Page 112 of Smoke Screen
Phin spun, spotted his brother standing by the wall separating the entry and the open area. He couldn’t have been there long. Cruz would have spotted him and said something.
“Well,” Cruz said, “welcome to the fun.”
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“It’snotBARS,”Phin said, still facing Zeke. “That’s what I said. Since when do you eavesdrop?”
Zeke walked to the table, took his seat at the end. “You guys called me. If you didn’t want me to hear, you shouldn’t have been talking.”
“Phin fucked Maddy,” Cruz offered and Phin nearly launched himself across the table to beat the ever-loving crap out of his brother.
Before he could set Cruz straight, Zeke drilled him with a look. “You fucked Maddy?”
If the two of them didn’t stop using that word, there’d be a homicide tonight at Chez Blackwell.
How did this conversation spin so far out of control? “I didn’tfuckher!”
“My apologies,” Cruz said, half laughing. “Would you prefer we call it making love?”
Phin pointed a steady finger at him. “Keep it up and I’ll lay you out.”
“Both of you,” Zeke said, “shut the fuck up. Phin, please tell me you didn’t sleep with her.”
“He slept with her. Now he’s freaking out about some personal crisis that makes absolutely no sense. To me anyway. And I’m not exactly dumb.”
Zeke shifted back to Phin. Gave him the here-comes-a-lecture face. “You’re thinking too much, aren’t you? I’ve talked to you about this. It’s not healthy. What’s this personal crisis?”
“He thinks he’s a man whore—his words, not mine—because he bangs women at fundraisers.”
Enough. How much humiliation did he need to endure?
Phin got to his feet. “You aresuchan asshole.”
“You’re not a man whore,” Zeke said, his tone so flat he might as well have been reading a grocery list. “Why would you say that?”
“It’s true.” Phin met Zeke’s eye. “When I need to get information, sometimes I’ll go there.” He cleared his throat. “You know. With women.”
“And?”
Phin snorted. “Fellas, I gotta say, if we’re all okay with me trading sex for information, we’ve got enormous problems.”
“First of all,” Cruz sat forward, his big shoulders seeming to widen, “you’re not doing that. You make it sound transactional.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Hell no,” Cruz said. “We all do things to move a case forward. I sit here in the middle of the night having conversations with scumbags who make my skin crawl. Last week, I forwarded to Ash a conversation I had with a collector who’s into child porn.”
Phin knew this. Intellectually, he understood it. Hearing it, though? Having Cruz confirm it, twisted Phin’s stomach.
“Dude,” Cruz continued, “sometimes we do things we despise. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but I know for sure it doesn’t make you a man whore. And, can I just say, I should kill you for making me say man whore?”
“He’s right,” Zeke said. “That being said,no oneexpects you to use sex as a tool. When it comes to Maddy, I’m not blind. I see you like her.”
“I do.”
“And I don’t think I have to remind you that you can’t share certain things.”
The sacred NDA. Phin gave him a hard look. “You keep pounding on the NDA. I’m not violating it. I wouldn’t. And fuck you for questioning my loyalty.”
