Status Updates From Mask Market (Burke #16)

“You know what? I thought you loved me. I don’t mean I was your great love. Not that special, once-in-a-lifetime-if-you-get-real-lucky love. But a whole lot more than…than just liking me, I guess. I guess I just told you too much truth, didn’t I?” “No, you didn’t. You told me just enough. And you showed me a lot more.”

I wasn’t holding good cards, but I wasn’t down to drawing dead, either. Not yet. Beryl’s picture was circulating all over the city. Favors were being called in, pressure was being put on.

His hands were as steady as a dead man’s pulse. THIS IS CLASSIC VACHSS!

When violence erupts at me, the same thing always happens. A tiny white dot lasers in my brain, bathing the world in a blue-edged light. I watch myself move through that blue-edged light, like a man underwater, everything so very slow. Later, I can play it back, like a stored VCR tape. Over and over again. What I can never do is erase it.