Re: Bench near the pool table: Michael C & Reece E
He could have accessed Michael's phone (illegally) with his eye, but Reece didn't... really have much interest in doing that right now. So, when the man slid his phone over, Reece read the exchange as it had gone so far, and he sat back, blue and brown eyes on his colleague, and he didn't say anything for minute. He drank his lukewarm beer as Michael talked of forgiveness, and he should've been better at these things. Reece. He'd climbed the corporate ladder quickly—though, not as quickly as Michael, but then again, he didn't have Michael's money either—and climbing ladders took a certain kind of... ruthlessness. It meant using people's faces as rungs, tossing them down from colossal heights to watch them splatter on the ground almost invisible from newly gained vantage. And really, he should've been better at these things, but, peskily, very, very annoyingly, he couldn't seem to let certain things go.
He knew it slowed him down. He knew it meant he'd never be as great as Dane Blake, unless he managed to shed the useless weight of his conscience. But, he'd never expected it to be so difficult.—And, perhaps, if he had been a more calculating man, not only would have used Michael's disappearance to his advantage, he would do the same with his return, with the knowledge of his wife,—he would leverage himself with each and every breadcrumb, God help whoever got in his way. But, as it was, he wasn't that good. Not yet. Very earnestly, he wanted to help Michael. It was why he'd talked to Clementine.—Here, at the table, foam above his lip, he sighed.
"He's angry. He's very, very angry. But, he—we need you. That's all it is. You're useful." Reece frowned a little, sloshing beer up the sides of his glass. "More than useful. You're integral. Or you'd already be gone.—Your--The--Clementine? She's... not. She's not useful or integral, and if anything, he sees her as a danger... I tried to tell her, but I don't know if--I don't know if she listened to me."
He actually smiled when Michael told him he looked worse than he did, and he leaned back against the spine of the bench, glass on his thigh.
"I've been... oh, you know, hanging in there—" He air-quoted for no reason, and mumbled, "I don't know why I--" And back at full volume, nodding toward Michael's phone while simultaneously smoothing back brown-blonde hair with gunmetal fingers, he said: "Your laptop, uh--I found it. In your... in the--your room, but it was... in pieces. Pieces that flew out of a box. And then a door opened behind the bed and rifles fell out." He cleared his throat, lifted his eyebrows, and took another loooong drink.