Out of the pair, Vera was the older one. She’d gone to great lengths to hide her age. If I wasn’t looking for it, I might not have noticed. Small signs signaled to her being in her mid-thirties, not so far from my own age. It struck me that she was on the way out of her profession when I was still young for mine. Time, like many things, was relative, and age was only a number.

  Silas, on the other hand, was likely somewhere in his late twenties. His pale, gray hair hung loosely before his eyes and lightly brushed his shoulders. That color generally aged a person, but for him, it only emphasized his youth. On the Lieutenant, gray hair made her look weathered, like a woman who’d been through war and back again. For him, it looked otherworldly in a way that was almost untouchable.

  “Gray?” I asked.

  “No, not that part,” he said.

  “Didn’t think so,” Gabe said. “It’s too convenient.”

  He wore a white jacket over a loose black shirt. His shoulders showed through the black mesh pockets on the sides. Unlike Vera’s more over-the-top design, his clothes only hinted at what was underneath instead of flaunting it directly. White in black. Black in white. Once again, I was confronted with the dichotomy of Ying and Yang. Just like in my dreams, it now haunted me in my waking life.

  “We were told that you two were the only ones we needed to talk to. Any idea why?” I asked.

  “I can think of a few,” she said. “Do you want to tell them, or should I do it?”

  “There’s no point putting it off,” he said. “People only book the two of us together when they want to be watched.”

  “They came to fuck me. That’s my job. His job is to watch,” she said.

  “I don’t follow,” I said.

  She leaned forward, pressing her generously sized chest into her arms, almost begging us to look at it.

  “I’ll put this bluntly. Some guys can’t get off to the normal stuff. It’s not good enough to get a beautiful woman to let them have their way. They need someone to lose too. They need someone to witness them winning or taking or acting like very bad boys. That’s where Silas comes in. No one’s better at it than him.”

  “We just work together, but I can make it real,” he said. “I know how to cry on command. I can look hurt. I can sound betrayed. They feel like they’re really taking something from me. And I’m watching the whole time.”

  Suddenly, the pieces were all coming together. The reason why it was only these two we needed to see. They were in a unique position to see more than anybody else. Not only were they composed of a person physically in the act, up close and personal, but they were also composed of someone whose job was only to witness them in the act. If anyone would have seen anything, it was these two. We wouldn’t have to waste time on anybody else.

  The world wasn’t clean-cut or beautifully divided into those who had and those who didn’t. Winners and losers blurred around the middle. Instead of black and white, the world was only bleeding gray. Outside of the raw edges, everyone sat somewhere in ambiguity. Those who couldn’t accept this ugly truth often craved overt signifiers of where they stood in the world, and what was a win worth if no one also lost?

  “That’s disgusting,” I growled.

  I could feel the bile rising in the back of my throat. I was constantly surprised by my ability to still be this affected so long into the game. How sick did you have to be to pay just to see someone suffer? Even if it was a show, the entertainment was in the cruelty it emulated. Vera was there for the thrill of the chase. Silas was there to be humiliated. They made themselves into commodities to be bought and sold. I hoped to God that at least the pay was worth it. This industry was anything but kind.

  “Sounds like our dead guys were real pieces of work too,” Gabe said. “Maybe we don’t have to feel so bad.”

  He said the second line a little quieter, watching me out of the side of his eyes. You had to give it to Gabe for his ability to read a room. I bled for every person who ever hurt in front of me. Good or bad. Kind or brutal. Beautiful or ugly. Age and station were also irrelevant. I didn’t believe in sorting people on a sliding scale of value. In the end, we were all just people. He didn’t want me to suffer because I was being torn in different directions.

  “You’re shocked, but for us it’s just Tuesday,” she said. “Isn’t it, Silas?”

  “Something like that,” he whispered.

  There was a wounded look in his eyes, equal parts solitude and defiance. He looked like someone who had never had someone this angry on his behalf before. In a way, we were both engineered to be invisible. My family ran on fumes. I hid away all the loud and needy parts of myself so that I wouldn’t bother them. Our roles were not to matter, and someone should have noticed that.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  “You don’t look like you relax much,” he said quietly.

  “I don’t, but we’re not here about me,” I said.

  Something flickered in his eyes, but I purposely didn’t look. I didn’t need to know because I’d get just distracted. Distraction meant danger or vulnerability. In a way, there was no difference between the two. They were two sides of the same coin, and you just had to pray that it’d land right side up. I held my breath, and the moment soon passed with a newfound understanding between us. A line had been drawn in the sand, and neither of us would dare to cross it.

  “See them recently?” Gabe asked.

  “Sorry, baby, but this time you’ll have to be disappointed,” Vera said. “Chase stopped coming months ago. Never said why. I figured he just ran out of cash like poor, little Greg.”

  “What happened to Greg?” I asked.

  “Debt mostly,” she said. “He ran out of cash weeks ago and started begging for free sessions. I thought he finally got the hint when he didn’t call yesterday, but I guess he just ended up dead instead. Too bad...”

  His carefully manicured lawn and spotless floors showed no signs of struggle. There was no sign of a scuffle, but there were no signs of poverty either. In the city, even owning a house was no small feat. He was either lying through his teeth for freebies or stubbornly holding onto status symbols to keep up appearances. Considering how demeaning it’d be for a prideful man to beg, I figured he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t have to. This time, I was expecting to see bills in the red.

  “Did they mention any trouble?” I asked.

  “Look, everyone here is fighting their own demons. Some of them think our price tag comes with permission to spill their guts, but not all do, and I try not to remember either way,” she said. “If any of their trouble got back to us, we’d be the ones in trouble then.”

  She flicked her hair over her shoulder and gazed at Gabe.

  “Although… If a guy like you came around, I wouldn’t mind getting into a bit of trouble,” she said.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t need that kind of trouble,” Gabe chuckled.

  There must have been something they could tell me. I just needed to approach it from the right angle. Neither of them was going to give me concrete details. Standing on the other side of the transaction didn’t protect them as much as our badges did for us. They could lose either business or their lives with loose lips. What I needed to ask would be something they wouldn’t find important.

  “Did they ever beg for mercy?” I asked.

  Something akin to shock flashed over their faces. Either my question was so out of pocket they didn’t know what I was talking about, or I’d hit the nail right on the head and we were about to get the payoff.

  “Chase never did, but Greg? Yeah, I think he did. Does it mean something?” she asked.

  “Not to you,” I said.

  She got the hint and dropped the question. This was what we needed. Hypothetically, it could have just been a coincidental turn of phrase, but knowing what we did already, it didn’t seem likely. Dominants and submissives played with the idea of power and pain, but moaning for relief didn’t often come with demands for mercy. The words that came to their lips in the throes of ecstasy sounded a lot more plain and crude. Something as moralistic as mercy had no place in the bedroom.

  “Chase was always moaning about someone, though. What was her name?” Vera asked.

  “He never said her name,” Silas said. “But it wasn’t his wife, that’s for sure.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “It’s just a feeling,” Silas said.

  If Miller knew Mercy, then there was a good chance that Renner did too. The puzzle was when and how. If only one of them called her name during the act, there was still the question of why the other did not. It could have been timing or pure coincidence. Maybe it just wasn’t in Renner’s personality to call out like that. Time would tell.

  “Renner had a wife. Did Miller have anyone like that?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “He was… how do I put this? Hmm, kind of a loser.”

  Blunt and straight to the point, lacking in all tact and decency, just what I wanted. It didn’t beat around the bush or clean up the harsh edges either. Was it worth the effort to spare a dead man’s feelings in order to be polite? There was a method of softened, careful deliveries I’d never quite mastered. Maybe it was because they were never given to me as a child. My family didn’t believe in sugarcoating all the ugly stuff. I got spoon-fed the truth in bitter mouthfuls, and I learned to like it too. They say children absorb everything around them like a sponge, but I’d never been given the right kind of water.

  “So the guy was a loner,” Gabe mused.

  “Pretty much,” she said, leaning back. “No friends or family. Just me. Just this.”

  She gestured around the room.

  “Don’t feel too bad though. The guy was a piece of shit,” she said.

  “He was,” Silas muttered. “I always hated him too.”

  I had a feeling this was all we were going to get from them. There was no reason to think either of them killed those dirtbags. People often ended up connected to trouble when they danced along the moral boundary and rubbed shoulders with people willing to play with fire. It didn’t matter if they got their hands dirty or not. We were all guilty of association with someone with a bad habit. I had no reason to judge them for what they did. What I hated was the industry, not the people in it. That is as long as they weren’t the ones in charge.

  On our way out, Silas flashed me a complicated expression. I tried not to think about it, but the harder I tried, the more I did. There was a gnawing feeling in my chest akin to jealousy or longing. For what? I didn’t know. A flash of bitter embarrassment accompanied by wishing for more pushed those eyes I didn’t dare look at to the front of my mind. What “more” was, however, was still up for debate.