Page 90 of Z For Butterfly Man
I squeeze the trigger, squeezing my heart with it. “Goodbye, my darling butterfly.”
Glass explodes.
I bend, sheltering my face with my arms. The window shatters inward in a spray of crystalline fragments. A figure crashes through. Rolls. Comes up in a combat stance. Gun pointed at my head.
Brandon Gatsby.
“Drop the weapon!” he shouts. “NOW!”
“Brandon,” Reagan gasps. “How did you find me?”
CHAPTER 41
Brandon
Mr. Morra’s instructions are precise. Get to the cabin ahead of Ashford. Secure the perimeter. Erase any evidence trail that leads to Mr. Morra. Let the detective incriminate himself by simply being here. Simple. Clean. Executable.
I’ve executed harder things. Like falsifying credentials, lying about my age, where I come from, foster care history. I’m nineteen, and I’ve never set foot in Texas. In my first sixteen years, I moved from foster home to foster home until I ran away and joined the military as nineteen-year-old Brandon Gatsby. Then, as destiny would have it, I joined Monarca last year.
Finally, after all the pain and misery, I’ve been living the best years of my life thanks to Mr. Morra and his faith in me. And yet, I’ve been doing something I’m not paid to do, something he would not appreciate. Questioning orders.
Headlights come up the road and stop thirty yards out. They die. A car door opens and closes quietly. I track the movement through the tree line by sound before I acquire visual.
Ashford. Service weapon drawn, keeping to the shadows, scanning the perimeter like someone who has done this a thousand times. He moves like a cop and not like a man who has something to hide. I file that away in the part of my mind that has been collecting similar observations since I was assigned to Birdie Abel’s security team.
Ashford spots me ten feet out and raises his weapon. “Hands where I can see them.”
I just stand there. This is Monarca’s property. I have every right to be here. He, on the other hand, doesn’t know what is coming his way. “Detective Ashford, please lower your weapon.”
“Not a chance.” His eyes sweep the area behind me, checking corners and angles. Guilty men check for exits. Butterfly Man is very smart. He’d figure out this is a trap right away. He’d run. Ashford is checking for threats, holding his ground. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
“I can ask you the same thing. This is private property, Monarca’s, and you’re trespassing.”
“I’m investigating a kidnapping. Birdie Abel’s kidnapping. That’s her car right there. Now cut the bullshit and tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.”
“Mr. Morra sent me ahead to secure the location.”
“The fuck he did. Morra was right behind me. He couldn’t have— Where is he? Where’s Morra?”
“On his way. Should arrive any minute.” I step forward, and his hands tighten on the gun.
“Stay where you are.”
“Detective, you need to calm down. You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
“Harder than what needs to be? What did he really send you here to do? What the fuck is going on here, Gatsby?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” I point at Mrs. Abel’s car. “Why would Mrs. Abel’s car show up at this location, a decoy meant to expose one person in particular?”
“What?”
I say the lines Mr. Morra prepared. I say them correctly, in the right order, with the right weight. “This cabin that only you knew about? This address where we supposedly kept Mrs. Abel weeks ago was specifically given to you to rule you out as a suspect. It’s a decoy. It wasn’t the actual safehouse where she stayed.”
His face shifts with fear. He’s just figured out this is a trap. “You set me up. Morra set me up.”
“Did he? Or did you set yourself up the moment you left Mrs. Abel’s car here, Butterfly Man?”
“I didn’t leave the car here! I didn’t take her!”
