"What did you do to get yourself into this mess?" I asked, half watching a couple of Brantley minions cleaning blood off the floor. Wouldn't want any of us to slip and hurt ourselves, would they now? That wouldn't be fun for the Brantley twins, especially if we died before they killed us.
Pair of sadistic pricks.
Logan shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Took a shipment of guns that weren't mine. Seemed like a good idea at the time."
Sanun gave me a look like he'd rather poke out his own eyeballs than answer the question.
I slid my gaze to Tash. The girl held her own, I had to give her that. She was also hotter than the centre of the road in the middle of summer.
I reminded myself she was my competition, but that kiss lingered on my lips. The taste of her was intoxicating. A guy could easily get addicted.
"My boyfriend, ex-boyfriend," she corrected, "was laundering money through his business. I found out about it. He begged me not to tell them and I didn't, at first."
She looked regretful. Of course she was. The Brantleys had killed for less than that.
"I'm guessing it was a lot of money," I said.
"A few million," she admitted.
I let out a low whistle. "No wonder they're pissed off. What happened to him?" I hoped it was long, bloody and painful. He deserved to be here, not her.
"He ran," she said, not holding back a flash of anger for him leaving her in the lurch like this. "As far as I know, he's still out there."
"For now." Logan said, sounding ominous.
She glanced over at him. "Yeah, for now. What did you do?" Her chocolate-brown eyes fastened on me.
Were those lashes real? They looked like it. Her breasts too. She was dressed to distract us, not because this was her. I bet she was more at home in a pair of pink bunny pyjamas and cute little bed socks. Or better yet, nothing at all.
"I got curious about whether or not I could hack into their computer systems," I said unashamedly.
"Could you?" Logan asked.
"Not without being undetected," I admitted. "Those guys are good."
When it came to hacking, or preventing hacking, Parker Brantley was one of the best. They hired a bunch of others who were almost as good as him, which was why I tried. What was life without a bit of challenge once in a while? What sucked was getting caught.
"Surprised they let you live," Sanun said.
I twisted around to look back at him.
"You know what, me too. Even if I win the tournament, they might not." After all, I'd seen some things I shouldn't have seen, things they wouldn't want getting out.
Logan narrowed his eyes at me. "Don't go winning if they're going to kill you anyway. One of us should walk away from this alive."
"Which reminds me," Tash said slowly.
When she had all of our attention she continued. "Before I came here, I took a look into the rules of ping-pong."
"If you think they apply here—" Logan started.
"From what I know of the Brantley family, they live by a certain set of rules," she said carefully.
"Yeah, they make them up as they go along," Logan huffed.
"To some extent," she agreed. "But I think they might listen if we propose something out of the box."
"Or they'll ignore us and kill us," Sanun said.
