Hate F*@k: part three by Ainsley Booth Read Free Book Online Page A

freeway.
    “There are more important things in life than billable hours.”
    He shrugs. “Don’t have to tell me that. I’m used to living on a cop salary. We could do this pro bono for all I care.”
    “Maybe we should.” I mean, we already were. It’s not like I was going to bill Hailey for any of this. She didn’t ask us to dig into Lively. We started doing that for PRISM, the shadowy extra-governmental organization that only concerned itself with geopolitical issues of the highest order. But right now, if they asked us to back off, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves.
    Which would be colossally stupid, and probably mean I’d be out of a job, at best, and living with a price on my head at worst.
    In my world, we always assume worst case scenarios are the only scenarios.
    Tag must be reading my mind. “Is there a way to do that and keep the overlords happy?”
    I shrug. Fuck if I know.
    “You want to be a gladiator or something?” He snorts. “There aren’t any real heroes in this world. The good guys just get trampled.”
    “I know.” I squint through my sunglasses, not liking where this conversation is going. I don’t want a reminder that it’s just a matter of time before I do something Hailey won’t be able to stomach. “Gladiators are just puppets, anyway.”
    “What?”
    Now it’s my turn to snort. “Read a fucking history book, man. They look it, all dressed up and sent into the arena for battle. But the stage was set by those in the shadows. Those with the real power. The fights were rigged.”
    “You’re fucking kidding me. Like professional wrestling?”
    Laughter thunders out of me. “Yeah. Something like that.”
    “Got it. No gladiators. Arena masters?”
    “Nah.” I peel the label off my drink and watch the bubbles bounce against the inside of the plastic. “We gotta think bigger than that. Go back a step. Trojan horse type of thing, maybe.”
    “Now you’re talking in riddles.”
    “Yeah.” I rock my jaw from side to side. There’s something there, in the back of my mind, but I can’t grab onto it. Not yet. But it’ll come to me. I close my eyes. “Wake me up when we get to New York.”

    — —  

    “What are you doing here?”
    I give Clara Forrester my most charming smile as she glowers at me from the door of her Hell’s Kitchen artist loft. It doesn’t work. I look at Tag, and he tips his head to the side.
    She opens the door.
    He laughs at me as he steps past. Pretty motherfucker. Oversized bear is what he is, and all the girls eat him up.
    I roll my eyes as I follow him inside.
    “You can’t go on this trip,” he says gently, pointing to her suitcases piled in front of a bookcase near the door.
    “Of course I can.” She crosses her arms in front of her, wrapping her floor-length sweater coat thing tighter around her small frame.
    We first met this woman before I went to Miami. She’d agreed to fly down there after I talked to the Feds, but of course that plan went to hell in a hand basket after Lively was arrested for Hailey’s kidnapping.
    From the pained look on her face, that’s where her mind has gone. “I agreed to speak to the investigators when it was all in the past. But they came to see me this morning. They told me what happened and why he’s been arrested now. I can’t…” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I need to distance myself from that danger.”
    I clench my jaw to keep from asking her if she’s stupid. “Lively will eventually find out you’ve spoken to the investigators.”
    Fear flashes in her eyes. “And I have you to thank for that.”
    I keep my voice soft and speak slowly as I try to erase her false sense of security. “If we could find you, someone else would have—eventually.”
    “But nobody else did. Until you showed up, that was just a gross part of my past. Now it’s my terrifying present. I’m not okay with that.”
    “That was luck.”
    “Well, my luck was pretty damn good until you showed up in my