by Siobhan Muir
She’s an Enforcer. She does what needs to be done.
My gut sank at the thought as I followed the bikers into the industrial portion of the small city. We skirted the warehouse I’d seen in the photos and parked behind one of the other derelict buildings nearby. Despite being the middle of the day, the streets remained relatively empty and I suspected the cops didn’t make regular trips to that part of town.
Despite the loud engines on the bikes, no one seemed to notice our arrival. I grabbed my Glock and checked to see if it was loaded. I had a full magazine. I took a deep breath, wishing I could wear my vest, but it had big yellow letters screaming “US MARSHALS” on it. Not exactly the way I wanted to tell Karma. I shoved the gun into my waistband at my back and locked the car.
The Concrete Angels fanned out around the warehouse and I joined the group going in the front. Attila took another bunch to the back entrances and Loki led the crew in the front. I followed along, keeping my head down and my steps silent. I left the gun at my back, hoping I wouldn’t need it. Please, Goddess, make it just be the victims, not the johns or pimps.
Loki counted down to three on his fingers before pulling open the warehouse door and slipping inside. Someone had oiled the hinges into silence so no one could hear our entrance and I thanked our lucky stars. We surprised the first guard wearing an old Uzi, the Friar grabbing the guy from behind and cutting off his airway. Despite the manic expression on Friar’s face, he let the guard down gently. Dollhouse came behind him and used zipties to secure his hands and feet.
The warehouse had been partitioned in to several rooms, though none of them were soundproofed. I could imagine this place on a Friday night. Men and women grunting as they fucked the unwilling whores. I swallowed against bile and brought out my phone, documenting everything I could see, including the downed guard.
Turns out we’d come in the back way, through the “rooms” for fucking. All but one were empty. The one occupied room had another guard pumping into someone underneath him, his white, hairy buttocks flashing with each thrust. The person under him was too small to see from behind, but they made high pitched, painful grunts as if each intrusion hurt. My lips pulled back from my teeth and I swallowed my snarl as I moved to yank the guy away.
“Hey, what the fuck!”
He tried to throw me off, but I slammed my knee into his wilting cock and balls, before I decked him to the floor. Gopher moved in, his face more serious and focused than I’d ever seen it, and he bound the guy’s limbs. I turned to see who he’d been fucking and almost threw up.
The girl on the floor couldn’t have been more than sixteen, her body bruised and emaciated. She’d rolled up into a ball and scooted to the back of the pallet on the floor, her eyes wide and wary.
“It’s all right. We’re here to help.” I crouched at the other end of the pallet with my hands out.
“You don’t look like cops.”
Her voice was low and scratchy, like she’d been sick or coughing. I smiled and shook my head. “Not cops, just concerned citizens.”
She didn’t look convinced but I wasn’t about to give her the 411. “Are there more guards?”
“Why?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why what?”
“Why are you really here?”
“We’re here to put a stop to this.” Karma appeared over my shoulder and the girl’s gaze shifted upwards. “We’ll make sure you get home after this, but we need to know how many guards we’re likely to meet. Can you tell us?”
She took her time considering and I gritted my teeth against the urge to shake her.
“There are five or six guys who watch us all the time. Sometimes they use us when they think no one is looking.”
Karma growled and I concurred. “Okay, stay here. This is Dollhouse. She’ll be hanging out with you.” The smaller woman stepped in the room and handed me the zipties as we shifted out of the nasty room.
Holy fuck, Backlog is gonna pay for this. Hopkins and Eisenburg had been siphoning money into this enterprise and it made me want to kill them all over again. I knew they were into all sorts of shitty things, but underage prostitution sickened me. Decorated FBI agents, my ass. I photographed the room, making sure I never got the girl’s face, and followed Karma deeper into the warehouse.
From what I could tell, it had been split roughly in half, with the rooms and kitchen in the back, and the greeting area and a prison cell in the front. All the people the Backlog had kidnapped or captured were in a large cage near the front entrance behind one last partition. Oh, look, they made a foyer for their coats and boots. And possibly weapons.
The cage sat to our right and held about thirty people ranging in age from about ten years old to somewhere in the late twenties, male and female. The wary and solemn expressions on the victims told me they didn’t trust this new influx of armed people anymore than they did their jailers. I couldn’t blame them as I snapped more pictures.
Shouts and gunshots erupted in the foyer as the guards realized something was wrong. Karma darted past ratty old couches and chairs in the open space just as the guards boiled into the main room. And that’s when the shit hit the fan and broke it.
Her face solidified into an otherworldly mask of anger and intensity, her skin turning reddish in the dim light of the warehouse windows. She threw out her hands at the guards, tossing knives at them without looking, as the other Concrete Angels swarmed into the space.
But I was looking, and those damn knives curved mid-air to strike at the guards’ most vulnerable spots, even when they ducked. One guy caught one in the neck, right over the jugular vein. He yanked it out and dropped like a stone, his blood sheeting across the floor. Another guy miraculously missed her knife but his foot caught the strap of his automatic rifle, tipping the muzzle upwards, and he ended up shooting himself in the head.
Karma spun and caught a guy at the throat, lifting him off the ground with one hand. My Madam wasn’t a very large woman, but she held this guy like he weighed no more than a sack of leaves cleared from the garden. He struggled and writhed, clutching at her hand with both of his as his eyes bulged, but she just kept squeezing until his eyes rolled up and he went limp in her grip. Then she dropped him and kicked him out of her way.
Holy shit.
I stepped to the side as the rest of the clubmembers took over. I hadn’t taken any images of Karma doling out justice, but my knees shook along with my hands. What the hell had I just seen? There had to be some sort of scientific explanation for what I’d seen her do, but nothing in my experience came close to making sense.
“Oy, Coop, are you gonna take your shots?” Friar waved a hand in front of my face and I blinked up at him.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah. Right.” I nodded as I clicked my phone, but my mind wasn’t on the mess of the warehouse.
Something’s wrong with Karma. That’s the only coherent thought I had as I photographed the cage of people and the conditions of the make-shift brothel. Michael shot me worried looks periodically as he organized moving the victims from the cage and into groups. Another biker, Nightingale, checked over all the people in the cage with careful attention, offering first aid and medicines to get them stabilized before they were taken to a shelter.
I photographed what I could and had almost finished when Loki sauntered up to me, his expression unusually grave.
“This place is an abomination.” Anger coursed through his voice and I was glad it wasn’t directed at me.
“Yeah, it is.” I zipped up all the photos on my phone and sent them to a secure folder in Dropbox where Battlebourne could get to them should anything happen to me. “Hey, Loki. What the hell was going on with Karma? I swear I saw shit that doesn’t make sense.”
Loki snorted and shot me a half-smile with no humor in it. “What doesn’t make sense to you, Marshal? That she came in here and killed some of these dritmongers or that these dritmongers would do such a thing to other humans?”
“Both, honestly, but did you see w
hat she did with the knives? They curved mid-air. And she didn’t look…normal.” I swallowed hard, my words sounding crazy when said aloud.
Loki barked a laugh. “By normal, you mean ‘human,’ ja?” His eyes twinkled as he grinned. “That’s because she’s not human, Marshal Cooper DeVille.” When I widened my eyes, he nodded. “Oh, ja, I know who you really are. I’ve known for a long time. Shall I tell you a secret? Karma is karma, the energy of retribution. I tempted her into a physical body to give her a taste of what it’s like to be amongst those she affects. Now she’s here and you love her, right? Det er bra, Marshal.”
Then he sobered and an odd golden light shone at the backs of his eyes, like a hunting cat at night. “Don’t fuck this up, man. You’ve been given a chance of a lifetime and you don’t want to miss it. Got me?”
“Let me guess. If I do fuck it up, you’ll kill me.” I shot him a dry look.
“Oh, no, man. Not me.” He turned and nodded back toward Karma where she helped the girl we’d found in the room toward the entrance of the warehouse. “She will. Energy of retribution and consequence. Remember?”
He clapped me on the shoulder and strode away, taking my confidence and reality with him.
****
Cooper
The rest of the clean up and dismantling of the make-shift brothel happened faster than I thought possible. Nightingale triaged all the people forced into prostitution, some of them so young I could barely keep my breakfast down. She led them out to where Michael waited with the van to take them to the shelters Numbers had suggested.
I stood back out of the way, only helping when someone needed some brut strength. In addition to the victims, we found caches of alcohol and drugs, some prescription strength, meant to keep the whores pliable. Attila had scowled and asked Torch to destroy it all. The big green-eyed biker grinned and took the contraband out to the parking lot behind the warehouse to set it ablaze.
All the while I kept my eyes on Karma and Loki. Both of them appeared normal now, but the idea that she wasn’t human set my teeth on edge.
And you didn’t tell her the truth about who you are.
Yeah, there was that, too. And after what I’d seen her do to the guys in the warehouse, I didn’t think it would go easy between us.
“Fuck.”
“What’s wrong, Marshal?” Torch appeared next to me and I jumped. Where the hell had he come from?
I rubbed the back of my neck and glanced around. He was the only one near me as we finished the cleanup.
“You ever have one of those moments when you realize you’ve screwed up so badly there might not be any way of coming back from it?”
His gaze sharpened on mine and my gut dropped. Oh shit, he’s not human anymore than Loki or Karma. But a grimace ruined the otherworldly effect and he nodded.
“Yeah. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Why? What did you do?”
I scowled. “It’s more what I didn’t do and it’s gonna bite me in the ass so bad I might forget how to walk.”
“Hellwinds.” He shook his head as he glanced toward Karma. “Does this have to do with your relationship with Karma?”
“Yeah.”
He hissed a breath and it sounded just like the vicious warning of a dragon. It unnerved the daylights outta me. Smoke even rose from his nostrils for a moment.
“Here’s the thing, Coop. Karma has my respect and loyalty. It’s a Concrete Angels thing.” Torch met my gaze and his eyes shimmered with peacock green sparkles. “But I like you and I think you’re an honorable man. When you finally get the balls to tell her whatever it is, you won’t lose my respect or my friendship. And I’ll back you up if I can.” He paused and tilted his head. “Is this about you being a U.S. Marshal undercover?”
“Fuck!” I gaped at him. “How the hell do you know that?”
“I heard you talking to Loki. I got damn good hearing.” Torch gave me a smug smile.
“And you’re okay with it?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Yeah. I’m not sleeping with you, so it’s not that big a deal. You could’ve just asked us if we were involved with Backlog.”
“Oh, right. That’s exactly how undercover investigations work. You just come right out and ask and the people you’re investigating are totally open and honest about things.” I shot him a dry look before I sighed. “The good news is I figured out pretty fast you weren’t working with Backlog. But I don’t know if that’ll save my ass with Karma.”
“Yeah, no, probably not.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I totally get why you didn’t say anything. But you should’ve said something before you slept with her.”
I should’ve said something before I fell for her.
“Good luck, Marshal. You’re gonna need it.” He shot me a sympathetic glance before he strode off to finish the clean up of the warehouse. I took one last look around before I headed back to my car, wondering how the hell I was going to tell Karma who I really was. I still didn’t know.
But one thing I did know. I truly loved her and I meant it when I told her. The question was if it would matter after she found out my profession. I scrubbed my face as the world lit up with a huge whoosh and heat blasted past me. I jerked around to see flames licking the sky from behind the warehouse just as the rest of the Concrete Angels came out to their bikes.
“What the fuck was that?” I yelled the words to Attila as he jogged up.
“Och, just Torch gettin’ rid of the contraband and the bodies.” He shrugged as he swung his leg over his bike. “It’ll get the pigs’ attention and bring ’em here to check things out. We’d best be well away by then, aye?”
“Damn. Yeah, I’d say so.”
I slid into my car and started it, waiting for the rest of the club to head out. Karma strode out and shot a look toward me, but she didn’t hesitate to climb on her bike and start it up. I swallowed hard as I remembered what Loki told me. Karma is karma, the energy of retribution. I’d always known this job was going to be full of bad karma, but I hadn’t thought I’d be the one cultivating it. I’d just been trying to find the bad guys. Unfortunately, I’d hurt people along the way, and there was more than a good chance it would hurt me back, tenfold.
My phone rang with Rhapsody in Blue as we drove back to the compound and I hit speaker phone. “Yeah, DeVille.”
“Holy shit, DeVille, what the hell did you upload there?”
“A make-shift brothel, deep in the sex trade, and funded by the organization via Hopkins and Eisenburg.”
“Dammit. You’re sure? You got evidence?”
“Yeah, and I got a list of all the people Eisenburg knew were working for the organization. At least in the FBI, local PDs, and ATF. There are even three from our office, but there might be more. He didn’t have contact with the Marshals as much.”
“Nice. Okay, you’re really comin’ back tomorrow?”
I sighed. The last thing I wanted to do was bug out after this discovery, but there was no help for it.
“Yeah, I’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe some of the people on the list will lead us to the rest of our own moles. I just gotta finish one thing and then I’m out.”
“Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow. Good work.”
“Thanks, boss. Later.”
I knew I’d done the right thing in this investigation, but I still felt like shit and it didn’t ease when I pulled in through the gates of the compound behind the bikes. I parked in my usual space behind the barn and girded my loins for the coming conversation. Hopefully she won’t kick the shit out of me. Literally. Karma scared me in more ways than one. But in particular, I was scared I’d lose her over this one detail. Yeah, the most important detail. She’d said BDSM was all about trust, and I’d violated hers.
I got out of the car, locking behind me as I headed for her cabin. Lucky number thirteen. I found the door open as if she expected me to walk right in.
“Karma, Ma’am? May I come in?” I stood outside the door, my shoulder blades prickling with un
ease.
“Yes.”
Her answer was short and her voice sounded angry. I swallowed hard and pushed the door open so I could step across the threshold. Karma stood in the middle of the living room with my duffle bag at her feet. She held something in her hand, the knuckles turning white from the strength she exerted on the object. I met her gaze, reading anger and betrayal on her face before I dropped my gaze to what she held.
Oh fuck.
“I found your ‘tin star,’ Marshal.” She held up the gold star in the leather wallet that had been tucked away inside the duffle. “Is this real? Are you really a cop?”
How the hell did she find that? I didn’t leave that lying around, not while undercover. Must have been bad luck. Or bad karma.
“Sort of. Karma—”
“Sort of? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I was trying to tell you last night and again before the raid. It means that I never meant to hurt you. It means that I was conducting an investigation of Backlog and how deeply they’ve compromised every law enforcement agency in the US.” I stopped and rubbed the back of my neck.
“Which one, Coop?”
“What?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Which law enforcement agency are you from?” She waved my badge at me.
I sighed. “The U.S. Marshals.”
She barked a laugh that sounded more like a sob, and tossed the badge into the open duffle bag. “Perfect. Just fuckin’ perfect. You gave me all the clues, I was just too arrogantly blind to see them. Hell, even Samurai gave hints of who you were at the strip show.” She kicked the duffle to me. “Take it.”
“Karma—”
“Take it and get out.” She pointed at the door behind me and my gut sank.
“Ma’am, please”
“Get. Out. Of. My. Space.” She advanced on me and I got another glimpse of her wicked ‘death angel’ appearance that I’d seen at the warehouse.