Chapter 14
Hazard
Dust wafted in the air, and though I had tried to have this meeting in the motel room, this idiot wanted to meet outside. The sun beamed down like an oven, or maybe it was the irritation bubbling under my skin. I rubbed my forehead. Zira hadn’t let me call the bastards from my phone myself.
She called them for me.
The asshole in front of me—Finn Carter, I think that was his name—stood stiff, like he was made of bricks. A bushy beard was on his face, wavy black hair on the top of his head. An ‘assassin,’ apparently. Like I needed that kind of help.
Zira was controlling as hell. Sometimes, I even liked it. On the other side of my recklessness, sat her manipulative, controlling side. But this was the first time that it got on my nerves. I didn’t need her to control every detail of Ernest’s abduction. That took the fun out of it.
“I don’t need assistance,” I said. “I’m just going to knock him out and take him back to my motel.”
“He has a surveillance team working for him,” Carter said. “One of my rivals. They’re not as good as us, but they know what they’re doing. If you do this alone—if anyone does this alone—you won’t get out alive.”
I scoffed. I had already broken into three different members’ houses in this private community. The three of them might have been overly confident, but I didn’t see how Ernest Dumas could be any worse. Even if he had a little security, a game of bullets would only add to the entertainment.
And goddamn, with Zira’s reins wrapping around me like a noose, I needed some entertainment.
“I can handle it,” I said.
“Callen has provided—”
“Now, who the fuck is Callen?” I asked.
“He owns Universal Medical Industries. He’s another member of the Marked Blooms Syndicate.”
“So another idiot that got into some trouble and begged Zira for help?”
Carter sucked in a breath, but his gray eyes stayed still and glossy. “Callen has provided sedatives that will render Ernest completely unconscious. We can drug him before you—”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked.
Carter pinched his brow like he was getting ready for a real business talk.
“There’s nothing fun about this,” he said. “Killing and capturing are jobs, not past times.”
“Maybe to you,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder. “You didn’t come from a town like mine.”
He stared at me, his eyes flinching back and forth, like I was both irritating and familiar. And for a second, I wondered if we actually did know each other. Oakmont was a piece of shit town, but plenty of people came through. When you were lucky, you got out, but not many of us did.
And sometimes, when you got out, you died in a place like this. Like my sister.
“Let’s make a concession. If you want to do this alone, we’ll stay out of your way,” he said.
“‘Preciate it, man.”
“But we’ll get rid of the surveillance team so you don’t have to deal with that kind of trouble.”
Annoyance leaked into my chest as sweat dripped down my neck. He acted like he knew everything, and that made me itch with jealousy.
“How do you know Zira?” I asked.
Carter paused for a moment, then ran a hand over his forehead. “She helped my wife save my life.”
Zira had mentioned that, hadn’t she? Curiosity spurred inside of me, cooling me down like an icy breeze. It must have been hard to admit for a burly ass man like him, saved by two women. But I respected that. Zira must have respected him as well.
But then that burst of jealousy grew inside of me, knowing that he knew Zira before me. If he ever had sex with her, I’d kill him. And yet, with the way he stood, all stiff shoulders and flexed arms, I knew he hadn’t. It was like he thought he was better than us.
“You think you’re too good for Zira?” I asked in a low, calculated voice.
“When did I say that?”
I leaned forward. “You didn’t have to,” I said. “I can see it in your eyes. You fuck her too?”
His brows furrowed in disgust. “No.”
I let relaxation melt over my shoulders. I didn’t have to kill him then. He hadn’t touched my queen.
“Let me tell you something,” I said, pressing my thumb knuckles together. “I don’t give a fuck what happens. Dead or alive; it’s all a good time to me.”
Carter cracked his neck. “You want to die?” he asked.
Maybe I did. “It’s. All. A. Good. Time,” I said slowly so he could understand every word. “Give me the fucking ride.”
He tossed his head to the side, withholding his emotions, like it made him a better man than me. But fuck that. He was too rigid to be worth a damn.
“Tell Zira I tried. You have my number,” he said.
I threw a sideways glance at him as he got in his SUV, driving out of the motel parking lot. There was something about him that made my skin crawl, like he thought he could control everyone, if he just fit them inside of his little box.
Zira was like that too, but she guided you into it, made you think that’s what you wanted.
Sometimes, I was like that too. I liked manipulating people into doing what I wanted; it took a subtlety that I often skipped, but once in a while, I liked to switch things up.
At least with Zira’s manipulative side, she had that edge of violence lurking in her soul.
She was more human to me that way. More like me.
But that didn’t mean that she would let me do what I wanted.
All day, I waited at the motel. Zira had convinced me to hire someone else to play Chris Cox’s role, just to make sure her precious daddy didn’t catch on now that I was an official board member. Another damn way to control me. But as soon as night rolled around, I drove through Opulent Gates.
Ernest Dumas’s house was like a fairytale home, complete with spires and a tower looming over the driveway.
Four guards were stationed out front, and who knows how many were posted around the back.
I kept driving slowly, but not slowly enough to draw their attention.
I was good with a gun, but this was like a mini-army. I wasn’t trained for this.
Zira was right. I did need backup. I groaned, then called back Carter Care.
“Yeah?” Carter answered. Even hearing his stern, gruff voice irritated me, but I was man enough to know when I was wrong. I might have been ready to die, but getting annihilated with bullets before I had the chance to enjoy the whole ride, wasn’t my thing.
“All right,” I said. “You’re on.”
That next night, the cameras were busted, and the guards had been knocked out, but Carter kept to his word; by the time I came through, there were no visible assassins anywhere.
As I crept through the property, I wished that there was something to give me a little bit of trouble. I needed some entertainment.
“You hear me, you animals?” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “You want to kill me? Do it now!”
But nothing happened. The wind rustled the leaves, and a curtain in the window of a tall spire flapped in the wind.
Even when I came to Ernest’s bedside, he stayed still.
The asshole was unconscious, like Carter had said.
It was all under Zira’s calculated instructions, and it was boring.
The skin at the back of my neck prickled with annoyance.
But maybe there was a need for that; she knew I had a habit of letting my indulgences get the best of me. But fuck, I wanted the adrenaline. The laser focus. The blood on my hands. I wanted the rush of knowing that my life was on the line.
This was like picking up my girlfriend’s laundry.
As I threw Ernest in the back of the truck, tying his wrists and ankles and gagging his mouth, I realized that it was exactly what I was doing: picking up Zira’s dirty laundry and taking it to the cleaners for her.
Maybe she didn’t trust me to keep him alive for the both of us.
After all, she had made me promise, practically with pinkies and all, that she could share in the fun.
And if it was like that, all desperation to get a taste of his murder, then maybe I could admire her.
She wanted her revenge piping hot, and so did I.
I carried him into the motel room, grunting as I opened the door. I threw his limp body on the floor with a thud, then pulled out my phone, about to dial Zira, when lo-and-behold, the hostage opened his eyes.
He had a decade on me, but I understood immediately why my sister would accept the offer to marry someone like him. Even disoriented and in his long-sleeved pajamas, he seemed stable. Reliable. The kind of man that would take care of you, as long as you let him.
But he had put her life at risk. He had let her die.
“So the bastard lives,” I said.
Ernest wiggled on the ground like a snake, drool spilling out of the side of his mouth. His moans were stifled through the gag, and he huffed through his nose. Out of sheer boredom, I ripped the gag from his mouth.
“It’s you,” he puffed, his eyes coming into focus. “Hazard Boucher. Chris Cox. You got on the board.”
I blinked. No one knew I was impersonating some man named Chris Cox except for Zira. Yet, Ernest knew. He had been hunting around.
I popped my jaw, letting it hang open for a second longer than usual, like a snake unhinging for a big, juicy piece of prey. I snapped it back into place.
“Ernest Dumas,” I said. A twinge of nerve pain surged through my system. “We officially meet.”
“Is this about the note?”
I leaned forward. The note?
Zira knows what happened to Gabby.
Was he the one who sent it, then?
“What note?” I asked, playing dumb.
“I wrote that note,” he said. “You must have seen it. I told the landscaper to put it where you’d find it. You’re my late wife’s brother.”
So he called Gabby his late wife, as if he still respected her. I wanted to break his neck for being a fake son of a bitch.
“Zira doesn’t know anything,” I said, my canines dripping with sadism. “But apparently, you do. Brother.”
“Do you want to know what happened to your sister?”
I grabbed my brass knuckles, smashing into his head. His skull cracked with the metal, and he groaned like a dying animal.
“Spit it out, motherfucker,” I said.