But Queenie shut the cameras off.
“Come on, Phoebe!” Jake shouts.
“Sorry, I have a lot of stuff in here,” I say, scrambling for something. Anything.
“I remember you always had the entire fucking house in your purse,” he says, turning to Queenie. “Open your mouth, bitch.”
My hand wraps around something I’d forgotten I had. Something I bought back in college when there was a rapist on the loose.
A knife.
Jake’s fumbling with his jeans as he holds the gun, and he’s not looking at me. There’s no other way out of this, and he’s too out of his mind to be rational. He’s going to kill Queenie.
As much as I think of her as competition, I don’t want her dead. In fact, I kind of like her. Except for the fact that my boyfriend used to come here to get what he needed.
Refusing to think too much about it, I pull the knife out and run toward him, shoving it into his back right above his shoulder blade. The gun falls to the ground, and Queenie grabs it while Jake cries out and falls to his knees.
The blade went in like butter, and I have blood on my hands. Red, warm blood, and I stare at them, dumbfounded.
“Go down the hallway and get Pacino and Capone. They’re in the office,” Queenie says. “Go, Phoebe!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pacino
“Why the fuck is this taking so long?” Capone asks.
Rolling my shoulders, I sigh. I only planned to be here for a few hours. I didn’t expect to have to do three hours of updates because no one else did it when they were checking the system.
“Because everyone else is incompetent,” I mutter.
“I guess we should actually do the updates when they pop up, huh?”
I glare at him before glancing at the clock. “How the fuck is it eight already?”
“Oh fuck.”
The bakery’s closed. Is Phoebe still there? Is she waiting for me? I should call, but she doesn’t have a new phone yet. But I could call the store.
“How’s Phoebe doing?”
“She’s okay,” I say, reaching for my phone.
“I didn’t mean to freak her out like that,” he says, running a hand over his face. “I felt so terrible.”
Setting my phone down, I rest my hand on his shoulder. “It was bigger than just killing Joseph. She’s got demons as dark as we do.”
“That must be why you fit so well together.”
The comment takes me by surprise. “Really? You don’t think we’re too different?”
Laughing, he shakes his head. “Are you kidding? On the outside, sure, you look like opposites, but I’ve seen something dark in her. Something only guys like us can see. But unlike us, she chooses happiness and sunshine instead of gloom.”
It’s true. She definitely chooses happiness where we embrace the evil.
The last of my father’s employees uploads into the system—a task that should not have taken this long thanks to the hours of updates needed—and I shake my head. “I need to get to her. She’s probably wondering why I haven’t made good on the promise I made earlier today.”
“She’s good for you, man. You actually smile now. Without murder being on the table, anyway.”
