by Keta Kendric
“D, if it is DG6, they might be after Lacey Daniels.” I had revealed almost everything to Ansel, so he knew that Megan was also Lacey Daniels.
D huffed into the phone. “Knox, wait the fuck up. I thought you put a bullet in her head weeks ago?”
“D, you have a way of finding out shit that nobody else can. If you dug into Lacey Daniel’s past like I know you did, then you’d know what was done to her and why I couldn’t kill her. And trust me, the shit they released to the public was the watered-down version.”
The long, quiet pause let me know that D was connecting the dots. For a while, all I heard was my tires eating up the highway and D’s fingers striking keys.
“So, let me guess. That foster family she killed all those years ago was DG6?”
“Yeah,” I answered, not surprised at how fast D had pieced the shit together.
“Knox, man, what the fuck have you gotten yourself into? Those motherfuckers aren’t gonna stop until she’s dead, no matter how much time has passed. They don’t care about what their people did to her. I know you, Knox. Your crazy ass will try to kill their whole fucking clan if it comes to it.”
D took another long pause. I already knew what he was thinking. D rarely passed up a chance to step away from the computer and participate in what he called field missions.
“If you need me there, Knox, just let me know. Also, that suit-and-tie-wearing motherfucker, Dax, is back on the prowl too. He’s getting hired for half-million-dollar hits. You know how he is. Mention of the word danger, and he’ll come running.”
Ansel’s eyes grew big at those words. As much as my cousin enjoyed killing people, he was likely getting ideas from some of the shit D was saying. D, on the other hand, was just as bad as my cousin. Both D and my friend, Dax, would come running if danger called. D’s legal name was Derrick Michaels, but Danger Michaels would have been more fitting. However, I wasn’t going to point this out to my friend. Like my cousin, D apparently saw himself differently than the way I saw him.
“D, I’ll say no for now, but if I tell you to come, you know shit is blown all to hell.”
“I know, Knox. I also know I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve saved my fucking life, so I got your back, no matter what the fuck is going down.”
“Thanks, man,” I said and hung up before Ansel could get the words out that I knew were brimming on the edge of this twitchy tongue.
“Hey, can you link me up with Dax?”
Just as I’d thought. I knew my cousin well. “Don’t you think you’re into enough shit? Now, you want to add contract killing to your resume?”
Ansel shrugged. “Fuck it. I’m young. The world needs people like me to ride it of evil. I want to enjoy the things I enjoy doing while I can. If we survive this DG6 shit, it would guarantee me six-figure hits.”
The way my cousin’s mind worked made me wonder if he’d been wired right. He’d just admitted that he wanted to enjoy killing while he was young enough to. I shook my head, attempting to shake out the idea. Despite how twisted my mind was, my cousin made me seem like I was the normal one. Ansel was smart and business minded. He dressed in suits and hung around with the wealthy, but it was his dark side that he managed so well, unsuspecting victims didn’t see it until the monster came out.
He owned two successful clubs that catered to the rich and twisted and several other small businesses that he’d acquired over the years. He and I shared the same gun supplier, and being in California where the market was bigger, Ansel was able to push twice the shipment of guns as I could.
After a long silent moment, a chuckle from Ansel sounded.
“What’s so fucking funny?” I questioned him.
“I was thinking about the kind of unit you were deployed with. Was it a unit full of fucking killers?”
I laughed then. It did appear that most of my old unit had gotten out of the military and turned to a life of crime. Aside from D and Dax, there was also Luke and Gavin who’d linked up and started their own security firm down in Georgia. Knowing the men the way that I did, I was sure they did a lot more than security.
I was distracted, but my eye didn’t miss the two unfamiliar men climbing out of a black SUV that was like the one that had followed Megan and me into the woods. Ansel’s gaze followed what my eyes had locked onto. Finally, after days of searching, this unfamiliar group that I now stared at, could be our first lead.
One of the men pumped gas as the other two exited the vehicle and walked into the Quit Mart. I pulled my truck around the side of the bowling alley where we could observe and not be spotted.
Chapter Ten
Aaron
Ansel and I sat low in the front seat of my truck, eyeing the unfamiliar men. From the angle we were parked, I couldn’t see what their license plate said, but I was willing to bet it was out of state. DG6 mainly operated out of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. As far as I knew, the gang had originated in Texas, which was likely their main base of operations. Texas was also the place where Megan had been placed in a house with a bunch of killers, raped, and tortured to within an inch of her sanity.
“We need to follow these motherfuckers,” Ansel stated the obvious. “I wish we were on our bikes or that I’d driven my truck.”
“Me too,” I voiced absently as I watched the one pumping the gas swirl a toothpick around in his mouth. He wore a pair of those tactical khakis that contractors and law enforcement officials wore and a police-blue Under Armor polo shirt. His attire was a dead giveaway that he wasn’t from our neck of the woods. I was willing to bet these were three from the group of motherfuckers that had attacked Megan and me and shot my father.
I started my truck and pursued the black SUV once the men reloaded and took off. When the license plate came into view, I texted it into D. Nothing on the license plate identified what state the vehicle was from, but I was confident in D’s ability to find out what others didn’t want you to know.
Since my truck was missing a passenger’s side mirror, had visible bullet holes, and a cracked back window, I stayed as far behind the group as possible. When they drove into the parking lot of the most luxurious hotel Copper County had to offer, The Copper Grand, I drove into the lot of a hotel two buildings down the road and across the street from them. Using the binoculars that I kept in the center console, Ansel and I took turns using them and sat and watched the men exit their vehicle and enter the hotel.
The hotel was fancy enough that you had to walk through the lobby before taking the stairs or an elevator to your room. We sat for about thirty minutes to see if any of the men would return to the vehicle and leave. I wanted to get one of the men alone so I could question him.
Ansel and I agreed that he should return to the safe house to pick up his truck. My truck with its damaged body was way too suspicious and easy for people to describe and spot. I didn’t expect Ansel back for at least thirty minutes, so I climbed out of my truck and found a comfortable spot to wait.
The thick branches of a tree on the far side of the hotel lot kept me hidden from view. I sat on a thick patch of grass, peeking through binoculars at the hotel the targets had gone into and the vehicle that they had driven. If they decided to take off before Ansel returned, I had no idea what I would do. However, I was compelled to keep watch. What I wanted to do was walk over to the hotel to see if I could gather some information on the men, like their room numbers perhaps.
Just as I started to get antsy and rose to walk towards the hotel, Ansel wheeled his big black dually truck into the parking lot. The good thing about having a truck in this town was that you blended in. Around here, trucks were all that mattered as far as vehicles went. Even the women had adopted the habit of driving trucks. Ansel pulled up near me, bringing his truck to a scratchy stop. I ran to the passenger’s side and climbed in.
“What you wanna do, cousin?” Ansel asked with one eyebrow stuck in the air as he glared at me sideways. I hadn’t even closed the door before Ansel asked his question.
I knew my co
usin. The prospect of killing someone not only had his trigger finger itching—his entire body likely needed a scratch. Despite what others may think of me, I didn’t like killing people. Killing had become a part of my life that I had to learn to deal with, like paying taxes. You didn’t want to do it, but you knew you had to.
As for Ansel, he embraced killing like one would embrace a hobby. He wanted time with it. He wanted to shape it and improve his techniques. My gaze left him and landed back on the vehicle of the three men who likely had no idea that death lurked outside their windows.
“Calm down, kill boy,” I teased Ansel. “We need to figure out if they are with the group Megan and I left in the woods. Once that’s confirmed, either they die or we die.”
The far-off glint in Ansel’s eyes and the devious smirk that danced across his face caused a chill to run up my spine. He was likely sitting there dreaming up ways to torture the unsuspecting group.
I loved my cousin, honest I did, but I seriously wished my father hadn’t called him. He was about to drag me into some shit that I likely wasn’t prepared for. Ansel was like that extra drink you knew you didn’t need but drank anyway. Then, later, you found yourself in a situation that you didn’t remember getting yourself into.
“I think we should sit on this group,” I suggested. As badly as I wanted to confront the group, patience and planning had always given me an advantage over my enemy. I eyed Ansel, knowing my words likely had no effect on him. “They could lead us to the rest—if there are more of them.”
Ansel’s head whipped around so fast that it appeared he’d forgotten he was steering his big-ass truck into a parking spot across the lot from the suspects’ black SUV.
“I’m not good at playing the waiting game, Aaron.”
My fingers spread over my forehead, and I squeezed. “I don’t like waiting either, Ansel, but what good will it do for us to bust in there, find these guys, and kill—”
He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Who said anything about killing? We need to torture them for information first,” he said this with a straight face as if we were talking about meeting a bunch of guys to play a casual game of basketball.
“Why the hell should we wait until they lead us when we can get them to tell us what we need to know right now?”
He did have a point, no matter how twisted it was inside his head. Although I’d thought about doing exactly what Ansel had suggested, I would have avoided the unnecessary bloodshed and waited and let the guys lead me to their group. Ansel preferred to beat the information out of the men so he could know faster. Lack of patience was definitely my cousin’s weakness.
My head tilted as I thought about what I wanted to do. I could sense my cousin’s eyes on the side of my head, eyeballing me like a dog whose bone I was holding back. His anxious hand tapped against his leg. He didn’t smoke, but if I had a cigarette, I’d give him one to calm his damn nerves. After making him suffer for a moment longer, I decided to put him out of his anxious misery.
“You’ve got a point, cousin, but these men are mercenaries. After that encounter in the woods, I know that at least some of them have dished out or have been on the receiving end of torture before.”
He laughed at me, his chuckle filling the cab of the truck. “Trust me. Being in the life and having to kill when the moment arises, I’ve picked up some techniques that could make the manliest man sing like a fucking bird.”
Shit! I thought to myself. I didn’t doubt what Ansel was saying. The first time I’d accidentally walked in on my cousin with one of his subs, I stood in the doorway with my mouth gaped open. The woman was locked inside one of those dog cages on all fours, licking or drinking something out of a metal dog bowl. She seemed way to damn happy to follow whatever twisted and cruel commands he was dishing out. The shit he did gave me pause, so I couldn’t imagine what Ansel would do to someone he planned to really hurt and torture.
“There’s a chick at the front desk.” His voice pulled my attention. “You can use that pretty-boy long hair of yours to get the room numbers we need.”
“So, what? You’re my fucking low-budget pimp now?” I asked as a smirk filled my face.
Another chuckle left his throat. “These fucking women around here look at you like you’re a fucking god. And you can pull off that whole bad-boy, pretty-boy routine. You used to do that shit in high school. You had chicks thinking you were such a good guy when really, they were sleeping with the damn devil. Look at you. Even now your eyes look all innocent and shit. Me, I’d scare that fucking woman into submission or to death—whichever happens first.”
Ansel took a long pause before speaking again, and that devious smile had inched back across his lips.
“But that damn Megan—she ain’t scared of my ass. I’m not used to people not being afraid of me, especially not a woman. She has that whole innocent thing down to a science like you, but she has darkness in her. She hides it, but her darkness is as bad as what we carry around. She—”
The seat squeaked as I leaned forward in the truck with a loud huff. “Ansel, can we get back to the fucking subject at hand. We need to concentrate on how we’re going to make these motherfuckers tell us where the rest of their crew is located. If these are the right motherfuckers.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… You don’t want me thinking about your woman. How fucking hot, she is. Nice tits. Plump ass. Sexy. I heard you two last night too. I bet she—”
“Ansel! Fucking concentrate, man. Get Megan off your fucking mind.”
Ansel was getting me agitated on purpose. He thought he was slick. He knew that talking about Megan would get me riled up enough for me to give in to his plan to go into that hotel and torture those men.
He’d done this kind of shit since we were kids. He’d drive me crazy until I gave him what he wanted. In this case, part of what he wanted was Megan, but that shit wasn’t happening unless it was over my dead body. Ansel understood as much, but he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t try to break me anyway.
Crazy thing was, if anything happened to me, Ansel was the only one I’d want Megan with. He knew her background, what she was capable of, and I could already tell that he’d started to care about her enough that he’d keep her safe.
Chapter Eleven
Aaron
After I’d stuffed my face with Megan’s good cooking, we’d retired to our room and showered. As soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, I stopped her as floral scented steam followed her out of the door. My hands roamed her body and the lust in my gaze made words unnecessary.
Megan had heard bits and pieces about what Ansel and I had done with the targets at the hotel. She’d been eyeing me with an inquisitive stare most of the evening.
“What did you do with Ansel today?” she asked, even as her mouth parted and her breathing increased from my hand sliding under her shirt and over one of her warm soft tits.
“We tortured three of DG6’s hired guns for information on whereabouts of the rest of their crew. We need to know where the heads of DG6 are located so we can find and kill them. It’s the only way to put an end to this hit they have out on you.”
Her face was pinched with enough tension that it appeared she wanted to cry. She had questions to ask me, so many, she didn’t know which to ask first.
My lips covered the warm softness of hers before she could spit out a word. She accepted my kiss as I massaged her tongue with mine, making her moan into my mouth. As soon as I removed my lips from hers those tense lines returned to her face.
“Aaron, you can’t do this. These people have armies of soldiers who are willing to kill for them. I can’t let you go off on some mission that could start a war. I won’t!” Megan exclaimed, raising her voice to ensure I understood her stance.
It took everything in me not to laugh at Megan’s attempt to raise her voice at me. She was such a quiet woman that it baffled me that she could pull the trigger or stab a man in the heart if she had to. It was her eyes that told her complete story. If
Megan actually vocalized half the shit she was thinking, it would probably scare the shit out of people…even me.
“Megan, Ansel and I tortured and killed three men for information and left them inside a hotel. Shit has gone too far for us to stop now.”
She shook her head, begging me with those sad innocent eyes, not to go any further with our plans. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. Please, don’t go after these people.”
I’d just told her we’d tortured and killed three men, yet she was worried about me getting hurt.
“We were able to confirm the whereabouts of the rest of their crew.” I told her as she continued to shake her head at me. A ten-man crew was housed in a two-story, eight-bedroom house in Marshville, a larger town, three counties over.
The house was in the wealthy area of Redwood Pines, so no one would expect it was the safe house of a bunch of hired mercenaries, deployed to take out and kill a woman. The large house posed as the group’s hive or temporary operations center according to the information we’d gathered from the men we’d tortured. We were also able to confirm that their orders came directly from DG6 and Lacey Daniels was their primary target.
Their information confirmed just about every speculation I’d had about this situation. DG6 had deployed a small army of men because their intel had informed them that Megan was possibly being protected by a large group of armed men—us.
The men didn’t confirm the exact location of DG6’s headquarters or home base. We’d been unable to extract an address from them, which led me to believe they didn’t know it. These men were hired guns, that DG6 wasn’t going to share their secrets with. All we could get out any of them was one of the DG6’s key locations of an old dude ranch in Texas. The men had spilled their guts before they realized Ansel and I were going to kill them anyway.
Megan stared at me and widened her eyes when I took too long to respond.
“The plan is already in effect. Ansel and I will leave in about six hours, around 2:00 a.m., to recon the place. We can’t wait too long. When the guys we murdered today don’t check in with their people, they are going to deploy more people here. Keeping them out of Copper County is best for your safety and the MC’s. It may take us a day or two to complete this mission, so I’m going to need to you to be patient.”