Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 656

The room went very quiet.

He stared at me, and for the first time since he'd flashed that badge, something other than boredom moved across his face. Genuine surprise, maybe. Interest, definitely.

"You know Big Bryan personally?"

I nodded, and immediately wondered if I'd just made a catastrophic mistake.

He pulled out his phone, thumbed through it, and turned the screen toward me. A photo. Three men in it, all of them built like refrigerators, all of them with the same square jaw and the same haircut, like clones ordered in bulk.

"Which of them is Big Bryan?"

I looked. "None of them. He's not in that picture."

He swiped again. Another photo, three different men this time, all strangers, all wrong.

"Which of them is Big Bryan?"

"He's not in that one either."

A slow smile spread across his face, and he swiped one more time. Three men again, and the one on the right was wearing a brown shirt, and my heart recognized him before my eyes finished focusing. That face had haunted my nightmares.

Before he could even ask, I said. "Him. The man on the right, in the brown shirt. That's Big Bryan."

The officer let out a long breath, and his shoulders actually dropped, like a man who'd been holding tension for days and just got confirmation he'd been holding it in the right direction.

Then he moved behind me, and I flinched, and instead of grabbing me, I heard the small metallic click of the cuffs coming off. Cool air rushed against my freed wrists, and the ache in my arm throbbed its gratitude.

I stared at him. Really stared. His back was to me, his jaw working, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out what game this man was playing. Five minutes ago he was dragging me to jail. Now he was uncuffing me like we were colleagues.

He turned, crouched down in front of me, forearms on his knees, and looked up at me from below, which somehow made him more intimidating, not less.

"What did you mean when you said Big Bryan was blackmailing you?"

I hesitated. My pulse was everywhere, my throat, my wrists, my ears. Could I trust him? A stranger with a badge and a phone full of photos of my tormentor?

But I looked into his eyes, into those tired, sharp, oddly patient eyes, and a strange feeling settled over me. Confidence. This man was hard, but he wasn't rotten. There's a difference, and I'd learned to smell it in captivity the way you learn to smell gas.

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