Free Kill Me Twice (A Zeke Edison Novel Book 1) by Joseph Flynn Page A

and said, “See?”
    Zeke gave up. “All right, I’ll buy you a new baton and get your old one back. Good enough?”
    “Have a heart etched on the new one. Put our initials inside the heart.”
    Zeke laughed. “So when you’re beating the hell out of someone you’ll think fondly of me?” He turned to Aaron. “You ever meet anyone like her?”
    “If you knew sabra girls, you wouldn’t ask,” Aaron told him.
    “Can we get back to work now?” Zeke asked.
    He received two nods and filled Aaron and Reggie in on his chat with Washington.
    “What I’d like to find out is the name and location of Jonas Dawson’s sole surviving partner in crime. See if he’d feel like talking to me. At the least, that should rattle Dawson some more. Maybe make him do something stupid, even dumber than trying to muscle me. You think you might be able to find the name of this guy, Aaron?”
    “Get his name? Certainly. Find out where he’s being held? Probably. Arrange a conversation with him? Who can say?”
    Reggie asked Aaron, “This guy’s been inside a long time?”
    “Yes, many years.”
    “I’ll talk to him. Maybe he’ll be in the mood to hear a woman’s voice. I’ll even give him phone sex, if he wants.”
    Both men looked at Reggie.
    “Hey, think about it,” she told them. “That shit’s for guys who are desperate. It won’t bother me, and if it gets us something we want …”
    Zeke and Aaron exchanged a look, both thinking the same thing.
    Maybe their business needed a female partner.
    They both looked at Reggie and nodded.
    Zeke adding, “Oh, baby.”
    Zeke’s Porsche came with a hands-free phone feature. In response to his hello, an unfamiliar female voice asked, “Have I reached Zeke Edison?”
    Before he could answer, Reggie said, “You haven’t called to offer him phone sex, have you?”
    “ What? No. I must have the wrong number. Sorry.”
    “How about real sex? Pro athletes get a lot of unsolicited offers,” Reggie said.
    That was true, Zeke knew. He’d always ended phone calls and closed hotel room doors immediately when such approaches came his way. His high school coach had been the first authority figure to warn him and his teammates about such overtures.
    “Boys, I’m going to tell you about tar-babies. They might look good at first, but you just can’t ever get rid of them. One way or another, they’ll stick to you for the rest of your life.”
    With Reggie handling things, though, he was curious how the call might work out.
    After a moment’s pause, the caller said, “Have I reached Zeke Edison’s phone? Are you his secretary or something?”
    “His dominatrix. I was just teaching him to roll over when you interrupted.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry. Unless you’re bullshitting me.”
    Zeke laughed and thumbed his nose at Reggie.
    “She is. This is Zeke Edison. Who’s calling and how’d you get my phone number?”
    “My name is Roberta Lane. I’m a reporter for the Trib, and I got your mobile number from George A. Black when I called your house.”
    “The house number is unlisted, too,” Zeke said.
    “In your name, yeah, but not in Mr. Black’s.”
    Zeke sighed. He should have known George would make the phone number publicly available to his horde of relatives. By extension, that meant the rest of the world, too.
    “Are you new on the sports beat, Ms. Lane? If so, I’m still retired from football and have no intention of returning to the NFL.”
    “That’s not why I called. I do stories on crime and official corruption. I was in Teddy’s Diner keeping an eye on Jonas Dawson. I saw him react to something he saw as he went by your table. It looked like someone put a cattle prod up his ass.”
    Reggie grinned and whispered, “I like her.”
    “And if I said that whatever happened at Teddy’s is a private matter?” Zeke asked.
    “I’d say that would be a shame. I was hoping we might talk. Swap what I know about Jonas Dawson for what you know about him. My thought was we