6. Dingo
SIX
DINGO
“So let me see if I got this straight . . .” I glanced between Coyote and Jackal, taking in their soaked clothes, the overall effect giving them a look similar to that of a scraggly, wet dog duo whose humans had left out in the yard too long unsupervised. “You showed up at the target’s house, and he just, what, wasn’t there?”
Jackal snorted incredulously. “Nah, he was there, alright. Already dead, though. It was like someone got to him before we could. Dude was lying there face down in the sand, just like he was supposed to be—except we didn’t do it.” His sharp ass teeth glinted in the light, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine. You never quite could get over the whole sharpened shark teeth. Just when you’d forgotten, he’d spread that mouth wide open and remind you.
My attention swiveled to Coyote, who was conveniently silent as he stared a hole into the carpet, no doubt wishing it’d open up and swallow him whole.
No one of us ran this ragtag group, and as a result, our personalities constantly clashed in the worst of ways. Like tonight, when these two idiots had assumed they could handle a mark on their own while I was at home sick with a . . . hangover.
I wanted to laugh, but the pain was too intense. Hangovers were a bitch once you hit that special age between youth and middle age. Somewhere around the big three-zero mark, your knees started to hurt, you couldn’t drink like you used to, and everything ached when you slept on it wrong.
I scrubbed the creases out of my forehead and tried again. “What do you mean he was already dead? How do you know someone else got him?”
Jackal offered me his phone, and I stared in open-mouthed shock at the picture he’d grabbed before they bailed on the job.
The target was sprawled in a puddle of his own blood, his face beaten in, but not quite how we did it. Spray-painted on the back of the jacket thrown over his chest was a smiley face–one that oddly resembled the mask Jackal had worn since we started this crew, down to the fucking shade of neon red. Next to his body, lying in the sand, was a single piece of paper with a bloody print on the bottom corner. And, of course, Jackal had brought it back with him and presented it to me now, watching me for any sign of a reaction.
I read the words on the paper six times before I was able to actually respond.
Your move, dogs.
“This is some next-level crime drama shit,” I muttered under my breath, eyes wide. “A fucking copycat, in this day and age–”
“Whoever this is, they’re not randomly stumbling across our kills before us. They’re doing it intentionally. They have inside information–”
I waved a hand at Jackal dismissively. “You have an overactive imagination. Likely, this is a copycat who wants to get our attention. Maybe they wanna join our group.” I flicked the edge of the paper and grabbed the lighter sitting on the end table, bringing it up to eye level as their eyes fell on the paper dangling from my fingers. “This is a cry for attention, and we’re going to ignore it.” The lighter made a satisfying click as the flint caught a spark and the flame licked up the side of the paper, devouring the tinder like air as I let it drop to the concrete floor. “They’ll probably move on to idolizing someone else soon enough.”
“But how did they have inside information, Dingo?” Jackal persisted, snapping his teeth dangerously in my direction. I could hear that tongue ring clicking away behind the row of pointed teeth, dragging from one side to the other in his annoyance. “How did they know when and who we were going to hit?”
“Lucky guess?” I offered, the room spinning still every time I tried to straighten and stand. “Look, it’s nothing to worry about. Once is a fluke.” I dusted my palms on my thighs and rose slowly from the couch, wincing at the throbbing in my skull. “If it happens again, then maybe it’ll be time to worry about it.”
“Stubborn,” Coyote offered up from his usually-silent position by the door. He rarely, if ever, opposed myself or Jackal openly, preferring not to take sides when he could avoid it. But the look he bestowed on Jackal spoke volumes. Somehow, he’d been convinced this was bigger than it was. He looked at me dead-on again, shaking his head as he repeated the single word he’d previously uttered. “Stubborn.”
“Stupid,” I offered in return, gesturing at our partner. “Sheep,” I said next, pointing in his direction. “You might’ve been raised by dogs, but you don’t have to think with that pack mentality all the time, ya know, mate. You’re allowed to have a single thought of your own occasionally.”
Jackal shook his head and wandered off into his room, slamming the door behind him to let me know how much my attitude pissed him off. Which would typically be a drop in the bucket, but right now, while my head was trying to split in two? It was a declaration of war .
I was not about to give in to the urge to be childish like him. I wasn’t. I was better than that.
But I was just childish enough to roll my eyes at him. Just barely.
Idiot.
Coyote watched me warily, his eyes glued to my body as I rose and stumbled across the room in search of some water. Sure, water would fix me.
Or it was a start, at least.
Of course, there was no more bottled water. I was the only one around here who restocked anything, and far be it to expect these fuckers to do anything outside of kill and sleep and eat and shit.
Dogs. We were all dogs; the letter got that right, at least. Feral fucking animals unfit for society. As a unit, we functioned just enough to get by within the Guild, but if we ever split apart?
Good luck to whoever had to deal with Jackal’s dumb ass. And heavens help anyone who happened to run into Coyote. He was still legally classified as a feral child, even though he was well past the cusp of adulthood. Apparently, the title sticks with you if you go around biting the social workers moving you from house to house.
“What are you looking at, Coyote?” I growled, moving to throw my head under the faucet at the sink. The cups were all in the damn dishwasher, and since I hadn’t turned it on last night, I knew it hadn’t been run. “Got a staring problem, mate?”
“No,” he growled back, his bass-y voice sounding like someone had dragged it over a bed of gravel once upon a time. “Got other problems.”
“Well, I’m no therapist,” I mumbled, drowning myself in the running cold tap water to try and get my body the hydration it lost from all the alcohol I must’ve consumed last night.”Solve 'em yourself. You’re a big boy now. ”
“Mmm,” he growled, stalking off in the direction of his room, dripping all the way there from every inch of his soaked frame.
Of course he wouldn’t explain himself. He was Jackal’s loyal little dog, letting his friend take the lead any time he could get away with it. I knew damn well he knew how to talk, but when you had a willing mouthpiece like Jackal, there wasn’t a need to make your thoughts known.
I was damned tired of feeling like I was talking to a wall, though. I needed some fucking human interaction, or I was going to go insane in this place. Ironic, considering we lived in an insane asylum filled with assholes who probably qualified as original residents.
With the determination borne of a man fed up with his situation, and the bull-headedness I kept in reserve for when I needed to kick my ass in gear, I lumbered off into my room in search of some clean clothes, determined to do something outside these four fucking walls for the first time in a long time.
Swizzle Sticks was empty–a rarity for any bar in Port Wylde these days. But empty didn’t really mean empty–it meant there were only a few stragglers here for the earliest rounds. A girl in the corner booth, sipping a frozen smoothie thing while she checked her phone almost compulsively; a silent man dead center of the bar, nursing a room-temp beer; two teenagers who had to be just barely legal age, off to one side of the pool tables as they assessed the sticks like they were seasoned pros. None of them screamed unique, and nothing about them made me wanna get up and make friends. Sure, the girl in the corner was cute, but it was obvious she was waiting for someone, and as much as I needed my dick sucked these days, I wasn’t about to go down swinging in a brawl with her jock boyfriend when he finally did show up .
And considering my door only swung one way, I didn’t have any other options. So I raised my hand for another double shot of whiskey and settled in, hoping someone would come through the door soon who would capture my eyes like nobody ever had before.
The place was packed within a few hours. My head had already been pounding when I walked in, and the aspirin and Tylenol weren’t making anything better. I had almost begun to debate my decision to come here when a group of very appealing girls walked in; their attire and their high-pitched shouts of shots and bachelor part y marked them as easy targets. Culling one from the herd wouldn’t be hard at all. Girls like these came to places like this to get wasted, get fucked, and remember what the taste of freedom was before their group leader went on to shackle herself to one man for the rest of her life.
Girls like this were looking for trouble in a place like this, with men like me, who weren’t good for them at all.
And then, as soon as I’d imagined fucking the pretty brunette in the back of their little conga line, another woman walked in that stopped my heart in its tracks.
She wore a tiny pair of leather shorts, fishnet stockings with holes just big enough for my fingers to poke through, black leather boots with a hell of a heel on them, and an off-the-shoulder black sweater that looked like it’d been knitted in the eighties and then promptly forgotten about, tossed in someone’s attic until it was dragged out and repurposed. Strands of red ribbon wove through the abnormal-sized holes at the edges of her sleeves and made a neat little bow at the end, a complete contrast to the dark and gothic appearance of the rest of her. She’d cut it off halfway up her ribcage, making it a crop top of sorts .
Fuck all, when the bouncer checked her for weapons, and she raised those arms, I could see the bottom curve of her breasts, peeking out dangerously–and braless–for anyone to see.
I watched her politely sidestep the handsy bouncer and offer her fist up to be stamped, and then she disappeared into the crowd, just another body, another face I hadn’t gotten a good enough look at to find her in this commotion.
But damn, how I wanted to.
I wanted to put my hands all over that girl and make her scream in the bathroom of this fucking dive bar, her noises drowned out by the pounding metal and rock beats that echoed throughout the building’s speaker system. I wanted to get my hands on her, my dick inside her, and make her beg for more.
But in the span of a minute, in the blink of an eye, she was gone, and I wasn’t any closer to getting a good dick-sucking. What I was was harder than a fucking rock, adjusting myself discreetly to avoid being called out for sporting a boner in public.
Fuck.
Two drinks later, I was feeling less hungover and more determined to find that alluring bitch who turned my head when she walked in. But though I hadn’t taken my eyes off the dance floor, she was nowhere to be seen.
With nothing to ease the tightness in my pants, I opted to head for the stairs leading to the second floor. I could watch the crowd from the balcony and maybe spot the girl currently making walking next to impossible for me.
Forearms resting on the railing, eyes on the floor below, my search was still in vain an hour later. Either she’d snuck off with someone while I was looking in the other direction, or she was so good at hiding she’d just disappeared. I sighed and flagged down a waitress, ordering another drink for the hell of it. When she brought it back, I downed half of it in one go as I pondered my fucking existence–and that girl.
I still couldn’t get her out of my head, though. A girl like that doesn’t just walk into your life every day. Someone as eye-catching, as head-turning, as delectable and confident as her was a rare find in a town like this. Missing my opportunity might very well haunt me for who knew how long.
I downed the rest of the drink in my hand and wandered to the bar, my head only slightly less achy than before. The renewed presence of booze in my system had muted the headache and stopped the world from spinning, but now I was on the fast track to right back where I started.
But that didn’t make sense. I had only had three drinks. I was no lightweight, either.
What . . .
. . .
. . . shit.
Had I left my drinks unattended at any time? Had I turned away for even a second and allowed someone to spike it? But why the hell would someone bother to spike my drink? And who would have cause to even try?
Knowing time was limited, I pulled my phone from my pocket, the words and numbers on the screen already swimming. Frantic, I scrambled to unlock it with my thumbprint and pulled up my recent call list.
And pressed dial on Jackal’s number.
Ring, ring, ring. Ring, ring, ring.
Fuck. If he didn’t pick up?—
“What the fuck do you want, Dingo?”
He sounded like he was in the middle of doing something, but whether it was a contract or a slut off the streets, I didn’t care. This was now imminently more important.
“Roofied. Fuck, come get me. I’m at–”
“Swizzle Sticks, yeah, I know.” He paused for a moment, then sighed. “Get in a bathroom stall and lock the fucker. I’ll be there soon.”
He hung up before I could ask him how he’d known where I was without me telling him. As the bathrooms came into sight, I felt the last little bit of control over my muscles leave my body, and I tumbled to the floor in a heap of my own limbs, which steadfastly refused to cooperate with the commands I was giving them.
I gave into the darkness a short while later, as I swore a silent prayer that nobody came this way before Jackal got to me.
Maybe he hadn’t been overreacting after all.