“Got screwed for trusting one asshole too many.”
“Hmm” was all Clay said, but internally he was on fire—equal parts fear and excitement—that feeling he’d gotten addicted to undercover.
They headed down a long set of shallow steps, to what appeared to be a bunker in the basement, through a hall wide enough to drive a car, and then into a dank room where four guys stood around, waiting.
For him.
Beside an old-looking lie detector kit, a chair sat empty, waiting.
Clay offered a quick, cool nod to the occupants and then sat, heart beating a million miles a minute.
Slow. Breathe. Ignore them.
He grinned and looked around.
Jam and Boom-Boom didn’t worry him the way Ape did, standing behind Clay’s chair, casually swinging that ax in his hand. Clay’d heard stories about that fucking ax. He’d seen the goddamned stains it bore a time or two when the guys came back from some trip. Some mission. Those times, Ape had always been wilder than usual, extra sadistic. It’d been after one of those trips—just the week before, in fact—that he’d challenged Clay to a fight and gotten pissed when Clay started to beat his ass. Clay’d had no choice but to cave when the big fucker had grabbed a bottle from a brother’s hand, smashed it on the bar, and come after him with the sharp end. Getting that slice, though, across the face…that, he realized now, may very well have been just the thing he’d needed to get in.
Fucking club scars, he thought, ass glued to the seat that could become his throne of execution.
Fuck it. He shrugged, cleared his throat, turned, and spat not five inches from the big asshole’s feet.
You wanna kill me, fucker? that gesture said. Do it.
Then, cool as ice, Clay breathed while the polygraph dude wrapped the cuff around his arm, twined the two long pneumograph tubes around his middle, fiddled with some settings on his laptop, and slid the sensors onto his fingers.
Remember your training, he thought over and over. A mantra, something to hold on to. Feet down, ass squeezed, breathing deep as the stranger cleared his throat and began.
“Are you known here as Indian?”
Big breath, thinking of Carly, getting that pulse up, up, up for the control questions. “Yeah.”
“Is today Monday?” Carly, bruised, those weeks before she died.
“Yeah.”
“Are you wearing a black T-shirt?” Carly, her face beaten in.
“Yes.”
Handles asked, “Did you clean behind the toilet this morning like I told you to?” and Clay decided to lie, letting the stress rise, using it, eating it up, making it his, and remembering that feeling for the big questions.
“Yes,” he said, his voice reflecting the shit spewing in his stomach.
“Do you love slinging booze upstairs?”
He reached for another bad thought and didn’t have to look far for this one—Ape behind him was good enough. “Love it.”
A chuckle from everyone but his nemesis.
“Is your real name Jeremy Greer?”
Happy thoughts—not easy for Clay, since there wasn’t much to be happy about, was there? Calm, blue water. A mountain lake. Carly alive. “Yeah,” he said.
“Have you ever worked in law enforcement?” No longer control questions now. The real deal.
Mountains, a breeze, a brook. “No.”
“Are you currently working with law enforcement?”
