CHAPTER FOUR
Coop
“You want to do what?” Storm asked.
“We’re going to scare the shit out of Kayla.”
“And why would we do that?” Tacoman asked.
“Because she’s breaking the fucking rules, and one of these times, it’s not going to turn out so well for her.”
Storm shoved his gun in his holster and then strapped on his knife. Tacocheese was putting on his vest. “I’m still not seeing what you hope to accomplish,” Storm grumbled.
“Hey, Thunders, when you have kids, you’ll understand.”
“Kids? Ha, never gonna happen. Troublemakers, all of them.”
“Exactly. The plan is, we’ll surround the house and then storm in, scaring the shit out of Kayla and whoever she’s with.”
“You want us to storm someone’s house?” Tacoman shook his head. “Not happening. You’re gonna get us all arrested.”
“We have Sean on speed dial. It’ll be fine.”
“No, I’m pretty sure we’re all gonna end up in jail.”
I glared at Tachocheese. “Are you a man or a pussy?”
“A man?”
“If this was your kid, sneaking out of the house at all hours, showing up at someone else’s house, someone you have no fucking clue about, wouldn’t you do anything you could to make sure that she thought twice about ever doing something so stupid again?”
“I don’t know. I think I’d let it play out and see what she’s up to.”
“And that’s the difference between us. I’m not leaving my kid in a potentially dangerous situation that could get her killed. What if she’s with a rapist right now and doesn’t even know it? They hide in plain sight, hunting the weak.”
“But Kayla’s not weak,” Storm pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter. She’s inexperienced. Anyone can see that and they will use it against her.”
“I still think this is fucking ridiculous,” he grumbled as he strapped on the last of his gear.
“Rob, come in,” I said over coms.
“I read you loud and clear.”
“Send me the address. We’re heading out.”
“Copy that.”
We headed for the SUV and climbed in. I was driving because I was pissed and needed control over something right now. It was a short drive into town. I parked a block away from the address and hurried down the street, sticking to the shadows.
“Alright, Storm, you head for the back door. Tacocheese, you’ve got the garage door. I’ll take the front. I want all the information we can before we enter. If you see the target in trouble, we move in right away.”
“Just for the record, I don’t think Kayla would like being called a target,” Storm said. I slapped him upside the head, ignoring his scowl.
“Let’s move out.”
I made my way through the bushes to the front door, peeking inside the windows as I went. I was just about to get in position when I saw her move through the house, laughing at some asshole that was trying to grab at her. I saw red.
“Target acquired. Everyone in position.”
I tested the front door, checking to see if it was locked. It was. At least I knew she was trying to remain safe indoors.
“Copy that,” Storm said. “Ready to storm this nice suburban house.”
“Yeah,” Tacocheese grumbled. “I’m ready for jail.”
“Move out.”
I kicked at the door twice and then gave a final boot to the door and watched it swing wide open, banging against the wall. I saw the look of shock on Kayla’s face as I moved into the living room and cleared the area. The asshole moved in front of her, trying to protect her. Wrong fucking move.
“Down on your knees,” I shouted, pointing my gun at him. I knew that Tony Tacos and Storm were clearing the rest of the house, so I kept my gun trained on this asshole. He slowly moved to his knees, but my girl stood tall, refusing to get down. Obviously, she knew who I was. She would recognize the gear anywhere.
“Kayla, baby, get down. Just do as he says.”
“No,” she said defiantly.
I walked forward slowly and placed my boot right over the fucker’s fingers, slowly lowering the weight of my body on top of his hand. He screamed in agony, but I remained staring at Kayla.
“Still want to stay standing?” I asked her.
“You’re being an asshole,” she shouted.
“An asshole,” I repeated, lifting my boot just enough to kick the fucker in the side. He tipped over, holding his side and gasping for air. Kayla stared at me incredulously.
“What are you doing? You’re gonna get thrown in jail!”
“Kayla,” the fucker whimpered. “Just do as he says.”
I waited for her to listen, but my defiant little girl just wouldn’t do it. I quickly snatched him off the floor and held him against my body, my arm wrapped around his throat. Tony Tacos and Storm entered the room, both with wide eyes.
“Oh shit,” Tacos grumbled. “We’re so going to jail.”
“Should I call Cap?” Storm asked.
“He would do the same fucking thing if it was Caitlin,” Tony answered.
“Just…don’t kill him,” Storm said, narrowing his eyes at me.
I grinned maniacally. “I’ll take that into consideration.” I turned to the kid, whispering in his ear. “Have you ever felt the sting of a really sharp blade against your neck?” He shook his head wildly. “That’s a shame. It’s really a very…exciting feeling. Let me show you.”
I pulled out my knife and slid it ever so slowly against his neck, not actually putting him in any danger. I was quite good with a knife and there was no chance that I would accidentally nick him.
“Doesn’t it make you feel alive?”
He shook his head slightly.
“Dad, would you stop fucking with him?” Kayla said in exasperation.
“Dad? This is your dad?” the fucker shouted.
“Nice to meet you. You can call me Mr. Cooper.”
“Smitty.”
Storm snorted and shook his head. “Smitty? What the fuck kind of name is that?”
“That’s…that’s just what people call me.”
“What’s your real name? You know, the one that doesn’t make you sound like a fucking douchebag.”
“Uh…Carl.”
“Carl? Your name is Carl and you’re going by Smitty?” Tony laughed out loud, but narrowed his eyes at me. “I think your daughter’s virginity is safe.”
“Dad!” Kayla gasped.
“My last name is Smith,” he said, whimpering and shaking against me.
I looked at Kayla in confusion. “Why the fuck are you hanging out with this kid?”
“Because he’s the only one that will hang out with me! Nobody else wants to go near the kids of Reed Security.”
“And how do you know that?”
She scoffed at me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because I’ve talked to them. As soon as they find out where I live, they literally run the other direction.”
“That can’t be true. Sebastian has friends that don’t work with us. Their kids hang out with us,” Storm pointed out.
“Yeah, and have you met his friends? They’re all fucking crazy too!”
“Language,” I scolded Kayla.
“She’s got a point. A former sniper, a police officer, a manwhore, and then there’s Ryan. Hell, he willingly married into our chaos,” Tacos pointed out. “I think she’s actually balls on accurate.”
“Not to interrupt,” Rob said over coms, “but we’ve got cops on the way. Apparently, someone called in a disturbance when they heard screams.”
Tony narrowed his eyes at me. I slowly released the kid, shoving him to the ground. He was shaking and looking at me like any minute I was going to pull out my gun again and shoot him. Not likely, but I’d let him think that.
“Well, this has been fun,” Storm said, clapping his hands together. “I say we do this once a week. You k
now, until Smitty understands just how dangerous it is to hang out with Kayla.”
“I’m good,” Smitty cried. “I get it. Your daughter is hands off.”
“More than just hands off, asshole. You don’t go near her unless you want to really feel that blade against your neck again. Got it?”
He nodded furiously and refused to look at Kayla, who was staring daggers at me.
The sirens grew closer and then I heard the voices. “Police, freeze!”
I held up my hands, having just slipped my knife into hiding. I smirked down at the kid and gave a slight shake of my head, letting him know to keep his mouth shut. He paled and gave a nod.
“What the fuck is going on?” I heard Sean say from behind me. I turned around and grinned at him. “Oh shit. Please tell me this is not what it looks like.”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
He rolled his eyes and walked over to the kid, taking in his appearance and then grimaced. He turned to me slightly, whispering so that only I could hear. “You made him piss his pants.”
I chuckled slightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, officer.”
He rolled his eyes again and took a step back. “Would someone like to tell me what happened here?”
“Sure,” I said congenially. “My coworkers and I were just getting off a job and Kayla asked me to swing by and pick her up. When we arrived, we heard screams, and of course, I kicked in the door to get to my daughter, just as any father would. It turns out that they were playing a game and it got out of hand. But I had a talk with the kid about safety and I think he understands now that he has to be careful when dealing with teenage girls. Don’t you?” I asked the kid.
He nodded and swallowed hard. “Lesson learned, Mr. Cooper.”
I grinned widely at him. “So, no harm, no foul.”
He shook his head almost violently from side to side. “Not at all.”
✯✯✯✯✯
“I can’t believe you did that,” Kayla said as she got in the SUV to head back to Reed Security.
“You can’t?” Tacos asked. “Really? Because we all knew this day was coming. How did you not see it?”
“Because I thought my dad was sane.”
The guys started laughing, but I wasn’t in a joking mood. “Who was that kid?”
“He was just a kid I met a few nights ago.”
“A few nights ago when you snuck out of the house,” I clarified.
“Well, how else am I supposed to have any fun?”
“You don’t have fun?” Storm asked in confusion. “But we have the training center with all those weapons. That’s loads of fun.”
“All the other kids seem to enjoy it,” Tony added.
“And I suppose that I should be so happy to learn how to kill someone,” she snapped.
“Hey, it’s not all killing,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, sometimes you learn how to maim, or just really cause a lot of pain,” Tacos said. “Trust me, when that first guy screws you over, you’re going to be happy that you know this shit.”
“Yeah, that’s just what every girl’s fantasy is. A guy screws her over and she takes a knife to his balls and makes him wish he had never met her.”
Storm looked at me in confusion. “Are we meeting the wrong women?”
“Yeah,” Tacos added. “All the women that we know love to do exactly that.”
“Well, I don’t want to be those women,” Kayla said, crossing her arms over her chest in a huff. “I just want to be normal. I’ve been living like this for way too long. I want to go into the real world and see what real people live like.”
“You mean, without weapons?” Tacocheese asked.
“And without someone that will back you up no matter what?” Storm asked. “Because that’s what outsiders are like. They’ll screw you over at the drop of a hat.”
I grinned, happy that I had backup with me tonight. They weren’t exactly great parental figures, but at least they understood what was running through my mind.
“Kayla, that kid was older than you. Where did you meet him? And what was he doing at that house? That wasn’t his house.”
“It’s his cousin’s house. He was crashing there while he’s in town.”
“In town for what?” I asked suspiciously.
“I don’t know. He was out of town for something-”
“Jail?” Storm suggested.
“No, not jail. Like, college or a job or something, but it didn’t work out and he came home, but his parents wouldn’t let him crash with them. So, his cousin is letting him stay with him.”
“And you thought it was okay to go over to someone else’s house, who you didn’t know, and be in their house when they weren’t there?”
“I didn’t know, okay? But he said his cousin was cool with it.”
“I can guarantee that his cousin was not okay with it. Especially since his cousin has two small children. Now I have to call Cap and send over a crew to fix that door.”
“And the back window too,” Storm said. I looked at him in confusion and he shrugged. “I was trying not to break down the door, but when I went in through the window, I kind of got stuck and…well, the window’s busted now.”
“Fucking perfect.”
“Hey, this was all your idea. We told you to let it play out.”
“You saw what I walked in on,” I said incredulously.
“Yeah, I saw a kid in a house with your daughter. No offense, but that suburban neighborhood didn’t look all that scary to me,” Storm said.
“He didn’t even try and defend my daughter.”
“He didn’t really need to,” Tacos pointed out. “She was doing a pretty damn good job all on her own.”
“See? They think I can take care of myself,” Kayla said primly.
“Whoa,” Tacos laughed. “I wouldn’t take it that far. Just because you can take care of yourself better than the asswipe you were hanging out with, that doesn’t mean that you’re ready to go play with the big guys.”
“Yeah,” Storm agreed. “Imagine if we had been smaller, slightly less scary versions of ourselves with big goatees and oversized guns. What would you have done then?”
“What does a goatee have to do with it?” I asked.
“Have you ever seen a sane man with a goatee? That’s not a good look on anyone. I’m telling you, men with goatees are fucking scary-assed motherfuckers.”
“Name one person that had a goatee that killed someone,” Kayla said, crossing her arms smugly over her chest.
I narrowed my eyes at her. She knew better than to challenge me on useless information. “H.H. Holmes, also known as the Beast of Chicago. He killed twenty-seven people during the 1893 World’s Fair. He would lure them into his house that had secret rooms, trap doors, and even a kiln to burn the bodies.”
She rolled her eyes at me, so I continued.
“And then there was Luis Garavito, also known as The Beast. He raped and murdered over one hundred boys during the nineties.”
“Whatever.”
“And then there’s the Mustache Serial killer. He killed ten people, posing as a pillar of the community in Kansas.”
“You said mustache,” she clarified. “That’s not a goatee.”
“Come to think of it,” I said thoughtfully, “I think all of them had mustaches. But it doesn’t matter. They all had facial hair and they were all psycho.”
Tony nodded. “And the oversized guns are obviously there to make up for what they lack in-”
I reached back and flicked him in the face before he could finish that thought.
“For what they lack in what?” Kayla asked, trying to hide her grin.
“Uh…” Tony swallowed hard and tried not to show how fucking scared he was in that moment. “What they lack in…fingers.”
“In fingers,” Kayla repeated.
“Yeah, because if they had more fingers, they could…shoot more people with smaller guns.”
I rol
led my eyes and turned forward. What a fucking ridiculous explanation. I put it in the back of my head to never ask him for an answer on the fly. He’d definitely fuck it up.
We got back to Reed Security and Kayla tried to run off, but I snagged her by the arm and dragged her back to the room, even though she had probably been headed there anyway. I was pissed to say the least, and it was time to lay down the law.
“You aren’t allowed to leave the property anymore. And no college. I’ll be talking with Cap about removing your access code.”
“That’s not fair!”
“You’re not eighteen. I’d say that’s more than fair. I could ship you off to military school.”
“I’m already at military school,” she said incredulously.
“No, this is definitely not military school.”
“I have to wear a military uniform,” she retorted.
I shook my head. “That’s just camo you wear. If it were a real military uniform, you’d wear an insignia letting everyone know just what your rank was. Believe me, you don’t want to be wearing a rank right now, because I’d knock you down a peg or two and you’d be cleaning the latrines and scrubbing the floors with a fucking toothbrush.”
“They’re called toilets, Dad.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you call them. You will learn some goddamn respect before you go out into the world to ‘adult’ as you say. I didn’t raise you to be like this. You’re supposed to be smarter and stronger than all the other girls your age, but right now, you’re acting like a spoiled brat.”
“I’m a spoiled brat because I want to do things that normal kids do?”
“You’re a spoiled brat because you’re not taking into account your safety and what putting yourself in danger would do to everyone around you. Everyone here cares about you and we all just want to make sure that you’re safe. Why can’t you see that?”
“Mom would have let me go out,” she grumbled.
Rage unlike anything I had felt in a long time built inside me and bubbled over. “Your mother was a selfish, drugged up slut that whored herself out for her next fix.”
Her face paled and she backed away from me. Regret instantly filled me and I tried to say something to fix it, but she ran from the room, slamming her bedroom door behind her. She knew her mother wasn’t a good person, but I had never laid it out quite like that before. In fact, I rarely spoke badly about her mom because she wasn’t here to defend herself. Now I had just ruined any illusions she had about her mother and pushed her even further away from me.
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