Monster (2 page)

“Hey,”
she started to object, rising from the bed.

My
eyes shifted to her and she fell silent, sitting back down. “What
the fuck did you get yourself into?” I asked, shaking my head
as I made my way toward her.

I
had no choice.

None.

I
didn't do the job... he would die. Suffer first. And then die.

I
had to break one of my rules.

And
this bitch with her scared eyes and honey-sweet voice was going to
pay the price for me giving a shit about another living human being.

“I
don't know what you're...”

The
rest of her sentence was cut out on a yelp when I stabbed the needle
into her neck. Her eyes flew to mine. Huge. Pleading. And I felt like
the biggest shit in the world. A fuzziness took over her features and
she started drifting down toward her mattress.

I
glanced around her room.

Lex
was right after all.

It
wasn't just the bottle trick.

She
had her windows nailed shut. There were bats situated everywhere
around the room, within arm's reach at all times. Actually, that was
likely what she was going for when I charged in, when she was getting
off her bed. Going for the bat propped up against the footboard.

I
looked down at her sleeping body, wondering aloud again, “What
the fuck did you get yourself into?”

Then
I picked her up, cradling her to my chest, and made my way back down
the fire escape to my truck, shuffling her into the passenger side,
then heading back to the warehouse.

Where
I locked her up. And then freaked the fuck out.

Two

Alex

I
was supposed to be working. I had five jobs in my queue. Hacking was
always in high demand. Wives who wanted into their husband's social
media accounts to check and see if he is screwing around (he always
is), people who want to take down some site that was slandering them,
score early concert tickets. Whatever the job, there was always
someone who wanted it done.

And
I was woefully low on cash.

I
was supposed to be working.

But,
well, let's just say I have trouble staying focused.

I
was technically working. Just not on a job that paid anything. It was
the same job that I had been working on since I was sixteen and I
learned about him.

Lex
Keith.

It
was such a tame name for such an evil bastard.

And
he was good.

Careful.

No
one touched him.

It
was my life's mission to bring him down.

Which
involved a lot of intel.
Like watching the cameras I had set up.
Around his businesses. Around the restaurants he frequented. The
whorehouses he spent his free time in, beating and abusing the women
there who had nothing else to do in their lives but sell their
bodies. Talk about taking advantage. Though, that wasn't even the
most shocking thing about Lex Keith.

I
had notebooks upon notebooks filled up (in a code I made up, with no
key) with all his activities. All the deaths he was responsible for –
with his own hands or through contracts. All the rapes he had covered
up because he had a few choice detectives in his pockets. All the
drugs he smuggled in and from where. What gangs and families he was
affiliated with (which was just about all of them). What his vices
were (brunettes, scotch, Italian food, cigarettes). What his
weaknesses were (hot temper, distrust). His strengths (intelligence,
his type-A anal attention to detail).

He
was my life's work.

I
wasn't getting paid for it though.

So
on the third day locked up in my apartment, I quickly worked through
my backlog of jobs, watching my online account fill up with money
that would enable me to buy me another camera to put outside the gym
he spent his early mornings in. And would buy me some groceries and
pay my week's worth of rent.

The
people who owned the Chinese restaurant were okay with this
arrangement. I paid by the week. I kept the noise down during working
hours. I didn't wreck the place.

I
had been staying there for a few months, knowing that I should have
moved at least two times already. I was getting lazy.

Which
wasn't safe.

But
there weren't a lot of places that didn't insist you sign paperwork
and put down a security deposit and agree to spend a year of your
life there.

I
didn't commit that much time to anything.

Not
since I was sixteen.

Not
since I found my mother's body in the bathtub, dressed in her
prettiest beige linen dress that skimmed her ankles and made her look
like a fairy princess. Her hair was done. Her makeup perfect. She
looked asleep. But I knew the second I laid eyes on her that she was
dead.

I
found the note sitting on the sink counter next to the empty bottle
of pain killers she had taken.

A
note that haunted me. That told me the truth.

A note that set my life
in a whole new direction.

I spent a year in and
out of foster care or in group homes before I finally decided I was
better off on me own. Better off not having my shit stolen. Better
off not having creepy foster fathers come in my room at night. Better
off learning how to take care of myself, making my own way.

So that was what I did.
Working whatever jobs would pay me under the table. Saving up.
Getting cheap places to live. Buying myself the equipment I needed to
start the process of slowly dismantling Lex Keith's life.

Closing in on ten years
and I hadn't managed much. I siphoned a little money every year.
Money that was tainted in blood so I rewired it and sent it to
charities that helped women who survived sexual assault or domestic
abuse. I had created a minor annoyance when I released a nasty bug
into his cell and computer systems.

Mostly though... it had
just been gathering information. Getting to know him. Learning how he
operated.

Alright, so I was a
little obsessed.

But taking him down was
the only thing that mattered in my life.

Which was kind of sad
if I thought about it.

So I didn't think about
it.

I checked the time on
my cell (a burner, I was like a drug dealer with an aversion to
contract plans), powered down my laptop, put a bottle on the door (I
couldn't afford the good kind of security and it was a bad area, but
my methods had always proved effective enough), then I turned out the
lights and got into bed.

The bottle crashed
sometime after I had finally fallen asleep. My body moved before my
mind was even awake enough to react consciously. I was half off the
bed, my heart hammering hard in my throat, trying to grab one of the
bats (or even one of the knives) that I had stashed around my bed.

The light flicked on,
half blinding my sleep-tired eyes.

And then there was a
man.

With a very nasty gun.

Pointed at me.

“Where the fuck
is Alex Miller?” he demanded, his voice gruff, guttural and
brooking absolutely no argument.

Actually, everything
about him, head to toe, was intimidating, meant to scare the ever
loving hell out of anyone he crossed paths with.

He was well over six
feet of solid, unyielding muscle underneath his black jeans, tight
black tee, and leather jacket. He had on huge, heavy combat boots and
leather gloves. The gloves struck me as weird before I realized that
he was likely trying to not leave fingerprints during whatever the
hell he was going to do to me.

His shoulders were
wide, pulled back. The hand holding his gun was steady. His head was
shaved on the sides in a deep undercut, the hair on top long and
falling to one side, a really pretty natural shade of blonde.

His face was strong.
Wide of jaw, chiseled, with a full beard that was a shade or two
darker than the hair on his head.

Then there were his
eyes.

They were the lightest
shade of blue I had ever seen. A color I could only describe as ice.
And the look he was giving me, well, it matched.

If he wasn't there to
possibly rape and murder me, I would have said he was really good
looking. In a truly terrifying way.

“I'm Alex
Miller,” I said, deciding to go with the truth. If he did any
kind of digging at all, he would find that out for himself. I wasn't
exactly in the position to piss off the bad guy.

And with that, to my
utter shock, he looked stricken.

Like... maybe he didn't
want me to be Alex Miller.

Why, I wasn't sure. But
it was there. In the tightness around his eyes, his clenched jaw, the
way his spine seemed to straighten all the more.

Then he was tucking the
gun away and going through my purse to validate my claim. And then he
took my purse. Slinging it over his shoulder like it was the most
normal thing in the world.

It was then I realized
what was going on. Because he didn't want my purse. He went through
it. He was in my wallet. He knew I didn't have any money. So he would
only take it with him if...

Oh god.

He was taking me.

“What the fuck
did you get yourself into?” he asked, sounding sad almost. And
resigned. Like he didn't want to do it, but he had to.

“I don't know
what you're...” my sentence cut off as his hand moved out fast.
I saw the flash of the needle before it plunged into the side of my
neck, the pain sharp and instantaneous, making me cry out. My eyes
flew up to his, silently begging, and to his credit, I saw regret
there before my vision and mind started swimming.

Then there was nothing.

Blissful oblivion.

I woke up being jostled
around, my body slamming down on something hard and cold. I felt my
lashes flutter, but kept my eyes mostly closed, able to only see a
slit of vision, but it was enough.

Enough to see that I
was inside what looked like an old, dirty, gutted out train car,
illuminated by construction lights hung from the roof of the car, the
wires snaking out of the open doors where I heard some kind of
humming noise. A generator. Outside the dirty windows, it looked
like I was in a train station. Except it wasn't. Or, at least, it
wasn't anymore. It was abandoned.

My captor turned back
to me and I made my eyes shut completely, not wanting him to know I
was awake yet. And then the weirdest freaking thing happened. He
reached out and brushed my hair out of my face.

“Damn it,”
he mumbled to himself, the words carrying some kind of weight that I
found myself wanting to understand.

But then he was moving,
from the sounds, away from me.

I slitted my eyes again
and saw him manually closing the train car doors and doing something
to them. I imagined, locking them somehow so I couldn't escape. Then
he turned, shoulders slumped forward, as he tore up the staircase.

I slowly pushed myself
upward, forcing my dead limbs to work, both annoyed and horrified
when they moved like dead weight- completely useless to me. But I
eventually got myself up into a seated position, looking around.

I
was right. Gutted train car. There weren't even any seats. Just the
metal
hold bars for standing
passengers and filth covered floors.

No. Not just filth
covered.

Blood.

There was dried blood
on the floor as well.

Damn it.

I knew it.

My heart refused to
pound in my chest, still dulled by whatever drugs he had forced into
my system. But the fear managed to permeate my foggy brain.

He was huge.

There was no way I
would be able to fend him off. And I didn't have any kind of weapon
on me. I was screwed. I was going to be tortured and end up in a
dumpster or shallow grave somewhere.