Free Experiment in Terror 07 Come Alive by Karina Halle Page A

the phone, grabbing Perry by the elbow and leading her away from the crowd. Satisfied we had some privacy, I eyed her and said, “Jimmy says he has an option for us, just the one option. If we don’t take it, we don’t have a show.”
    She nodded, grim but curious. “Okay, what is it?”
    “Lay it on us,” I said to Jimmy.
    “I have someone I want to add to the show.”
    The fuck? No. And I almost said no flat-out, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t screwing myself over by being so impulsive.
    “Go on,” I said tersely.
    “Dex, you and Perry, to put it mildly, cannot be trusted. You can’t be trusted with delivering a good show, let alone a show in general. You keep screwing up or acting unprofessional. I mean, how many cameras and phones have you two lost so far?”
    “No more than the average person.”
    “Right. And I think you know what I’m talking about, too. You just don’t have a leg to stand on at the moment, and if I trusted you enough to let you go on as is, you’d just disappoint me all over again.”
    That would have hurt if it wasn’t Jimmy who was saying it. I hated the idea of having someone else work with us; it’d totally ruin our dynamic. We worked fast and on the fly, we took risks and chances that sometimes didn’t pay off but sometimes did. Adding an extra person to the pot could make the job more dangerous than it already was.
    “So, Dex,” Jimmy continued, “if you two agree to work with this person, then you’d have the sponsorship. Naturally it means that you’d be working a threesome for the near future until an alternative is brought up.”
    “Naturally. So what, is this person going to be our babysitter? A host?  What?”
    “For now he would just be a supervisor. He would pick and plan where you go next—and he already has something lined up as it so happens—he would make all the arrangements, he would make sure everything is running smoothly, he would help you whenever you needed help, and this is crucial, when you think you don’t need help but actually do. I know you, Dex, you’re one stubborn son-of-a-bitch. You need help more than you know.”
    “Thanks for your wonderful vote of confidence. So it’s a he then. Who is this guy?”
    “You already know him.”
    And at that, everything around me began to spin and swirl: Perry, the pig, the tourists, the brick road, the Starbucks up on 1 st , as a heavy hunk of lead settled in my stomach. It wasn’t the crab, it was that I knew who he was talking about, and that the person was also standing across the road from me, staring at me above the crowd of people and passing cars.
    One ginger fucking head.
    I dropped the phone and it clattered to my feet. Perry let out a little cry, trying to go for it while juggling the crab cocktails. I didn’t know if it was yet another phone broke and I didn’t really care. Because I was locked in a surreal staring match with someone I had hoped to never see again.
    Maximus was outside of a bookstore, rain jacket on, white and orange plaid shirt peeking out underneath. He smiled at me, at the dumb fucking expression that must have been on my face, and started to cross the street.
    “Oh good, it’s not broken,” Perry said, straightening up and peering at my phone, shaking it. “I think you lost Jimmy though. Dex?”
    “We’ve got bad news,” I managed to say, still staring at Maximus as he sauntered over.
    “What did Jimmy propose?” she asked. “What was the…the fuck is he doing here?”
    Yup. She saw him too. I reached for her hand, as if we were preparing to meet a ghost head-on, but no ghosts deserved a punch to the nuts as much as this vag-burglar did.
    “Howdy, Dex,” he said in his stupid drawl with his stupid lopsided grin. He nodded chivalrously at Perry. “Little lady.”
    “Little lady? Who the fuck are you, John Wayne?” I sneered.
    “Here to save the day,” he said, his legs wide apart, arms folded across his chest.
    “The hell you are.”
    “So