Echo (Black Lotus #2)(77)

“I can’t stop missing you either.”

Battling with my emotions causes my body to tremble, and I know Pike feels it when he says, “You wanna play a game?”

I nod. “You can pick this time.”

“How about breakfast foods?”

“Okay.” Pike and I always used to play this word game when we were kids and I was locked up in the closet. It was his way of distracting me from my awful reality. We’d play this game for hours in the middle of the night while he sat on the opposite side of the door. And in this moment, in his death, he never fails to take care of me. “Pancake,” I say, playing my first word.

“English muffin.”

“NutriGrain bar.”

“Rice Krispies.”

We continue to play our words while he runs his fingers through my hair, careful to not hurt the tender scab that still remains on the back of my head. I never open my eyes, and eventually, before declaring a winner, I drift to sleep.



COLD METAL PRODDING my face wakes me up. My tired eyes come into focus as I jerk my head away from Richard’s gun. I look at him, his face pale and his hair messy, as if he’s been anxiously running his hands through it. He’s jittery, kneeling beside me, and I have no clue if something happened while I was asleep to cause his shift in demeanor.

“Have I given you the impression that I’m one to be toyed with?” he says with a tight jaw, pissed.

I shake my head, and he snaps, “Then where the f*ck is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“I will put a bullet in your head the same way I did the McKinnon woman. I swear to God, I will.”

“I won’t fight you,” I tell him calmly. “You want to kill me? Then kill me.”

He grabs my tattered shirt and shakes me, losing control while he screams in aggravation, “What the f*ck is wrong with you?”

“If you wanted me to fight, you picked the wrong girl. There’s nothing for me to fight for.”

He shakes his head, confounded, and then clues in, saying, “So you don’t give a shit what happens to you? I could do whatever I wanted with you, and you’d let me?”

“You can’t possibly hurt me; I’m already dead,” I tell him, the sound of my own voice creeping me out with its eerie tone. “But first,” I add, “Fill in the blanks.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Cal. What does he have to do with the guns?”

“He was my washer,” he tells me freely, taking a deep breath and sitting next to me with his back against the wall. “Cal used to push the money through a random laundromat he acquired for the sole purpose of covering the money trail. But I later found out he was being greedy and filtering some of the money into an offshore account that was linked to him. That’s when I taught him his first lesson in loyalty and killed his precious wife. He never stole from me again.”

His words turn the venom of my heart into the blood of life. Just because Declan doesn’t give a shit about me doesn’t change my love for him, but I hide my shift. I’m like a machine when I continue my quest for clarity. “And Bennett?”

“Bennett was a man who trusted too easily, which made him my perfect asset. His father actually worked with yours.”

“What?” I ask in shock.

“I always suspected bad blood between the two, then it became apparent when he put the authorities on Steve. I didn’t know this until after Steve was already locked up, but apparently when Bennett came home one day talking some nonsense about how he thought your father was hurting you, that’s when he saw his chance to get your dad out of the game.”

My hands tingle in fury as I listen to his admissions. I can’t even see straight as my desire to kill that piece of shit sparks to life. This man, my f*cking father-in-law, was yet another man who had a hand in my father’s death and the destruction of my life.

“Later, when Bennett was older and acquired his first production plant, his father convinced him to partner with me. We knew it would serve as a better cover for laundering the money. Bennett trusted me as a longtime family friend, took the advice of his father, and the rest is history, until you came along and f*cked everything up with your stupid charade.”

I sit in silence, trying with everything I have to control the anger exploding within me as I process what I’ve just heard, realizing that all of us are linked in one way or another. There was a time I was the one in control and able to manipulate people into my puppets, but I know now I was never in control because I never truly knew the cast of characters I lured my way into.

“But I will admit,” he continues, “I’m impressed with your efforts, even though you failed miserably.”

“Who says I failed? You’re stuck down here with me too. You’re not free.”

“I will be.”

I can’t contain my chuckle, and when it grows, Richard fumes, “What’s so funny?”

“You.”

“Do tell.”

“You’re so focused on yourself, that you’re shadowing the fact that, in a very twisted way, I won.”

He cocks back the hammer of his gun, the snick of the metal sounding when he does, and then points it straight at me, but he doesn’t intimidate me.