At Their Own Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

overconfident path, almost without fail. Perry warned me about it. He probably had some kind of algorithm for it, too.  
    So when I found out about Falkner, what I should have done was break it off, right there. Told Helen thanks for the fun, but I couldn’t violate the brotherhood, yada yada. Should’ve started a new round of being faithful to Michelle, too. Become a more honorable man. That kind of shit.  
    What I did was keep fucking her. Hell, more often, if the truth be told. Pretty soon, we were sneaking around outside of the gym time, holing up at my apartment when I knew Michelle was working and wouldn’t drop by, or even grabbing a motel room a few times just to make it seem more illicit.  
    When she asked me to come over to her house, I should have drawn the line. That was too dangerous, I should have said. That was too far.  
    But I didn’t. I let my cock lead me right into that trap.  
    All the while, I never really stopped to think what was in this for her. Why was she running around on her husband? I was pretty sure I was the only one she was seeing, but who knew? And why did she pick me?  
    I was still young, and those weren’t the kinds of things that I really needed answers to in order to forge ahead. She was indescribably hot, she fucked like it was going to be illegal tomorrow, and I guess it made me feel pretty superior to be sleeping with her right under Falkner’s nose. A little comeuppance for the great, lordly detective, right?  
    Slowly, though, it became more than that. There was something about Helen. She had a smoky, seductive quality to her. A sexual ember that was always burning. But if that was all it was, I think maybe I could’ve broken away. I could have told myself that there were a thousand other women in Spokane with the same fire burning. Hell, there were a dozen at the same gym where I met Helen.  
    She had something else, too.  
    I’ve thought a lot about it since, and it’s been hard to pinpoint exactly how she affected me above and beyond everyone else. The closest I can come is to say that she made me feel like I could possess her, I could make her mine, and somehow find the answers to all the secrets of this world.  
    Yeah, I know. Stupid.  
    Either way, it was all great, until Falkner came home for lunch one day while I was there.  
    I scrambled out of their bed and into my jeans, then was out the window with an armful of clothes and boots. I bolted across the yard –  
    Who else do you know who carries a gun twenty-four hours a day?  
    --and heard yelling behind me, but it was muffled enough to probably be coming from inside the house. I half-expected to hear a shot ring out, either inside the house or out in the yard, the bullet buzzing past me like a pissed off hornet. But it was just yelling, and that faded as I made it down the alley, hopping and pulling on one boot and then the other.  
    My heart didn’t stop pounding until I fired up my car and drove out of the neighborhood, smiling crazily in spite of everything. Some of what I felt was relief, but some of it was…I don’t know. Excitement? A thrill?  
    After that, Helen and I were far more careful, and banging her got more expensive in terms of motel rooms, at least until Michelle broke it off with me. Then Helen and I shacked up at my apartment.  
    “I think he knows,” I said to her one afternoon.  
    “Of course he does. He’s not stupid.”  
    “No, I mean I think he knows it’s me .”  
    She hesitated. “That could be dangerous.”  
    “No shit.”  
    “Why do you think he knows it’s you?”  
    I shrugged. He’d never confronted me directly but I was sure he suspected. Every once in a while when we ended up on the same crime scene or at department training, I’d catch him staring at me with those cool, calculating eyes.  
    “Just the way he looks at me,” I told Helen.  
    “He looks that way at everyone.”  
    “It’s more than that.”  
    “You’re being