Susceptible

Chapter eighteen

"His office." I croaked out turning around in Sam's arms. I took a step back, I couldn't be in his arms when I had just witnessed him murder someone. I felt my mind put up walls not letting me thinking about Alex laying dead at my feet. I wasn't strong enough to handle that.

"His office." I repeated, "He kept stuff in his office we should probably check it." I led the way through the kitchen stepping over the debris from where Sam had pushed Alex through the wall. I could hear Sam following me as I pushed open the door. His office was flawless, and my throat clenched thinking about our fight we had in here not so long ago. I swallowed ignoring the burning pain. I couldn't break down yet, not in front of Sam. Instead I carefully opened up Alex's office drawers and started rummaging through his stuff. Sam joined me as he shuffled through another drawer.

"What exactly are we looking for Addy?" Sam questioned me his tone sounding like he was asking a child, and I snapped not appreciating it.

"I told you that he wasn't working alone Sam. There was someone controlling  him, and I'm trying to find out who." He didn't reply and continued to slowly look through Alex's stuff with me. There was nothing out of the ordinary just office supplies and bills. Nothing connecting to the Quade I had seen call him. I was desperate to prove that there was something more going on here. I quickly scrambled through the stack of bills I had gone through three times already on top of his desk.

"Addy." Sam called out to me, but he sounded far away. "Addy." he repeated, and I ignored him. There had to be something, anything here to show that Alex wasn't in this alone. He wasn't a bad guy, he couldn't be a bad guy.

"ADDY." Sam grabbed my arms pinning me in his as I was now in a panic making more of a mess in the room then actually searching. "There's nothing here Addy." I yanked myself out his arms and stepped back panting. Sam was looking at me oddly and I realized I kept pulling myself away from him.

"Okay." I said breaking eye contact and looking around the room. "There's nothing here."

"Let's go." Sam extended his hand towards me and I paused before taking it.

"I just... I need to go to my room first." I whispered out and slipped past him down the hall.

I entered my room and flipped on the light. The bed was wrinkled where I had just been asleep, but that felt like ages ago. My room was a bit of a mess with some shoes and books scattered around. There was also a pack of playing cards abandoned by the foot of my bed. We had gotten them at the hotel and played them in our room one of the days.

I remembered the game well as it had ended with me accusing Alex of cheating, and him laughing causing me to only grow angrier, which made him laugh more, thus stuck in a never ending cycle.

But what was really important about that game was the conversation we had between rounds. I was sitting criss cross on my bed and Alex was stretched out across his with his cards fanned out covering most of his face.

"Got any 6s?" I asked.

"Go fish." I narrowed my eyes at Alex's blunt reply, sure that he had just asked me for 6s recently. Still I reached over to pick up a card off the side table between us.

"Damn Adriana you really do suck at even the simplest card game."

I stuck my tongue out at him in a childish gesture annoyed by his comment.

"I'm really not that bad." I said but the lack of stacks I had laid down compared to Alex proved otherwise.

"I can't believe I've never tried more games with you before. Seriously this is the most fun I've ever had." He cockily stated while taking my 2s from me and laying down a complete stack.