Page 155 of Challenge Me

“Remi, I would like to borrow your gun,” he said calmly. “No particular reason, of course.”

“Oli, breathe.”

“Me breathe? How ‘bout you breathe?”

“I’m breathing just fine.”

His eyes narrowed as he examined me. When there was a knock at the door, he jumped to his feet. He was still watching me as he walked toward it.

“What’s his deal?” Amir asked.

“You think I’m the only one fucked up from the past?” I rubbed my temples. “I’ve never quite figured out if Oli is remarkably well-adjusted or if he simply went so far over the deep end that he ended up back in some version of sanity.”

“That’s just what we need right now.”

I waved my hand. “He’s fine.”

“A visitor,” Oli announced when he came back into the room. “Yours, I presume?” He looked at Amir, who got to his feet when he saw Renshu.

“I told you not today.”

Renshu’s eyes went around the room to each of us. “It’s not exactly negotiable right now.” Oli was giving him a death glare, but the guy didn’t seem put off by it. If anything, it was the opposite.

Oli let out a derisive ‘hmph’ before he returned to sit beside me. Trying to tame the protective toxicity that had come out, I put my hand on his knee. With my other one, I sent a text to his fiancé so that he could come help me out. I loved my best friend, but I had a lot to deal with right now.

The guilt was like a vice inside my chest, choking me with every breath. I’d done everything I could, but Mal had still been put in a dangerous position. And at the end of the day, it was entirely my fault.

Chapter 42

Amir

“What are we looking at here?” I asked.

“Nothing good,” Renshu replied. With the way he leaned against the fireplace, the slump in his shoulders was evident. He must’ve been exhausted like the rest of us. “Worse since we really don’t know much at all.”

Glancing at Remi, I noticed the way his fingers dug into Oli’s knee. My lips pursed, and I wanted to tell him to scoot over so that I could sit next to him. It wasn’t jealousy. It was the half-dead look in his eyes, not like the other times when I’d struggled to find something alive in there. This time, there was real fear in them, a kind that even he couldn’t manage to hide.

“Mrs. Kessler reached out for a comment yesterday,” Renshu explained. “She wasn’t all that forthcoming, so we declined. We don’t want to step into something without knowing what’s ahead. For all we knew, she could’ve been bluffing.”

“She still could,” I pointed out.

“Unlikely, given the fact that she’s announced this interview with her mystery guest. She’ll have something, though we don’t have any way to know what.”

Oli leaned close to Remi and whispered in his ear. They shared a look, then Remi said something back to him, which made Oli’s eyes roll up to the ceiling.

“She really didn’t say anything?” Avery asked.

“Only what she later released in her article. Someone from Remi’s childhood.”

“Could it be the ex-boyfriend again?”

“We didn’t meet until college,” Remi noted without an ounce of emotion.

“Who, then?” I demanded.

His tongue poked at his cheek, but he didn’t meet my eyes or respond. I stood and began to pace. The two on the couch watched me warily, as if I was some sort of threat here. Like that, they looked a bit like children, and it made me ache for what they must’ve experienced in those days.

“The aunt,” I recalled.