Page 70 of Kane

Leon nodded.

Kane could see that Leon was thinking of what to say.

Desperately trying to find a glimmer of hope.

An upside perhaps.

But it would take a lot of effort to do so.

As far as Kane could tell, there really weren’t any positives to take away from all of this.

‘Okay. I want to say something good. But… honestly, yeah, I’ll need a little longer to think of something,’ Leon said, acknowledging what Kane had been thinking. ‘So how about we shoot some pool?’

Kane smiled and nodded.

Playing a few games of pool wasn’t going to solve his problems. He knew that. But what it might do would be to take his mind off the whole situation.

Kane knew how competitive both he and Leon were when it came to pool.

Or any sport.

Or videogame.

Or anything where it was possible to have a winner and a loser.

In fact, Kane and Leon used to keep a running count of victories versus losses when it came to their pool matches.

They had lost count a long, long time ago too. Somewhere around the one hundred game mark.

Leon had always insisted he was fifty-one games to forty-nine up. Kane, naturally, disagreed.

A classic case of two Daddy Doms battling for supremacy.

Still, competitiveness aside, it was always good to play.

‘Rack ‘em up,’ Kane said, walking over to the pool table with Leon. ‘Oh, wait. It looks like a new challenger has entered the arena!’

Kane smiled as he saw Cage entering the bar.

‘Yo! Over here!’ Leon called out, waving his hand in an attempt to get Cage’s attention. ‘Detective Hot Shot! Yo!’

‘I swear he’s going deaf,’ Kane laughed. ‘Far too much of that loud Little pop-music in his place these days is what’s to blame.’

‘I heard that!’ Cage retorted as he walked closer, but his smile was full of worry. ‘Okay. No more jokes. Here’s the thing. I need you to listen to me, Kane.’

Kane’s smile disappeared.

He knew Cage wasn’t kidding around.

‘What’s up?’ Leon enquired, also realizing that Cage wasn’t one to fool around like this.

‘It’s Cassie,’ Cage said, his voice gravely serious. ‘She’s… in trouble. Don’t worry, she’s safe. She’s over at my place with Katie.’

‘I mean… she drove off, she was safe, it was all done,’ Kane said. ‘Well, Ithinkit was. I don’t know what happened. She was driving away before we could get into it.’

Cage shook his head.

Kane’s heart was pounding.