Monster (6 page)

Then he was gone.

Five

Breaker

What the hell was wrong
with me?

I never should have put
my hands (or mouth) on her. No matter what information I was trying
to get out of her. She was small and scared and very seriously
contemplating her own death.

And I screwed with her
head even more.

It wasn't an excuse
that she was fuckin' drop dead gorgeous. Maybe not in the modern way-
all ass and tits. She was classic- long legs and perfect bone
structure. Couple that with those doe eyes, that sharp tongue, and
that temper...

Fuck.

Walking out of the
building, I took off on foot, leaving my truck parked out front of
the warehouse. It wasn't my place. Plenty of kids liked to use it to
drink and fuck and fight. But when my truck was out front, they knew
to take their fun elsewhere. It was a dead fuckin' town. There were
plenty of other abandoned buildings to break into.

I walked up to the door
of the tattoo shop on the corner, slamming my fist into the metal
frame until the glass wobbled ominously. It was almost dawn. The
place had been closed for hours.

“Better want to
fuck or fight if you're showin' up at this hour,” a voice
grumbled from inside a few seconds before the door pulled open.

And there was Paine.

And, yeah, that was his
real fuckin' name. On his birth certificate and everything. It was an
ironic twist of fate that he was a tattoo artist.

He was around my age,
three inches taller, and built just about as strong. He was mixed-
light skinned but black with startling light green eyes. Shirtless,
his entire body was covered in dark black ink up to his jawline.
Bitches liked him- partly because he was good looking and partly
because he knew exactly what lines to feed them to get them out of
their panties in under fifteen minutes.

He
took one look at me and sighed. “Drink?” he asked,
already moving
back in to the shop, past the
tattoo rooms, and down a hall that led to his apartment.

Paine liked nice shit.
The inside of his studio apartment had been completely redone. Walls
skimmed then painted a deep blue. Floors refinished and stained a
dark color, just shy of black. The kitchen (which he didn't use) was
all state of the art- white subway tile and white cabinets, white
marble counter, stainless steel appliances. To the opposite side of
the room was his enormous California king bed with a white comforter.
In the center of the room, a living area with a deep blue sectional
and the biggest flatscreen available.

He walked over to the
kitchen where several bottles of booze were standing and poured us
each a glass.

I walked over, taking
my first round in one shot, and leaning against the counter.

“What you got
yourself into now?” he asked, nursing his drink.

“Lex Keith took
Shooter.”

The air got noticeably
sharper. “What?” he asked, his tone turning lethal.

See... the thing was...
me and Shoot went back. Went way back to me finding him sleeping up
against my place when I was nineteen. And by “my place” I
meant the abandoned storefront I was squatting in. No one gave a shit
and I had been there for half a year. Hell, I had the place rigged
with cable and electricity by that point.

I walked out my front
door, and there he was. Fifteen, small, scrappy.

“Yo,” I
said, kicking his creepers with my boots.

His eyes bolted open,
his body somehow going from sleeping and sitting to alert and
standing in the course of a blink. He wore a pair of black skinny
jeans, a white tee, and a leather jacket. The nice kind. The kind
that cost a few bucks. He wasn't a street kid. Or he hadn't been for
long. His face was on the thin side, his hair a shade of blonde that
teetered the edge of brown, cut short, slicked back slightly and
dark green eyes.

“What're you...”
the rest of my sentence trailed off when, in a blur, his hand went to
the waistband of his pants and came back out with a gun. Pointed.
Aimed perfectly to put a plug between my eyes. And his fuckin' hand
was steady as a sniper.

“Know it's a
coward's play, but I'd never beat ya in a fight,” he said,
shrugging a shoulder.

“Wasn't gonna
fight you, kid,” I said, shaking my head. “Was gonna take
you to get some breakfast.”

“Why?” he
asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Because I'm
hungry,” I said, turning away from him and his gun and making
my way down the street.

I didn't get more than
five feet before he fell into step beside me.

“You know how to
use that gun.” It wasn't a question. Fifteen and he held a gun
like a seasoned professional.

“Ain't grow up in
Al'Bama without learnin' to use a gun,” he drawled, making it
clear he had actively worked to drop his accent.

“Long way from
the South,” I remarked, opening the door to the diner up the
street.

“Long way from
the
sonbitch
who raised me,” he said easily, giving the
waitress who was at least ten years his senior a smile that made her
blush. Blush. “So what?” he asked, reading over the menu,
“you just a good Samaritan? Helping out the homeless kids on
your doorstep?”

“Fuck no,”
I said, shaking my head. I had been one of those homeless kids at one
point. I knew how important bootstrapping was to their pride. I
didn't do hand outs unless someone was really hurting. And even then,
half the time it was thrown back in my face. Such was the attitude of
the streets. It was something I respected.

“Just the ones
who pull guns on you then?” he asked, grinning over his menu.

“Somethin' like
that,” I agreed, nodding.

“So you got a
name?”

“Breaker,”
I said immediately.

At this, I got a brow
raise. “Well if you can have a dumb fuck name like Breaker, I
can be Shooter.”

From that day on, he
was.

“What do you do,
man?” he asked a few minutes later, digging into a huge pile of
French toast.

“Nothin' I can
talk about in a crowded diner,” I said, slipping my eyes toward
the table less than two feet from us- an old couple making it no
secret they were eavesdropping.

To this, Shooter
shrugged. “Need any help?”

And from that day on,
he did help.

Fifteen was a lot older
in street years. And it was even older when you grew up with a father
who used to beat the ever-loving shit out of you anytime he drank.
Which was daily. Shooter was fifteen going on thirty. Sharp. Aware.
With a surprising control over his emotions. Probably even more so
than me. He was funny. Quick with a smartass remark. Even faster with
a pickup line. And it always worked. He was a god damn teenage
Cassanova.

And when he said he
knew how to use a gun, well, it was an understatement. He was a
junior champion shooter back in the Yellowhammer state. Best shot I
had ever seen.

Until he was in his
early twenties though, he worked for me. Helped me case jobs. Gather
intel. Grab people if I thought I would have a problem. As he aged,
he didn't get big and bulky like me, but his wiry thinness had it's
own benefits in a fight.

Then, around the time
he hit twenty-three, he decided it was time to branch out. Be his own
man. It was a move I had been expecting for a while. And I had also
been expecting what he would do.

When you had skills
like his with a gun, well, what else would you get into but contract
killing?

He took out big gigs-
working for the mob or the other crime families, the empires, the big
guys.

When it came to my
jobs, I made bank.

Shooter made my income
seem minuscule.

He sent his shit father
a case of the finest scotch money could buy every month.

One could say he was
still harboring some daddy issues.

And he had been, for
all intents and purposes, the only family I had. A little brother.
Someone I gave a fuck about.

And Lex Keith was
holding him against me.

“Wanted me to
pick up someone named Alex Miller,” I told Paine, snapping out
of my memories. “Told me he'd give back Shooter in one piece if
I did. So I agreed. The fuck didn't tell me that Alex Miller is a
fuckin' chick.”

To this, Paine's
shoulders fell. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” I
agreed. “Got her in the warehouse as we speak. I didn't get
much in the way of instructions. Grab her. Hold her. Didn't say till
when. Sounded like he wants to... do the dirty work himself,” I
said, my words feeling venomous on my tongue.

“Can't let him
have her,” Paine said, surprising me.

Paine, unlike me and
Shoot, came from a good family. A poor one. With way too many kids in
a two bedroom apartment in a shit area. But a good family. With a
strong mother and grandmother. Three kickass aunts. And two little
sisters. He had a strong, ingrained need to respect and protect
women. So, yeah, while he used a lot of them for sex, he never so
much as raised his voice to one or made promises or declarations he
had no intentions to keep.

He knew exactly what
Lex would have in store for Alex.

And no way would he be
okay with that going down when it could be avoided.

Problem was, I didn't
know how to avoid it.

“I agreed to get
her some H so she could end it before he got to her.”

Paine's
eyes slid from mine, looking out the window where the sun was
starting to pierce through the sky.

“Look, you know I
got love for Shoot,” he started, and I knew it was true.

Paine and I got tight
just from knowing each other, frequenting the same watering holes,
making bets on which one of us would land the hottest chick of the
night (up to current times, we were pretty evenly matched). And when
Shooter became a big part of my life, he by proxy became a big part
of Paine's. It also didn't hurt that Shoot spent a large chunk of
his income keeping Paine's tattoo business going. Shoot was a big fan
of body modification- piercings (huge gauged ears, tongue piercing,
then sometimes his lip, sometimes his nose. It varied. Then there was
the ink. He was covered: arms, chest, back. He even had a tattoo of
an eagle across the front of his neck, the wings spread out back
toward his ears. Shoot spent a lot of time in Paine's chair. The two
were close.

When Paine said he had
love for Shoot, he meant it.

“But he's a grown
ass man. He got into this business. He, like you, knew all the risks.
And he looked them in the face and said, 'bring it mother fucker'.
Now, this girl... this girl didn't make that choice. No matter how
she got herself wrapped up with Lex, no way would it be a fair fight.
She's innocent.”

He was right.

Fuck.

“I know that,”
I said, pouring myself another round. A silence hung, both of us not
sure what lines we were willing to cross. I spoke first. “She's
a hacker. That's what she does. And she admitted to try to take him
down.”

“Take him down
with a computer?” he asked, his voice a mix of amused and
disbelieving. “Mini armies haven't been able to take him down.
Carting AKs and Molotov cocktails.”

“Yeah,” I
agreed. Those early days had been a mess. Cops everywhere. In
everyone's business. I took out of town for a year, taking jobs on
the other coast just to keep my ass off the radar. Shoot came with,
still trying to build up a clientele so he worked part time for me
and took off the rest of the time on his own. Lots of sun and money
and bitches. Those were the good times. Suddenly, I wished we never
came back.

Shoot would be free. I
wouldn't have some sexy piece sitting in my train car. And I wouldn't
be faced with the impossible choice between them.

“I cross Lex, I
get dead too,” I mused out loud. He wouldn't stop by just
killing Shoot. That would just be to torment me before he came and
took me out as well. Probably making me watch him rape and torture
Alex before he did me in just to prove he had the upper hand. “And
so would Alex,” I added.