by Keri Lake
“Pretty much.” He rubbed his thumb across his palm, lowering his gaze from mine. “You had a shitty day?”
I’d actually forgotten about it until right then. Sighing, I squeezed past him, headed toward my closet across the room. “Yeah. My dad.”
“What about him?”
Stripping out of my jeans, I watched Ty’s eyes follow my every move, could see the slow rise and fall of his chest as I removed my top and swapped it for a long nightshirt. “It’s nothing.”
“It was enough that you needed to get yourself drunk.”
I rolled my eyes and groaned at that. “For the record, I didn’t set out to get drunk tonight. But I digress. He’s moving forward with transferring Jo into a nursing home. Unless, of course, I rob a bank between now and then.”
“So, you need money?”
“I need options. I’m so … tired of having to make deals to help the people I care about.” Rolling up my jeans and shirt, I tossed them into the hamper I kept just outside the closet. “It’s exhausting. I’m eighteen years old, and I feel like … like everything is weighing down on me all the time. I just need a break. One good thing to happen.”
“Go on. Get in bed.” He waved me toward the thick duvet I couldn’t wait to cuddle up in.
“Are you staying with me, or something?”
“Yeah. I’m staying tonight.”
I smiled at that, making my way toward the bed as he commanded. “Well, that’s a start of something good.”
“Don’t get too excited. You’re going to sleep.”
“And you’re going to what? Watch me?”
“Somebody has to. You’re like a damn toddler sometimes, always running off.”
“Look, I don’t remember a lot of things about last night, but what I remember vividly is never once calling you to come save me.”
He rubbed his hand down his face and sniffed. “Shut up and lay down before you really start to piss me off.”
“And what? You throw your tantrum and end up fucking me against the wall?”
His brow kicked up in warning, but instead of letting another smartass remark fly, I crawled into bed, and Ty slid in beside me. The moment he covered me in the blanket, my whole body shivered against him, and he dragged me closer, tucking the blanket around me. Lying against his chest, I could hear his heart beating in my ear—a slow and steady cadence that matched his easy breaths. He kissed the top of my head and stroked my hair, and for a moment, I was ten years old again, lying beside my mother.
The gentle calm and warmth lulled me into a drowsy state. As the aching effects of the alcohol dissipated, I thought about the events of the evening. Blacking out, and him being there. How? And why?
“Ty? Did you save me tonight?”
The long pause in between prompted me to lift my gaze toward him.
He shook his head and stroked his hand down my hair again. “No. You saved me.”
“How?”
“Just did. Quit talking and get some rest.”
Smiling, I closed my eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I slept until the sun’s heat beat through the window against my cheek.
When I opened my eyes to morning light, Ty was already gone.
31
Ty
Perched on a dull steel countertop, I stared down at the cage I’d welded together. At four-by-three feet, it’d be a cramped fit for my next victim, who stood five-ten and was probably pushing two-fifty on the scale. With a hole carved in one end of it, the box mirrored the one still haunting my dreams at night.
I pulsed the trigger of the drill, the bit for which I’d designed myself on a lathe machine. It so happened the drill bit was the perfect diameter for the hole in the cage, and the threads at the end of it designed to grab and tear skin.
My grand finale.
An end to the screams. The nightmares. Everything.
So, why the fuck did I suddenly have second thoughts?
I tossed the drill onto the table beside me, where it landed with a clang, and stroked my skull, as I paced back and forth like a caged animal. For years, I’d dreamed of hunting down the man who’d masterminded the kidnapping, the sick pedophile who’d stolen a kid from the streets simply because he could. Because he could get away with that shit and no one would touch him for it.
“Fuck!” My shouts bounced off the empty walls of the abandoned building.
I’d waited too long for the moment. I’d planned and crafted every piece of my revenge with careful detail, so each murder held meaning. The kills told a story that’d been swept under the rug so proficiently that no a spec of doubt lingered. I couldn’t abandon the plan, even if the final name on my list belonged to the father of the woman I’d become obsessed with. The woman who could very well be the end of me, instead.
What poetic justice.
My vengeance and the only thing in the world that could possible redeem me.
But to let Karl Kutscher live would be an act of mercy on my part, and I’d be damned if I’d give him so much as a small fraction of my compassion. I had none. All the things that made me human had been viciously torn right out of me, leaving an empty, lifeless hollow.
Even if she hated her father, Sera would never forgive me for killing him in the brutal manner I’d plotted over the last few months. And therein lay the dilemma.
Because I’d reached the point of wondering what I wouldn’t do, what I’d be willing to sacrifice for her. Yeah, she was strong and feisty, and could take care of herself, but she needed someone to look out for her.
I’d almost killed the little prick who’d taken pictures of her. Still didn’t know what’d kept me from throttling him to death. I’d offered him clemency, but no way I could do the same with Sera’s father.
Letting him live would be an outright perversion of justice.
Killing him would be the end of the one thing that’d come to matter most to me. The single flicker of light within the dark hell I’d been trapped inside for too long.
My phone chimed, interrupting my thoughts, and I tugged it from my pocket, staring down at text from Dax.
DAX: Meet me at book tower.
ME: Time?
DAX: Right now.
Knowing Dax, it’d be important. I had no doubts about that. He’d been hell-bent on finding some missing girl for months, and my moments of speculation and deliberation weren’t going to get in his way.
So I grabbed my shit and headed toward Book Tower.
* * *
Feet dangling over the ledge, nearly fifty stories above Washington Boulevard, I sat beside Dax on the roof of Book Tower. There were two quick ways to best reach the top—the fire escape along the side, or right up tall metal scaffolding set by the construction company, anchored at every other floor. It was a straight shot, without having to fuck with any locks or broken glass.
Dax pulled a flask from his coat, tipping back a sip, and passed it to me. “You go after Kutscher yet?”
“Not yet.” I kicked back the bitter whiskey, letting the burn dissolve every damned excuse I’d come up with most of the night.
“I need you to do me a favor, JT. Might throw a bit of a monkey wrench in your plans, but I won’t take no for an answer.”
“What kind of monkey wrench?”
“Girl I know works as a dancer for Spiderz. She gave me some info on Kutscher.” Spiderz had to be the nastiest strip club in all of Detroit. Kind of place a guy could get a lap dance, along with just about any other service he was willing to buy, for the right amount. “Tesarik’s old bookkeeper is a regular there,” Dax continued. “So we tracked him down, and learned that Kutscher is on Tesarik’s payroll.”
“Not surprised.”
“He’s sent payment through cryptocurrency. And from what I understand, all of Kutcher’s transactions are kept on a Nano ledger.”
“You want me to steal the ledger, so you can get the address where payments have been coming from.”
“Ding-ding-ding.” He tipped back
the bottle, his throat bobbing with a swallow, and chased it with a drag from his vape pen. “I got a buddy who can turn that shit into some magic and track down his IP address.”
“How do you know he’s not working off a VPN?”
“Fucker’s not that smart. We already tracked down one location, but he’d moved. He’s been sending payments regularly to Kutscher, though.”
I flicked my fingers for another sip, which he obliged by handing over the flask again. “So, what’s the story on Tesarik?”
“You already know that I’m looking for a girl. But it’s more than that. He runs a trafficking ring here in the city. You want to take a predator off the streets?” Vape dangling between his fingers, he prodded my chest. “Get me that ledger. I know it’s a bit of a setback. But as I understand it, you’ve been hanging out with the lawyer’s daughter.”
“Who told you that?”
“Her roommate’s girlfriend. She was the one with the blonde and blue hair? Looked like a mermaid, yeah?”
I hated that he remembered her so easily, as if he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her that night, either. “Yeah. That’s her.”
“You been keeping it business, right?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
“You want to end this, you gotta keep your dick in your pants. Moment you give her that shit, the whole fuckin’ plan is … poof.” His fingers demonstrated an explosion in the air. “Lost. Believe me, I been through this shit before.”
“Got it. Hey, thanks again for the tip on Fox.”
“No problem.” Another drag on his vape sent the skunky scent of what I guessed to be cannabis oil. “Sometimes, you gotta take shit into your own hands.”
I tipped back another sip of the liquor, staring down at the cars almost five hundred feet below. Wasn’t that long ago I’d sat in the same spot, wondering if I had the balls to jump. Things would’ve been different if I had. I wouldn’t have bastardized my father’s name by making myself a murderer.
I wouldn’t have to hear the screams and wake up to the ghost of my best friend staring at me with his accusing eyes every night.
And I sure as fuck wouldn’t have to betray the woman who’d damned near served her heart to me on a silver platter.
32
Sera
Three days had passed since I’d last seen Ty. He’d sent a text the day before, saying he could still smell me in his sheets. Aside from that, I hadn’t heard much from him, at all, and I sure as hell had no intentions of chasing him, if he was so content keeping his distance.
I’d been wrong to think one night with him would be enough. I should’ve known better. And when I’d told him no man could leave his mark on me again? Yeah, I’d lied about that, too, considering every inch of my skin still burned from his touch.
The artist in me craved the pain, while my body craved his torment. Ultimately, I craved more of him. So much so, my thighs clenched with the urge to cross my legs every time my mind drifted to that night, tangled in his sheets, wrapped in his arms. I hated the way my pulse hastened, my body came alive at the mere thought of him. That angry look in his eyes warning me not to push him. The wrath of his lips against mine. The punishing drive of his hips, promising regret.
I’d reached the brink of desperation. Obsessed.
I needed distraction. Something that would keep me from overthinking everything like I always did, seeing as Bea had gone to Simone’s for the weekend.
A gallon of ice cream in the freezer begged me to crack it open and sob, while watching The Notebook, or some other sappy romance that’d never come close to the kind of messed up relationship I had with Ty. Instead, I cranked up Janis Joplin’s Piece Of My Heart, one of my mom’s favorites, and picking up a glass bottle of Dr. Pepper from the table beside my art easel, I lifted it in the air like a toast to her. “To fucking heartbreak, and the men who put us through that shit.”
The TV I’d paused showed a woman bound by her arms, her head tipped back, lost to pleasure, though it almost looked like torture, while a man feasted on her somewhere outside of the camera’s view. In time to the music, I stripped off my jeans, and popped my bra free, sliding it through my sleeve. I tossed both garments into my hamper, and kept on dancing in nothing more than a Guns N Roses tee, a pair of boy-shorts, and the knee-high striped tube socks I’d slipped on to help me slide across the hardwood floor.
The charcoal drawing set before me served as a decent diversion, the subject being the woman paused on the TV. Nothing but a still shot, which I’d turned into a sensual image of dark clouds surrounding her, seducing her, as she reached upward, desperate to touch something. The pain and despair I’d captured in her expression mirrored my own.
So not a complete distraction, to be honest. But, hey, I’d found my mojo again.
The pounding at the door made me jump, and I scrambled toward my phone, turning down the music that blasted from the Bluetooth speaker on my desk.
“Sorry!” I shouted, figuring it was the neighbors complaining, as they often did when Bea had her tunes cranked too loud.
Another wallop at the door skated down my spine, and I tiptoed toward it. With no intentions of answering, I peered through the peephole.
Ty stared back, the bright blue of his eyes nearly blinding me. The sight of him tugged free a gasp, and for whatever reason, I ducked, before wondering what the hell I was doing.
I unlocked the door, forgetting for a moment how little I happened to be wearing, until Ty’s gaze dipped lower and back. I tugged the shirt down, trying to cover as much of my thighs as I could. “Um. You weren’t …. I didn’t …. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I see that.” He peered past me as though looking for someone. “You alone?”
Affronted by his question, I frowned and crossed my arms. “You assume I’m sleeping with someone else already?”
“I thought your roommate might be home.”
Oh. Right. I rolled my shoulders, the heat of embarrassment flaring in my cheeks. “Sorry. No, she’s at her girlfriends all night. Do you … want to come in?”
I stepped aside, feeling small, as he passed me and stopped just inside the foyer.
The moment I shut the door, his hands were on me, pushing me into the wall behind me, my back sliding up the surface as he lifted me and dove head-first into my neck.
“You don’t know how bad I need you right now.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t know. We’re back to playing games again.” I tipped my head back, as he devoured my neck, the feel of his lips on my throat sending me into a lust-drunk stupor.
Fight it, my head battled, but his lips disarmed me like ninjas out for the kill.
“My head’s all messed up. I got this noise banging around my skull all the time, but when I’m with you, it’s quiet. It all goes away.”
“Then, why do you avoid me? Why do you constantly push me away?”
Instead of answering, he shut me up with his kiss, and his hands slid up the hem of my shirt, fingers possessively digging into my waist.
“Did you think about me, Sera?”
Always the same question, designed to weaken me. To drag me into his bullshit, so the moment I gave in, he could swoop down and steal my dignity.
“You know I did. That’s how you torture. You’re a torturing asshole, Ty.”
“You know what torture is?” His whisper in my ear sent a shudder down my spine. “It’s wanting something more than fucking air and pretending like you don’t.”
“Why do you pretend? If you want me so badly, then why play games about it?”
He leaned in to kiss me again, his way of not answering my questions, and I kicked my head to the side before he could reach my lips.
My body slid back down the wall.
“You’re driving me crazy,” I admitted. It was true. I’d reached some codependent phase, and had to convince myself I was happy playing along, just so I could look myself in the mirror.
“You’re driving me crazy, too, Ser
a.” His breaths calmed, and for a moment, I thought we were done.
Instead, he knelt down before me, keeping his eyes on me, and lifted my shirt.
“Ty, I’m not doing this. I’m tired of the back and forth. I’m not going to be your cheap booty call.”
“You’re not cheap.” Fingers curled inside my shorts, he slid them down to mid-thigh, before I slammed my palms to his shoulders, pushing him back. His eyes turned pleading, and his tongue swept across his lips. The T-shirt tightened around my waist, as he rested his head against my stomach and kissed my navel. “Please, Sera, I just need one taste. One hit, and I’ll be straight again.”
Jesus, he sounded like an addict, fielding for pussy.
“Your charm and sad little boy eyes aren’t going to work.”
Except, they did. Goddamn it, he kissed lower, and in spite of the death grip I had on his skull, he kissed lower still, until the first sweep of his tongue reminded me that I had no choice with Ty.
My body lit up like a match with the first strike and came alive, while he held me against the wall, devouring me where I stood. “Why don’t you just … get it somewhere else?” I squealed, when his tongue flicked against my clit and he sucked my folds into his mouth. “I’m sure … eight mile—oh, God … has plenty …” Another long lick had my hands balling into tight fists around his hair. “Of pussy willing … to fuck you. No strings.”
“I don’t want a whore.” His teeth grazed my lips as he savagely ate me like an animal starved for too long. “I want your pussy.”
I turned my head to the side, catching a glimpse of us in the mirror that hung at the end of the foyer. I could see it in my face, my eyes, the upturn of my brows, the parting of my lips, his face buried in my cunt. I was fucked. Just like the woman paused on TV. So dirty and beautiful at the same time.
He yanked my panties down over my ankles and tossed them aside. Lifting me up into his arms, pressing my spine into the wall, he ground his bulge against my sex, silently confessing his appetite for more. “Can’t stop thinking about you, Sera,” he breathed across my jaw, before his teeth skated along my collarbone, and I closed my eyes. “Your smell. Your touch.” He grazed my throat and planted a kiss there. “Those little sounds you make when you come.” Another kiss. “The way you look at me after that makes me want to fuck you all over again.”