He wasn’t dumb.
He would take the money, invest it, let it grow, then pull it out before the people started dying, take a plane to some country without extradition, and retire while living the good life.
And let his clueless boss take the heat.
It was the perfect long game.
That was why the file was on Phillip’s computer, but buried so deep that Phillip himself would never happen across it. So that when the time came, there was evidence that he knew about it.
Christ.
We didn’t need to go after Phillip, after Blairtown Chem.
We just needed to go after David.
A much simpler target.
While I was busy trying to process what was going on, Phillip was launching into it.
The cancer, the files, the fact that he knew nothing about it.
“Now is the part where you tell me you had nothing to do with it,” Phillip said, something in his voice making me stiffen.
“Three people,” David said. “Three people would cost us hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of its life.”
There was a pause, the gears turning, Phillip seemingly putting together the pieces Quin and I already each had.
“You were going to let me take the fall, weren’t you?” he asked, that tone in his voice getting even more chilling.
“It’s not like–”
David didn’t get to defend himself, though.
Before any of us could even guess at how he would react to such a blatant betrayal, Phillip’s hand was moving, opening his top drawer in his desk, reaching inside, pulling something out.
I was a split second too late in recognizing what was going on.
Too late to shield her from it, to protect her from some of the ugliest things life had to offer.
One second, the men were having a somewhat uncomfortable, yet civil, conversation.
The next, the sound of the gunshot accompanied the sight of a bullet exploding through the forehead of a man who was dead instantly, waving on his feet before his legs buckled, and his body hit the ground.
The scream was what finally dragged me out of my momentary shock.
The godawful, soul-shrieking, ear-piercing scream.
“Fuck, okay, okay,” I said, reaching out for Gemma, dragging her to my chest, burying her face in my neck to keep her focus off of the body on the floor just a few feet away. “Alright. It’s alright,” I assured her, knowing full-well that nothing was going to feel right for her. Not for a while. Not for a long time.
She wasn’t equipped to handle this.
And we should have known better than to risk it.
“Shh,” I hushed, one arm anchoring her to me as the sobs racked her body, my free hand stroking through her hair. “I know,” I added as Smith rushed inside, gun drawn, eyes quickly taking in the scene.
“Well,” Phillip said, voice psychotically calm given the situation, “I think I need to hire you,” he added, looking at Quin. “I seem to be in the middle of a situation that needs fixing.”
“You need to get her out of here,” Smith told me, placing a hand at the back of Gemma’s head for a second. “Take her home,” he added, tone knowing. “We will handle this.”
“Keep me updated,” I demanded, ducking low, sweeping Gemma off her feet, cradling her to my chest, accepting the keys Smith tossed to me, then leading Gemma out to safety.
She was scary hysterical the drive out of there, the whole time I carried her up my path, into the house, and up into the bed.
I stroked, cuddled, talked, reasoned.
But there seemed to be no bottom to her misery.
“I’ll be right back, baby,” I said, stroking a hand down her body.
Everyone was about to find out exactly what was going on.
Because I knew Gemma well enough to know what she needed right then.
Reinforcements.
TWELVE
Gemma
The image refused to budge from my vision.
Even with my eyes pressed tightly closed, all I could see was the sheen of the gun in my peripheral vision before the bullet carved out a giant hole in a man’s forehead.
Stealing his life before any of us got a chance to blink.
I couldn’t seem to focus on the parameters, the justification of it all, whether it was what needed to happen or not.
My brain didn’t seem capable of rational thoughts like those.
All it could focus on was that image.
I had been spared brutality in my life.
I had lucked out in that I was born in a time where people generally weren’t exposed to horrific violence in the streets, or a place ravaged by wasting diseased, watching from a young age as people writhed in pain right in the streets. Or in my house, until they met a merciful end to the suffering they’d been dealing with right before their passing.
I hadn’t been born male in a time when a war was waging, and a draft was enacted, carting me off at a tender age to watch boys as young as me have parts of them torn off, or their lives cut short by supposed enemies’ bombs and bullets.