Lowlives | hes au

19. rag dolls

'If I were him, considering what you did to him, I probably wouldn't have hesitated."

I raised a brow, frowning. "I didn't do anything."

"Yeah, that's what I meant," Lana said back sheepishly. "Does that mean you cleared the air with him?"

"If I didn't clear the air with Beau, what makes you think I cleared the air with him?" I retorted.

She chuckled at my rhetorical question. "Okay. I don't know Iris, he's definitely got a thing for you if he's that nonchalant around you. I mean, you saw the dagger eyes he was sending you when the police were dragging him out of Pink Panther. We both did. Only pussy power can ease that much rage."

My eyeballs nearly fell out of their sockets hearing her. "Lana!" I exclaimed.

She chuckled again.

"I'm done talking about this," I warned, making my enunciation very sharp.

"Hmph. Be careful around him Iris. He gives me bad energy." Lana suddenly said, her tone growing eerier.

"What?"

"I don't get good vibes from him is all."

Now I chuckled. "Weren't you literally fawning over him a month ago?"

"Yes, but I've been thinking about it for the past few hours, there's not much else to do considering how vacant Pink Panther is nowadays." She trailed, but in a quick moment, her voice became slender. "Listen, I've seen a lot of faces in this brothel and majority of them, I've seen more than once. Loverboy's face... it's unforgettable. I would never forget a face like that."

"Where are you going with this?" I sighed, pressing a thumb to my temple.

"I'm saying that there's a lot of frequent visitors stopping by our place, but he isn't one of them. The one day he shows up though, there's a murder? A vicious, devilish kind of murder? Stuff like this has never happened before, Iris..."

I sat up straight by the time she finished sharing her theory. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"No," I reacted flatly. "That's not Harry."

He was literally, desperately, trying to hunt the real murderer down. It wasn't Harry.

From the phone, I could hear an amused gasp escape Lana. "Oh my god Iris."

"What?" I hissed.

"'That's not Harry?'" She mimicked over the line. "What, you know him now?"

I stayed silent and involuntarily listened to her continue mocking me. "Don't tell me you trust him too...."

Well, at this point, I probably trust him more than you. I thought in my head bitterly. There was further silence from me, and that bitter thought instantly sparked me to snap out the topic I was trying to introduce strategically in the back of my head.

"Lana, did you know that the pills you gave me aren't medicine pills at all?"

This time, she was the one to respond with silence. "Did Ester tell you they're livestock steroids used to fatten up cows that are to be sent to the butchershop?" I continued to press, waiting to irk her enough to audibly react.

Finally she did. "I was doing you a favor."

All the air left me once I heard her. Out of everything I was expecting to hear, that was not one of them.

I had been mostly sure that she was just innocent as I had been when taking in those pills. But what kind of response was "I was doing you a favor?"