Kill Me Twice (A Zeke Edison Novel Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

said to be very big.”
    Dawson looked like he was about to vent lava.
    “The most interesting tidbit I have is the feds have already braced Callas and Campos and are waiting to see which one of them squeals first and gets a plea deal. That tells me they want you most of all. So maybe you should stop worrying about your reputation and get your own criminal defense attorney. That and give me a call if you want your side of things in the paper.”
    Bitch, Dawson thought, but he didn’t say a word.
    He only continued to hold his tableware in a death grip as he watched the reporter go.
    Dawson wondered if he knew anybody who could get rid of Callas and Campos without fucking things up. He’d done that kind of work a long time ago. The way things were going, though, it might not be too smart to involve anyone else in his plans.
    He just might have to go back to doing his own dirty work.
    “You keeping your cool today?” Dr. Sandra Gallo asked.
    She was the one who’d introduced Zeke to Akio Sugiyama.
    Zeke sat in a guest chair at her desk. His therapist had a carry-out sandwich in a nest of wrapping paper set out in front of her. She dabbed a spot of mayo off a corner of her mouth. She pushed a bottle of pomegranate juice Zeke’s way.
    “So far, so good,” he said.
    He opened the juice bottle and took a swig.
    “But you’re still not cool with being cool, right?”
    “Every once in a while I catch myself smiling. Maybe laugh at something I’ve read.”
    “Sing along with a song on your iPod?”
    “Only when I remember you told me to.”
    “You don’t have a bad voice.”
    Zeke rolled his eyes. “Yeah, for a dancing bear. Or in my case an ex-Bear.”
    Leaving pro football had become harder for Zeke once his ears stopped ringing and his vision cleared up, that was a few months after he was post-op from his posterior cervical compression discectomy. He was told he had to be careful because there was a 3-5% chance the disc could herniate again.
    The numbers got a lot bigger if he ever went back to playing football or otherwise used his head as a battering ram.
    “I didn’t spear anybody. That was a clean hit,” Zeke had told his surgeon.
    The doctor had replied, “Nobody’s talking about blowing a whistle or throwing a flag here. You re-injure your neck in the same manner, we’re looking at spinal fusion in the best case and paralysis or possibly death in the worst case.”
    Zeke’s mother and father were in the room to hear that bit of straight talk.
    The fear in their eyes was more compelling than the doctor’s explicit warning.
    His parents had always been good to him. They were kind and nurturing despite his childhood being anything but a stroll in the park. He’d been mad at the world for as long as he could remember. Nobody had ever figured out why he was so angry, but Mom and Dad could have raised another three kids for all the money they’d spent trying to help him.
    Only they hadn’t dared to bring another child into the world.
    Not after seeing what they had on their hands with him.
    Zeke had decided in that moment that he couldn’t bear the thought of his parents having to care for him if he went back to the game and wound up getting paralyzed.
    Tugging hard in the opposite direction, the NFL had named Zeke not only the defensive rookie of the year but also the defensive player of the year. He deleted all his social media accounts when he got tired of hearing from all the fans who begged him to come back. Hell, it wouldn’t matter to them if he wound up a cripple. There were always new players coming along.
    He had no control over the video of his final NFL play that was shown endlessly on every sports network in the country. There were times when Zeke thought it would still be showing on the day he died, even if he lived to be a hundred.
    Then there was the devil in his head, whispering to him every night.
    Saying nobody else was as good he was, not even close.
    All he had to do to prove it