Chapter 14
KNOX
Her voice was velvety sin wrapped in a husky sweetness.
Her cursing sounded like a beautiful symphony, and every time she broke the recording device, my cock jerked at her frustrated cursing.
I heard every single conversation between my little criminal and her dog, and I immediately regretted not installing the cameras.
The temptation and anticipation of watching her every second of every day were starting to override my logical senses.
What was it about the masked devil that had me so fucking hooked? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I had finally found prey I was having fun playing with. The fact that she was the most gorgeous woman to exist was just the icing on the most delicious cake.
I still had her underwear in my pocket when I walked—slightly limped—into the briefing room. My feet halted at the tense faces of my detectives. “What happened?”
Brandon cleared his throat and opened his email on the monitor on the wall adjacent to the large whiteboard. My eyes narrowed. “What am I looking at? What is this?”
“Uh…sir, we all received this email fifteen minutes ago.”
Before even reading through the email, I pulled out my phone. Yep, I’d gotten one too.
Right then, the door to the briefing room barged open, and the captain stormed in to stand right in front of me, his phone raised in his hands. “What the fuck am I looking at?”
While I respected the captain, nobody took that tone with me. When I stared at him silently, the captain took a breath and stepped back. I nodded and answered, “Captain, I’ve just arrived. I haven’t seen the email yet. Permission to read?”
He harrumphed and waved his hand at the monitor.
From: yourlocalbatman@
To: bjones@
Subject: A friend in need is a friend indeed!
Dear Friend,
I heard you needed some help in your active cases. Please find attached all locations of the perpetrators and the respective evidence for their crimes.
Case of the missing son of Brooks family: PFA location
Case of the killer on Anderson Street: PFA Killer identity, location, and evidence
Case of the arson on 452 6th Ave: PFA Arsonist identity, location, and evidence
Case of the serial killer of Asian women: (That was a tough one. I could see why it took you eight weeks and more women murdered to find the culprit) PFA Killer identity, location, and evidence
Case of missing dog: Go to Uncle John’s Cafe outside your precinct ;)
Case of the killer on 320 Lexington Ave: (This was unexpected) PFA Killer identity, location, and evidence attached
Case of the missing woman on 416 Park Ave: She’s taken care of. Doesn’t need finding. Leave her be. You’re welcome.
Case of the missing women on 610 10th Ave: Location attached. PFA Information on kidnappers. You might want to hurry on this one.
Shoot me an email if you need more help, and I’ll be there for you ;)
Your friendly neighbor,
Batman
Blood roared in my ears as I opened the top button of my shirt. That little criminal. My lips very nearly twitched into a manic smile, but I restrained the cackling beast inside me. My little criminal wanted to play with me.
“Are you seeing this?” the captain asked, his face scrunched in a severe frown.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to rein in the pride and the smile trying to break free on my face, and took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. I’ll take care of h…it.”
“How the hell did this”—his lips pressed together, as if he loathed uttering the next word—“Batman know about all our open cases?”
Sometimes, Captain loved to ask questions that had obvious answers. “Clearly, we have a hacker at hand, sir. We’ll get IT involved and get all our systems checked.” We might also have a sneaky infiltration on our hands and a very real case of recording devices installed in the precinct.
If I knew my little criminal at all, she had ears in my precinct.
All my detectives stayed silent as the captain ranted about everything going digital and the good old days. I cleared my throat, effectively stopping him mid-rant, and got to the point. “How would you like us to bring this hacker in?”
“Bring him in?” he roared. “This Batman solved all of our open cases. What are you going to bring him in for? Helping us? Doing our jobs for us? Protecting the people of the city? Do you realize how that would look?”
I was hoping the captain would authorize me to bring my little criminal in. I would’ve enjoyed an “official” chase. Oh well. “What would you like us to do, Captain?”
The veins on his forehead popped as he restrained himself from yelling. “Do your motherfucking jobs.” He turned to all of my detectives. “All of you. Do your fucking jobs.”
With that, he stormed out of the briefing room.
When I met my detectives’ eyes, Brandon uttered, “Batman finished all our cases. What are we supposed to do?”
I let the smile slip for a second because my girl had successfully made me raging mad and maddeningly entertained.
She’d taken her revenge, made me feel humiliated and incompetent in front of my boss and my detectives.
She’d shown us all how easy it was to solve crimes for her and that we were wasting the time of the victims and the money of the tax-paying people of New York, all in one single night.
My fist clenched at the thought of how I was gonna exact my revenge. I was gonna make my little criminal mad.
Anticipation thrummed through my veins, expanding my chest and lighting my nerves on fire. Ideas ran through my brain at rapid-fire speed, pinging along my brain to try to figure out the best way to hurt her where it would really fucking hurt. And I knew just where that was.
I took my place in front of my detectives. “Everyone, I didn’t want to alarm the captain, so I didn’t say anything. But there is a high chance the precinct is bugged.”
Their eyes widened, but I didn’t let their outrage spill over. “Hear me out first. I need you to check around your desks, waiting areas, restrooms, and every nook and cranny. I’m certain we’ll find some hidden devices. Keep it on the down-low for now. I want to see where and how many we find.
“Clark, go to the IT Department and get the footage from the last two weeks. That’s when we got these cases. Check for any anomalies in the precinct, any person of interest who behaved in a strange manner. Let me know if you find anything. Everyone, until then, we communicate with pen and paper.”
I grabbed the whiteboard marker and started writing:
Brandon, we’re getting the information from the Russian lackey today.
I want all officers on duty until we figure out how the fuck we were bugged and hacked. We need all hands on deck as I get the location of the Russian hideouts.
We’re gonna light some shit on fire.
A chorus of cheers rang in the air as the tide of the room shifted. I needed my detectives motivated. I needed my little criminal on her fucking toes, anticipating my next move.
With Brandon on my heels, I barged into the holding cell of Greg fucking Martin, the Russian lackey I had in our custody.
Before he could even breathe, I slammed my fist in his face. “I need the locations of all your hideouts. And I need them fucking now.”
He dragged himself back on his ass, trying to escape. “You can’t do this. This is police brutality.”
I laughed and kicked him in the ribs. “That’s rich coming from a guy who deals with trafficking women. Fucking asshole. Now give me all your locations. Now.”
He wailed as I dragged him on the floor by his hair and slammed his face onto the floor. “I don’t know anything. Let me go.”
“I’ll say this once. We do this the easy way or the hard way. This was the easy way so far. Locations. Now.”
While he stared at my face, I extended my hand back toward Brandon. He placed a baton in my palm. Adrenaline pulsed in my veins at the anticipation of beating the fucker to a bloody pulp. Pick the hard way. Pick the hard way. Pick the motherfucking hard way.
I loosened my shoulder as my arms pumped. The violent beast inside me roared under my skin and snarled for blood. I took a step toward the fucker, slamming the baton on the bars of the jail, letting the beast out to play.
I raised the baton over my shoulders, taking a swing at the fucker, when he screamed like a banshee. “Easy way. I’ll go with the easy way. Please, don’t hit me.”
Fucking hell.
I clenched the baton in my hand and put the other end on Greg’s shoulder, a clear threat as to what would happen if he deflected or lied. “Talk. Now.”
In under a minute, I had three more locations for their operations.
I bent down over him and grabbed his shirt in my fist. “You will tell me more. And you will do exactly as I tell you to do if you don’t want me to go find your family and deal with them.”
I had plans for this fucker to take down the entire Russian operation.
The moment I stepped outside the holding cell, Brandon walked right beside me. “You got the coordinates?”
“Yes, sir. The locations are in the Inwood and Riverdale neighborhoods in the Bronx, and the other one is in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Your orders, sir.”
I barged into the briefing room, Brandon right on my tail, with the rest of my detectives rushing after me. I stood in front of them as Brandon pulled up the locations on the monitor. I grabbed the whiteboard marker and started to write:
I want as many Russian lackeys arrested as possible. Light the three locations up in flames. If there are any hostages, save them first. I want no casualties at all. I want the criminals in our holding cells by midnight. I’ll be coordinating the mission from here. Are we clear?
“Yes, sir.” The two words echoed in the room.
“Any status on the recording devices in the precinct?” I asked the question out loud.
Five of my detectives moved forward and dropped twenty devices on the desk in front of me. It was by sheer will that I kept the look of shock off my face. That little minx. “Is this all?”
Clark nodded. “These were the ones we got to so far, sir. I’ve put in the request for the Electronic Detection (ED) dog to get the precinct searched thoroughly.”
I nodded and got back to writing on the board.
Good. Get ready, Detectives. Everyone is on board.
Clark, I need three teams. Call me when everybody is ready with weapons and gear.
I need to make a call.
Dismiss, Detectives.
With that, I stormed out of the briefing room and went to the roof of the precinct. Surely, my little criminal wouldn’t have reached here.
I unlocked my phone, opened the recent call list, and hit call to the only man who could help me.
“This is too much, baby brother. We haven’t talked so much in the past two years.” Hugh’s drawl was as irritating as always.
“I need more recording devices and cameras.” I got straight to the point.
“Absolutely not. It’s unethical.”
“Fuck ethical. My little criminal is so far from the ethical line, it’s a dot on her radar.”
“You find something?” he asked, his tone serious.
I bit my lip, debating how much to reveal to him. “She doesn’t work alone. They’re a group of vigilantes and call themselves the Wildcats. I’m guessing they work for Dominic, considering all the apartments are under his name. Fucker is making girls fight his battles for him.”
Hugh scoffed. “Wildcats. Really?”
Anger on behalf of my pantheress blazed through my nerves. “It’s effective. Matches their personalities. I need more information on them.”
“What do you have for me? Any names? Faces?”
All I had was half a face of my criminal imprinted in my mind. “Nothing.”
He growled on the other end. “How the fuck did you infiltrate their operations, your girl’s house, and still get no name or face?”
If he had been right in front of me, I’d have decked him.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed.
“It’s called them being paranoid. Or careful.
Whatever you want to call it. The only photos I found were of the victims lined up on their tack boards.
Found a giant training area, a locked office area that had several monitors, a kitchen area, and what would be a brainstorming area.
And my girl”—something feral churned in my gut when I said that out loud—“is the mother of paranoia. There wasn’t a single photograph on the wall, no wallpaper on her monitor, not a single stray mail that would hint at her name or her face. Now tell me what you can do for me.”
There wasn’t a peep from him for half a minute. I was about to snap at the fucker when he grumbled, “I could get you cameras and a recording device. I need more from you to go any further.”
“I also need updated access. She’s probably updated her security measures.
Be prepared to stay updated with her changes and have the access ready for me.
I need to be able to get in and out of her apartment.
I don’t care about their headquarters right now.
The access to her apartment is my priority. ”
“You don’t pay me enough for this bullshit,” he grumbled.
“I don’t pay you at all.”
A dead line was my only response. Fucker dropped the call on me.