The Vigilantes Collection

by Lake, Keri

  Lucy sat beside me, shivering in the seat, as she held her arms across her chest.

  “You okay?” I asked, cranking up the heat.

  She gave a nod that morphed into a headshake. “You … killed them. So fast.”

  I sat quiet for a moment. What the hell did she expect? That I’d engage in peace talks with the bastards after they’d greeted us with a room full of bullets? “I wasn’t so innocent back then, Lucy, and I’m not now. Whatever you think I was, I’m not. I’m a murderer. A thief.”

  “But not a rapist?”

  “No.”

  “Then, why do you have the tattoo?”

  Fuck. What did it matter if I told her? She’d just gotten a taste of my dysfunction, anyway.

  “It was inked on me. I had no choice.”

  “By whom?”

  “Tesarik’s men.”

  “Why?” she continued to probe.

  My jaw tightened as I mindlessly headed us toward Hamtramck. I knew of a place there where the cops didn’t dare tread. Bojanskis, who had political connections that’d make the mafia shit themselves. Hell, they were probably connected to the mafia, too. “I want to find the man responsible for the website.”

  “Because he killed your family?”

  I nodded and glanced over at her. “You got a place to stay?”

  “We can stay at a friend’s house. Maybe a day, or so.”

  “No. You. Not me.”

  She frowned and glanced back toward the road. “I …. You’re letting me go, then?”

  “Yeah. Police will be after me. Pasák’s men will be after me. Tesarik will be after me. It’s too dangerous, if you stay.”

  Her shoulders slumped, and she twisted in her seat to face me. “Did you not hear the guy back there? They’re looking for me!”

  “And now they’ll be looking for me.” I glanced over at her, where she leaned against the window with her fingers dug into her hair. “Call the police if you want. Doesn’t matter if you hand me over now. I’ll be all over the news first thing tomorrow morning, anyway.”

  “I can’t call the police. The police were there the night …” She blew out a breath. “The night I took the pictures.”

  “Of the Slaughterhouse?” When she didn’t answer, but sat nibbling her lip, I leaned forward to catch her attention. “I just killed two men that I didn’t plan to kill. They were looking for that video, yeah?”

  Sliding her knuckles across her lips, she sat contemplative for a moment, then gave a nod. “The men … with the tattoo. They dumped a body at the old Slaughterhouse. I wasn’t even following them. I’d just been doing some urbex, and I watched them.”

  “You watched them and filmed it.”

  Her brow furrowed. “I had to.”

  “Had to?”

  She rested her head against her palm, her elbow propped at the window of the door as she wove her fingers into her hair. “I felt like I owed it to the woman. If that was me … I’d want …. I mean, I guess I’d just want to know that someone knew what'd happened to me.”

  “And they obviously know you caught this on the camera.”

  “Apparently. It doesn’t matter. I saw what they did, and now I’m on their shit-list.” She brushed her hand through her hair. “Look, I know this is a … weird thing we have going on here. You kidnap me, tie me to a bed for weeks, and slaughter two men in front of me. I should be running from you, screaming for sanity. But I don’t have any money. Nowhere to go. I guess I don’t have any sanity left in me, and to be honest with you, I feel …” She nibbled on her bottom lip. “I feel safer with you than my bi-sexual, yoga-practicing newspaper editor.”

  “I can’t keep you with me, Lucy. It’s too dangerous, and you’re fucking—” –with my head. I clipped the words before I could confess how she'd snaked her way into my curiosity.

  “Please, Jase. I can’t pay you, but I can cook and do whatever things a vigilante can’t find the time to get to, when he’s out doing his vigilante stuff.”

  I stifled a smile at that. I could think of ten things offhand that she could help me with, and not one of them had to do with cooking. “How long d'you think that’ll last? This crazy train isn’t bound for happy days, where you waltz back to your old life again. You stay with me, you’re looking at becoming a bigger target.”

  “I’m a target now, with no one else I trust. I just need a couple days until I can figure something out. I promise I’ll leave after that. I won’t cramp your style.”

  I guessed it could work. I’d just have to find a way to stay away from her. The last thing I needed in the plan was another complication.

  And with the way my mind played out fantasies of her at every turn, Lucy could be the biggest complication of all.

  27

  Jase

  With Lucy in tow, I tugged my hoodie up over my head and entered the hole-in-the-wall bar. One thing I’d learned living on the streets: recognizing the good-bad guys from the bad-bad guys could mean the difference between life and death.

  I'd once pulled a job for Frank Bojanski, at about age thirteen. Delivered a package on my bike that, as an afterthought, might’ve been a death card to some poor sap. I didn’t care. I'd gotten paid fifty bucks to do it and had hid the money from my mom. Frank told me that if I ever needed anything, to get a hold of him.

  The Poker parties they had in the back always went late into the next morning, so I had a pretty good idea one of the brothers would be around. Alfons, also known as Big Al, gave me a nod when I passed him, and I patted him on the back, before making my way down the short hallway, toward the door at the end. At the sound of boisterous laughter, I poked my head inside to see find Frank sitting around a table and playing cards with a bunch of other men, most of whom I couldn’t pinpoint from a lineup.

  The streets constantly changed. For every gang member gunned down, another rose up in their place, and after a year away, I didn’t recognize anyone.

  Cigar in his mouth, Frank lifted his gaze and waved me in, giving a throaty, “Hey!”

  Keeping to the wall, I rounded the table, clutching Lucy’s hand, as she followed behind me barefoot and wearing nothing more than my sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  “'The fuck’s this?” Bojanskis eyes narrowed. “What the fuck happened to your eye?”

  I touched my brow, wincing at the sting of a gash, where I’d taken a hit during the attack. “Walked into a bar, I guess.”

  Frank thumped his hand against the table and chuckled. “Good one.”

  Lucy stared down at the men playing cards, only a few of them eyeing her back, as I shook Frank's hand. “How goes it, Frank?”

  He gave a light slap to my cheek. “I see you brought me a gift.” Tipping his head, he peered beyond me toward Lucy.

  Strange, how my muscles tensed with the urge to send that cigar down his throat. “I need a place. Just a few days. Maybe a week, I don’t know.”

  His brow kicked up. “Got a one-bedroom.” The Bojanskis owned multiple single-unit apartments throughout the city, many of which stood above abandoned buildings. Completely out of sight and out of mind.

  “That works. Just need it for a short time.”

  He patted the table and set his cards facedown. “Gotta take a piss break. Any you fuckers look at my hand, and I’ll have Big Al blow your asses into next year. Got it?”

  A round of grumbling answered back, and Frank waved his hand, ushering us out of the room. He led us back through the hallway to the first door on the right, where the scent of cigar and leather hit my nose the second I stepped inside. He had a small but impressive office, made up of fine cherry-wood furniture and fancy paintings. I’d never pegged him as classy, necessarily, but the man probably conducted business about twenty hours out of the day. No doubt, even the card game was a business transaction.

  Taking a seat in front of his desk, I patted the chair beside me for Lucy to sit. She hesitated a moment, gaze warily shifting from the door to Frank, but slid into the seat.

&nbs
p; Rifling through his desk, Frank produced a set of keys and tossed them to me. “Washington Boulevard. Address is on ‘em. You got some trouble goin’ down?”

  “Nah,” I lied. “Just trying to lay low for a while.”

  Getting Frank involved might draw even more attention and have Roman hounding after me next. Who the hell knew what kind of political bullshit went down between the Polish and Slovaks?

  I peered down at the building number on the keyring. “Easy enough.” Tugging my wallet from my back pocket, I lifted a few bills of cash. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Fuck you, kid. Get out of here.”

  “I’m serious. I’ve got cash. How much?”

  “Take your girlfriend and go have some fun. Drinks are on the house.” He patted the desk. “And get that fuckin’ eye checked out. Looks nasty. You want a burger, or something? Just ask Sal.”

  I glanced back at Lucy. “You hungry?”

  Her enthusiastic nod had me rising up from the chair. “All right. Maybe we’ll grab something to go.” I held out my hand, and Frank shook it. “Thanks man.”

  “You take care kid. You need anything, just ask. Don’t be a stranger huh?” His eyes flitted to Lucy and back. “And you can bring her with you anytime. Like a blast of sunlight in this shithole.”

  After sending a nod to Bojanksi, his description had me staring at Lucy, as I stepped past her toward the door.

  * * *

  In the parking lot of the bar, Lucy and I sat eating in the Camaro. Goddamn, I’d never seen a woman wolf down a burger so fast, as small as she was. Sal had given us a fifth of whiskey to go, too.

  “My God, I’m starving,” she said, around two stacked fries. “I’ve not had a bar burger in years.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t eat meat, after I watched you scarf down a plate full of bacon.”

  “I do, just not often. Probably not enough.”

  My brow arched up as I cracked a devilish grin. “Works in a sausage fest and she don’t eat enough meat.”

  The grimace on her face had me inwardly laughing. “I’m not usually around all that when I work there.”

  “What do you do? Hand out mints in the men’s room?”

  “No.” She peered out of the corner of her eye. “If you must know, you were my first.” She crumpled the burger wrapper and tossed it into the greasy paper bag. “But I guess you knew that.”

  “Your first lap dance? Why would I know that?” I popped four fries at once into my mouth and, crumpling the paper, tossed it in the bag after hers.

  “You pointed it out to me that night.”

  You’re not a stripper, I’d said. “C’mon, don’t tell me that shit hurt your feelings.” I stretched my arm across the back of the seat, watching her mentally construct a barricade of bullshit between us.

  “No. Men don’t hurt my feelings anymore.”

  A chuckle cracked from my chest. “And why is that, tough guy?”

  She shrugged. “After a while, it just kind of bounces off. Guess I’m numb to it.”

  “Well, that makes two of us, because I’ve grown pretty numb to women’s bullshit, too.” I nudged my head toward her. “So, what’d you do at the strip club?”

  “Graphics, mostly.”

  “You go to school for that?”

  “Yes, with a photography minor. They just kind of went hand in hand with the arts.” She rubbed her palms against her thighs, the action making my brain bounce between what she said and what I wanted to do between said thighs. “I dropped out after my mom died, though. Did you go to college?”

  I wanted to laugh at the question, but instead shook my head. “No. I read a lot, though. If that counts.”

  “What, comic books?”

  Much as I tried, I couldn’t keep my eyes from raking her with a bit of contempt—a defensive reflex that’d been ingrained in me from an early age, from growing up in a shit trailer park. People just expected less of me, so I'd always busted my ass to try to be more, to blow them away with what they didn’t know. Then shit'd hit the fan with my mom, and the luxury of reading had morphed into long days of hustling to stay alive. “Try Bradbury, Twain, Salinger, Hemingway.”

  Her eyes widened before she cast her gaze toward the floor. “I stand corrected.”

  “Yeah. You probably saw me and thought, tattooed trailer trash scum.”

  “I didn’t, actually. My first thought of you was …” Her body shuddered with a beat of laughter.

  “What?”

  “Well, my first thought of you was, holy shit, I hope I don’t fall off his lap.” She emphasized the bugging of her eyes. “You were the biggest lap I’d ever sat on.”

  The visual of her small body struggling to stay on me tugged a laugh that had both of us looking up in surprise, and I quickly changed the subject before it dipped into some touchy feely shit. “So, you made graphics for the club?”

  She blinked out of her stare. “Yeah, and some website stuff.”

  I sat forward, suddenly intrigued. “You ever see the Seventh Circle site?”

  “Not at work. I’d never get through the first page. All those poor … victims.” She shook her head. “I’m not a violent person, but I’d love to see something really bad happen to the people who do those things. No one should take advantage of innocence like that.”

  My thoughts drifted back to the man I’d killed just a few nights before, and then again earlier. “You said you believe people should be punished. Killing doesn’t bother you?”

  “Depends on the reason. I once read a story about a man who tortured another man. I mean, like, sick stuff. Burned him with liquid nitrogen. Pulled all his teeth out. Bashed his knees. Ripped off his fingernails. Starved him to death.” Her lip twisted in disgust and she grabbed her stomach. “It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever heard. Gave me nightmares that kept me awake, wondering how a human being could become such a monster. What the hell could’ve made him do that? It was the most awful thing I’d ever read in my life. Then later, I read a follow-up story, about how the man he’d killed had raped and eaten—eaten—his twelve-year old daughter.”

  “That’s … fucked up.”

  A shadow slipped behind her eyes, turning them cold, a sight that struck me fascinated. Her nostrils flared with a snarl, and she shook her head. “I wanted to rip the sick bastard apart myself. I hoped he’d suffered with what had been done to him. Twelve years old.” Her brows furrowed, lips drawn into a tight line. “Could you imagine how scared that little girl must’ve been? All alone? That’d be the worst. No one coming to save her? Suddenly … I could empathize with the hatred. Suddenly, it just didn’t seem like enough punishment.”

  Damn. Just like with the hamburger, my image of some sweet and dainty little thing had just got blown the fuck out of the water. I knew that anger, had felt it myself, and took some small pleasure in knowing that fiery wrath lived inside of her, too.

  “We’re civilized, for the most part,” she said. “But every one of us hides a monster, I think. A primitive side of the brain that runs on a single instinct to survive.”

  I fired up the engine of the Camaro and twisted to face her, as I backed out of the parking spot. “Ever kill anyone?”

  She shook her head, and her eyes locked with mine. “I hope I never have to.”

  28

  Lucy

  It was sometime after eight in the evening that I daubed the whiskey-saturated wound at Jase’s brow, where he’d taken a hit by the intruders the night before. The strong scent of alcohol burned my nose, as he sat on the edge of the bathtub in the new apartment. As late as we’d gotten in after visiting Bojanski, we'd ended sleeping most of the day and hadn’t risen until about five in the evening, when he’d popped out for food from one of the Arabic restaurants around the corner. In that time, the wound at his eye had crusted over but still needed cleaning up.

  The white cloth I used to dab the blood had actually come from a fully stocked linen closet adjacent to the sink. The apartment sa
t on the top floor of an abandoned building, and had been rigged with electricity and water, somehow. We'd found the cupboards fully stocked with supplies, as if the place was meant to house criminals trying to lay low. It came fully furnished, too, with couches, and a television that looked to be from the current century—much more spacious than the cramped motel room, with a bigger living room, and a great view of downtown from the bedroom window.

  I grimaced as the wide gash spilled over with new blood. His wound had broken while cleaning and the depth of the laceration had me wondering if the front sight of the intruder’s gun had hit his brow. “You’d think, in your line of work, you’d have a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a pair of boxing gloves on hand.”

  His lip curved to a crooked grin, and he sipped the liquor straight from the bottle. One harsh gulp, followed by the clench of his jaw, and he resumed staring at me, studying my face in a way that felt almost scrutinizing.

  I cast my attention lower, to the winged tattoo with the gray eyes. “Do those eyes belong to someone in particular?”

  He glanced down at his chest and back to me. “Someone I used to know.”

  A scar marked his chest, just beside his heart, and without thinking, I ran my finger across the raised patch of skin there, pausing when his muscle flinched. “What happened?”

  “Took a bullet.”

  “And you survived?”

  “Missed my heart. My brother, Reed, called the paramedics, and they got me to the hospital pretty quick.”

  “Gang fight?”

  He shook his head. “My mom.”

  What the … I recoiled in disbelief. “Your mother did that to you?” Sure, I'd gotten momstrual cramps every so often, whenever my mom had gone in a mood and decided to go raving bitch on me, but she'd never turned psycho enough to cap me with a gun.

  He took another sip, swishing the liquor around in his mouth, as if debating whether or not to tell me. “I beat the shit out of her husband. Pounded his skull right into a coma.”