Battle of the Killers

71 | Gut Instinct

ARIES OR GMIE?

"Go with your gut instinct," Khan said, placing his hands on his legs before stretching them out. "Aries or Gmie."

Every fiber in my body despised Gmie. She was controlling, erratic, intelligently devious, manipulative and just a straight up bitch, but something told me she wasn't Layla's killer. It just didn't sit well with me.

"Aries." The name left my lips carefully yet swiftly, almost like I wasn't sure. Was I sure? No, but it was the best lead we had at the moment. "What if we're wrong? What if all of this is wrong and it's neither of them?"

"All of this is just a theory," he said. "Nothing's absolute. We just need to test our theory."

"How do we test something like this?" I asked, scratching my pants. "Just pretend we know their secret?"

He nodded. "And analyze how they react to us knowing their secret." Taking my iPad off the floor, he moved his finger around on the glass surface before typing something and handing it to me. "I just texted Gmie, telling her you know her secret and you're going to tell everyone."

My body jolted back a few centimeters. "What!" If Gmie didn't already hate my guts and want to murder me, she'd definitely want to now. "Why did it have to be me?"

"She already hates you, so she'll probably be more inclined to say something truthful."

"Now you're just talking out your ass," I said, watching a white bubble with three gray dots form under Khan's sent message. She was replying.

It took a few moments before her reply showed up, and it just made me hate her a little bit more.

I don't care. Tell them. Then she replied again. I can't wait to kill you just like I killed them. Watch your back. Your team won't be with you all the time.

"See? Told you she'd be honest," Khan said, completely ignoring her threat. "I figured she'd either hide it or deny it or just outright say it. Gmie doesn't have much of a middle ground. She usually goes from one extreme to the next. And now we can cross her off. She really doesn't care if you tell, so if Layla knew, Gmie wouldn't have cared if she told people."

"Thanks to that, Gmie probably hates me more than before," I said, arching my eyebrows, "increasing the target on my back."

"I really don't think Gmie could hate you more than she already does," he said, motioning to my bruised neck. Point taken.

"Are we doing the same for Aries?"

"No. I want to catch him off guard and see his real reaction," Khan said, eyes becoming darker. "He's been practicing this 'I didn't kill my girlfriend' façade for about a year now. I don't want him to have time to put it on. I want to surprise him — to see the real truth. Plus, if we give him a heads up, he might try to kill one of us, and we still don't know how he killed Layla or his ex."