CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sean
Kai comes back into the room we’re holding them all in, ready to make their nightmares become reality.
We’re in an abandoned house in the shittiest part of town.
The fucking windows are boarded up, for Chrissakes, and it smells like piss.
There are two women, if you can even call them that—they look more like high schoolers—sleeping on sofas in the living room.
They’re high as fuck and still dressed to pick up.
Meth bowls, cotton, a few spoons and lighters, and used needles are strewn all over the table.
One of the girls still has her arm banded up from her last hit.
I’ve seen at least one of these women on the street outside our Bleaker Road clinic. She barely fucking looks eighteen.
The moment Kai pulled up our security footage and we saw who was behind the break-in at the clinic late last night, we were on the hunt.
It didn’t hurt that Kai thought they might be able to help me with my search for the man who killed Layla’s parents.
Now that she’s talked about it with me and I’ve seen the pain behind her eyes, it isn’t just a want for me to find him, or them, and get her the answers. It’s a need.
We found them in the alley behind this shithole, handing off one of their girls to some guy in a van.
She looked scared, and it was obvious she didn’t want to go.
An all-out fight followed, and one of them punched her in the kidney.
He’d never hit her in the face because he wouldn’t want to damage his moneymaker.
They’re dealers of drugs and pussy, but most of them are avid meth users themselves.
And one thing about junkies like that, they get freakishly strong when they’re high and they don’t feel any pain.
We beat the shit out of them and dragged them back, but we all took a couple good knocks before we were able to overpower the five of them and drag them back into this place.
One of them hit me with a piece of wood that was lying in the alley and split my cheekbone open, but we got them inside and tied them up and then we got to work.
I look at the old clock on the wall. I’m supposed to be at my clinic appointment with Layla in five minutes, but it’s not like I can call her while Kai and Jake are slicing these fucks open and breaking their fingers, so I pick up my phone and call our prospect Boyd instead.
Thirty minutes and five more broken fingers later, one of them finally breaks and tells Kai where a week’s supply of our methadone and a massive stash of clean needles is.
That’s the problem with what we do—junkies want needles, and we have them.
They also steal our methadone mistaking it for something that can get them high.
“He also told me a rumor he heard about a couple getting shot at an Atlanta gas station a couple years back, and a certain Wretched Souls member,” Kai tells me before speaking to Jake.
“In the bathroom, under the sink, lift the bottom of the cabinet out, you’ll find it all there.
” He turns back to the junkie that spilled all and grips his face hard.
“Unless you’re fucking lying to me. Then I start taking teeth. ”
I shake my head. Fucking Kai. He loves this shit way too much.
Kai kicks him hard and the prick cries. He’s already tweaking for his next fix.
“Shouldn’t have caved so early, I was looking forward to breaking the rest of those fingers,” Kai says to him, genuinely disappointed.
I make my way through the dark house, doing my best not to step on a rat as I open the kitchen window to take a breath that doesn’t taste like the inside of a sewer while I pull my glove off to call Boyd. There’s shit everywhere—garbage and booze bottles.
Fucking pigs.
“Hey,” Boyd answers.
“You pick up my package?”
“Yeah, your package didn’t want to be picked up,” he responds with a chuckle.
“Not surprising,” I answer as Jake comes back inside from our van with a small tan duffel bag. I follow him back to what I guess you could call the living room in this shithole, where we have the K6ers tied up, and watch as Kai pulls a suppressed Glock 44 out of the bag Jake just brought in.
“I’ll deal with it. I’m pretty much wrapped up here,” I tell Boyd. “I’ll be twenty minutes, just don’t let her out of your sight.”
“Okay, but boss? She said she didn’t need a babysitter and, uh, she seems kinda pissed at you.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, the feeling is mutual,” I mutter as I hang up.
I’ve just sent her a text when Kai takes aim at our resident tweakers without an ounce of hesitation and the biggest fuckin’ smile on his face.
He quickly takes the first one out, then the second, both clean double taps to the head.
The sound of their brain matter and blood hitting the wall behind them makes more of a sound than the gun.
The other three are so badly beaten they hardly even notice that Kai just killed their buddies as they hover in and out of consciousness.
Even though we’re in the shittiest part of town, we still wouldn’t shoot them without a suppressor.
Cops are everywhere around here, and gunshots are the fastest way to bring them to the door.
There’s no reason to draw heat to us if we don’t have to, but we have no choice but to kill them. I won’t leave any loose ends untied.
I watch as Jake takes aim at the next one. It’s part of our code; we all participate. All for one. I think about Layla giving Boyd a hard time about babysitting her as Jake takes his shot. I can almost see the defiant look in her bratty eyes.
“You’re up.” Jake hands me the gun. I take it from him and move closer, needing the junkie’s eyes, needing to see the soul of the man whose life I’m taking.
I kick him and he looks up at me, fucked up and glazy.
He has no idea what’s even happening. I don’t waste a second, I just aim and fire, hitting him twice right where I want to—between his eyes.
It’s at this moment the last one comes around.
“Hey … what? … Don’t fucking … shoot me …
please,” he begs, noticing the guy beside him is now leaking from a massive hole in his forehead.
I move in front of him and focus on his eyes.
Even high, they’re pleading, but I’m going to finish what we came here to do.
We’ve been looking for two of these men for a while.
But these fuckers have stolen from us for the last time.
The one I just shot is the low-life pimp that’s been known to take in girls from the street—some underage, some just desperate to belong to someone—and he feeds them drugs, using their bodies for money until they have nothing left.
Until they’re just machines that work for him.
He beats them when they get out of line or even try to complain, and he takes almost every cent from them.
A waste of lungs using up fresh air that someone better could be breathing in.
Guys like him are the bottom of the barrel.
“Rock paper scissors?” Kai asks hopefully, but I’m done fucking around. I’m sick of the smell in here and my back has had enough. I look at the last junkie, raise the gun and pull the trigger, ending him. He slumps forward.
Five less K6 dealers make Harmony a better, safer place.
“Ax, fuck, that was rude,” Kai says, cuffing my shoulder, annoyed I didn’t give him the chance to take out the last one.
“Let’s just get the fuck outta here,” I tell them all. I’ve got other shit on my mind.
Layla might not be willing to admit she’s mine yet, but when it comes to her safety, I simply don’t give a fuck what she wants. She’s about to learn that I won’t tell her what to do very often, but when I do, she’s gonna fucking listen.