Chapter 44
KIR
I brace myself as I take the corner so fast that the Aston Martin almost goes up on two wheels. The car fishtails, my lips pulling into a snarl as I wrestle control back and gun the engine, hurtling toward Greenpoint.
They say bad things happen in threes. The first was the call from the guy I’d been paying to keep an eye on James in the oilfields in northern Canada.
His early reports, when James first arrived, brought nothing but smiles to my face: James had gotten the shit kicked out of him on day one for not respecting the pecking order in the chow line, then gotten his ass beat the next day , too, when word started to get around that he was a predatory sex pest.
Delightful tales involving various other oil workers kicking the shit out of him kept up for the last couple of weeks. Then, twenty minutes ago, I got a call that did not put a smile on my face at all.
Apparently, James’ beatings got so bad that he was sent to the infirmary. And twenty-four hours later, the doctor realized James wasn’t there anymore .
I tried to tell myself that New York would be the last place that fucker would come, being that he barely escaped charges for propositioning a minor—who’s not actually a minor, but he doesn’t know that.
But that was before the second call I got, from Maya, Brooklyn’s friend from The Mirage.
She’s the one who filled me in that Brooklyn had come to see her, and that they’d planned to get drinks after Maya’s shift, but then Brooklyn had vanished, and when Maya went looking for her, she’d found her phone cracked on the pavement in the back parking lot next to some tire skid-marks.
Venom and fire roar through my veins as I scream around another corner, blast through a stop sign, and screech to a stop behind The Mirage.
Bad things come in threes…
If he’s hurt her…if he’s touched one fucking hair on her head …
I shut off the engine and jump out of the car.
“Kir?!”
I’ve only met Maya once, when I went to her apartment looking for Brooklyn. But I can tell instantly that she cares about Brooklyn almost as much as I do. She looks freaked the fuck out as she sprints over to me from the back door.
“Right there,” she blurts, pointing to a spot on the blacktop. “Some of the girls in the dressing room said she’d gone outside to make a call, but that’s where I found her phone.” She looks up at me with wild, pleading eyes. “I don’t know what…I don’t…oh my God ? — ”
“Breathe,” I growl, forcing calm that I don’t feel into my voice. “Did you ever know James?”
Maya’s face says it all.
“ Yeah ,” she hisses. “I knew the motherfucker. But I heard he was dodging something gross like trying to pick up a minor and ran to Siberia or something?
“The Yukon,” I growl. “And he’s not there anymore.”
Her face pales. “ What ?”
“He left the mining camp he was hiding out at, and….” I glance down at the tire marks on the ground before my gaze locks with Maya’s.
“You think this was James ?!” she blurts, horrified.
“I think if you know anything about him, you need to tell me. Now ,” I growl. Then I point to the camera over the back door. “Does that work?”
Maya nods. “Yeah. Come on.”
In the office, she calls up the footage and rewinds it. My blood turns to acid and her breath catches as we watch that piece of shit sucker-punch Brooklyn in the stomach twice, then drag her over to the car and shove her into the trunk.
The world sort of fades away when I see that. So much so that I’m not even aware what's happened until I’m blinking in confusion at the pain in my fist, and wondering where the three new jagged holes in the wall came from.
Maya swallows uneasily, eyeing me. “I know he used to live in Bushwick. On Dekalb. Near the hipster bowling alley?”
“Thank you,” I growl, yanking out my phone.
“Kir?” Freya croaks sleepily into the phone. It’s noon in Kyoto, which is literally the middle of the night for my nocturnal daughter.
“Frey, it’s an emergency. It’s Brooklyn.”
“ Fuck . Gimme a sec.” Her voice becomes much more alert. I hear shuffling and Mal grunting “who is it” in the background, then a flurry of keyboard strokes.
“Okay,” Freya says. “What do you need?”
“I need you to track a license plate. Belongs to her ex. The fucker I had sent to Canada.” Maya rewinds the tape, and I rattle off the number to Freya.
Then I hang up and call Isaak. The plate trace is going to be the most accurate, but in case James heads to familiar territory, I have Isaak bring a few carloads of guys to Bushwick to start canvasing that stretch of Dekalb Avenue.
I have other men sent anywhere else I think James might go—his uncle’s office at the port, a friend’s apartment, anything.
Maya stays at The Mirage, to be at ground zero. I jump back into the car, my blood searing like napalm in my veins I peel away, dialing Freya again.
“Narrowing in!” she blurts into the phone. “Not everywhere has those newer speed cameras like in Manhattan, so I’m running image recognition on still frame captures. Taking a little longer than I want—oh! Got a hit!”
“Where?!”
“The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, heading south.”
I spin the wheel, screeching the car into a U-turn and crossing the meridian before I gun the engine and roar through Greenpoint into Williamsburg. I catch the expressway there, weaving through traffic like a madman.
“Another hit on the BQE!” Freya yells. “And another—a traffic light in Red Hook fifteen minutes ago!”
Fifteen minutes. Fuck.
The car roars down the exit ramp into Red Hook. Freya finds another still photograph of James’ plate near a shipping yard close to the old docks, so that's where I go, my hands gripping the wheel like iron, my pulse thudding like a war drum in my ears as I scan the crumbling old warehouses.
It’s the gate that gives it away—the one hanging open on rusty hinges, with a freshly cut lock. The Aston Martin tears through it, tires spewing gravel as I roar past old shipping containers and screech around a corner.
NO .
James looks up wide-eyed when my headlights flood the scene. Brooklyn is sprawled across the hood of his car, face down, her pants at her knees, his hand between her legs.
My car has barely stopped moving before I’m out and charging him like a runaway train. The breath leaves his body in a whoosh when I collide into him, knocking him off his feet and smashing him to the ground.
Then I rain down holy hell on him.
I hit him until my fists go numb, his face turns to bloody pulp and I hear his ribs cracking. It’s only when he's lying limp on the ground that I lurch away from him and rush over to Brooklyn.
“ Babygirl—”
“I—I’m ? — ”
She’s curled on the ground, shaking, her pants still down and her arms wrapped around her body when I reach her.
For a second, I’m worried that even my touch is going to break her.
But when I go to put my arms around her, she instantly clutches me tightly, like I’m the only thing tethering her to the world.
“H-he tried …” she sobs into my chest. “But… I fought him . I fucking fought him, Kir !”
“ It’s okay, babygirl, ” I murmur softly, stroking her hair as I pull her into my arms right there on the ground. She clings to me, crying into my chest. I just hold her, and kiss the top of her head, and tell her that nothing in this world will ever hurt her again.
Gingerly, I help her to her feet, and she pulls her pants back up. I gently lead her to my car, and text Freya that I have her. My jaw tightens when I see the ugly purple bruise swelling over one eye, and the cut on her lip.
“I have to go do something,” I say quietly as I buckle Brooklyn into the passenger seat. Her hands tighten on mine. “I will be right back ,” I growl.
She nods quickly, her eyes still teary but fierce as I lean in to kiss her cheek.
Then I turn and slowly walk to where James is lying on the ground. His face is destroyed, but his one good eye slowly swivels toward me, and he blubbers when he sees me calmly pull my gun out of my jacket, cock it, and point it down at him.
“When you get to hell,” I growl icily, “keep looking over your shoulder. Because when I get there, I’m going to find you, and we’re going to do this again, and again, and again .”
Then I do what I should have done the first time.
He chokes on blood, screaming through his shattered face and writhing when I blow his dick off with the first shot. The next two go through his head, and the whole grisly scene goes quiet.
I text Isaak to call off the search and triple security around my house. Then I walk back to the car. I hold her hand tightly as we drive away from the docks, her head resting against my shoulder.
“Let’s go home, babygirl.”