1)(64)

I take a seat on the other side of Case, not that Thomas scares me or anything. I just don’t feel like being too close to him right now.

“You wanna explain this monumental f*ckup, Lincoln?” Thomas says, his words coming out as a low growl.

“What do you want me to say? Atticus didn’t follow through.”

“Why?” Thomas sneers. “Why the f*ck didn’t it work?”

“I don’t know, *. I’m not the boss of him.”

Case rolls his eyes. “Lincoln, stop, OK? Just think, man. What happened last night?”

“I watched him go in the building.”

“We know he was in the building, Lincoln,” Thomas says, his voice way too calm for my comfort level. “What we don’t know is why he’s at the f*cking Cathedral City Asylum on a judge-ordered psychiatric hold. Now how the f*ck are we supposed to complete this job when he’s locked up?”

“We have to assume the worst,” Case says. “We have to assume the Old Man is on to us.”

“Sheila’s inside. She can get info from the system connected to the internet. But the interior cameras are on a closed circuit. She can’t access them.”

“So we just have to wait,” Case says. “We just need to sit tight and be patient until she finds something useful.”

Thomas gets up, gulps the whiskey sitting in front of his stool, then slams the glass down on the bar top so hard, it shatters. “So our whole plan, the one we’ve been discussing for fifteen f*cking years, hinges on that sorry motherf*cker in the psych ward?”

We don’t answer him, and he doesn’t wait. Just grabs his coat and walks out, slamming the door behind him, because the doorman has made himself scarce.

Case lets off a long breath of air. “He’s pissed.”

“Yup,” I say, catching the whiskey that Mac slides down the bar to me and taking my own gulp. “But we’re stuck until someone makes a move.”

“We’re going down, man.”

“We’re not going down, Case. Jesus, you two are pansies. We’ve got this. We’ve got Sheila, we’ve got me, and we’ve got Molly.”

“You told her?”

“No.” I laugh. “But she’s not stupid. And she’s covering for me. She knows about the others and she didn’t report me. In fact, I spent the night with her.” I get a little lost in that thought.

“You better be careful, man. Because once she figures this all out, she’s not gonna like you very much.”

“That remains to be seen,” I say back. “I can handle Molly.”

“You don’t even know her, dude.”

“Better than you do,” I say, turning my head slowly to eye Case. “So just stay the f*ck out of it. We’ve got a good plan, every player is in place, and no matter what, this shit is happening. It might not happen by the book, but in a few days this whole town will be upside down. Thomas will get what he wants and I’m gonna get what I want too.”

Case is silent for a few seconds. And then he picks up his glass of whiskey. “Whatever you say, *. Whatever you say.”

I squint my eyes at Case for a moment, but he just downs his drink and then gets up, walks over to the jukebox, and presses the buttons for Social Distortion. The melancholy rockabilly fills the bar at high volume, drowning out everything but the obvious.

We’ve all lost a lot playing this game, but if everything goes right Thomas will have more than he ever dreamed of in a few days. And I’ve got Molly back. That’s a huge win for me.

Case? He’s got nothing so far, and nothing coming either.

He’s not quite along for the ride, but Case was never out for revenge. He’s just in on principle. He needs to know why. But the thing is, the why for Case is not the same as it is for Thomas and me. We know why we’re in this f*cked-up situation. Case doesn’t. His parents refused to talk about it. They gave him an ultimatum—they would tell him all the things he wanted to know, or they’d let me stay with him after they released us from the psych center.

He chose me over answers. And it’s always pissed me off that his parents knew exactly which buttons to punch on their only son. Because we all know Case ended up in Prodigy because his parents owed those f*ckers something.

“It’s gonna work,” I yell, my shout competing with the music. But Case either doesn’t hear me or refuses to. He’s already playing an old standup arcade game in the corner as he pushes down the past and goes into his virtuality.





Chapter Forty-One - Molly




I sit at my desk and stare at my computer, looking over all my grunt work relating to the Blue Corp case. But I can’t sign off on anything because it still doesn’t make sense. Given the fact that I know Lincoln was influencing these scientists to kill themselves using some biotech mumbo-jumbo that he does down in that cave of his, why would Atticus go insane and try to shoot his father?

Did Lincoln get to him too?

It bothers me. Like, a lot. Lincoln was with me last night so he couldn’t have had anything to do with Atticus.

Don’t be stupid, Molly. If the man wanted to slip out of your house and go kill someone, he would. He did after the cathedral party.

Right. Back to being bothered.