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“Made it sound as if it wouldn’twhat I did?” He drove his hands into his hair, every h it didn’t happen quite so…peacefully”
She could fill in the spaces with the worst she could iine
“He dropped off the face of the earth Then three years ago, he suddenly called h I was stunned, since the Rashid I kneas a health and sobriety freak But what did I know about what he’d become in the years since I last saw hi up I rushed there, found nothing”
“You didn’t find hi No such place existed I kept calling hie Days later, he texted et it I texted back, begged to see him He never answered et it And hiht after the mess in Zohayd was resolved, he caht he was giving et payback, and to prove that he was ‘a year older and a light-year better’ So I called him, offered him a partnership, the one we’d dreamed of as boys He responded that the only and last tined everything I had over to hiain I was so frustrated with hiain Until today”
He was telling her things she already kne he couldn’t see beyond what he wanted and felt He’d done the same with her With Jalal She shouldn’t sy the ed him from a callous brute to someone who’d never learned how not to appear so It painted hirays instead of blacks
But it still made no difference to those he’d injured
He looked at her as if he needed her to tell him he wasn’t crazy “But none of that explains his enmity, does it? It was all just…words And he had to know I didn’this other talents?”
He grimaced “I mean he should have put what I said in context Even if he bought every word I said, that still wasn’t a good enough reason to want to bury me alive”
“Depends on what you said”
Ads”
Another shock to hear hiuilty, I let him tear into me But soon his actions made me so mad, I threw ned I was responsible for our conflict, deserved his en hih me like a thousand volts”
She had to nod “Quite understandable He’s one scary dude”
“But that’s the problem That’s not the ‘dude’ I knew And that scar… Ya Ullah”
She frowned “Scar?”
He looked at her as if she was crazy “How can you e?”
“I haven’t seen hi to my sources, Rashid’s first appearance in Azmahar in the past seven years was today Seems no one has seen him before to spread the news”
He nodded slowly “That makes sense”
Not to her “That’s what shook you so e in his appearance?”
“It’s not only that He’s becoe you Being in arht that, too, but it’sterrible”
“More terrible than being in a war?”
“Yes And he believes I had a hand in it”
Her heart kicked her ribs, hard “Is he right?”
His whole being stiffened, as if she’d kicked his A criminal wasn’t one of them And he would be worse, a monster, if he’d had a hand in his forure?”
Tension seeped froaze as he acknowledged her exoneration “I need to investigate before I can formulate a plan It’ll be harder because I can’t have anyone finding out anything I discover when Rashid has gone to such lengths to cover it up”
“Let me knohat I can do to help”