Chapter 26 Malice
MALICE
Early on Saturday morning, we head out to do our newest task for X. I’m in a shitty-ass mood, agitation whipping beneath my skin like a nest of snakes. Playing errand boys for this asshole is always fucking annoying, but more than that, now we have some idea of what X is probably up to.
He’s fucking with us.
He’s toying with us.
And I hate it.
We’ve spent the last few days doing the usual research and prep for the job, trying to make sure we’ll be able to complete it without fucking anything up or ending up dead. But there’s only so much we can control when we don’t know what strings X plans to pull, if any.
The job is to break into a guy’s house and steal a flash drive.
From what we’ve gathered from Vic’s digging, our target is a judge.
That makes him a higher profile mark than we’ve had from X before, someone more well connected than the usual random warehouse or businessman.
It makes us nervous, putting us all on edge, because if this job goes tits up, then we could be in a lot of trouble.
We’re all wondering if this shit will go according to plan, or if X plans to betray us on this job too.
How badly does he want whatever we’re supposed to steal? Would he be willing to risk not getting it just for the satisfaction of seeing us all killed?
Fuck. I don’t know.
It’s still dark out when we leave, driving over to the judge’s house.
Vic is in the front passenger seat, running a smaller version of his usual set up, checking on things from a tablet in his hands.
“You got eyes on the judge?” I ask him.
He nods, brushing a small lock of dark hair away from his forehead. “He’s still at the hotel he checked into last night,” he says. “Along with the hooker he brought with him. His wife is at home.”
I grit my teeth, already disgusted with this fucker.
We park a few blocks down from his house and make the rest of the trek on foot, keeping to the shadows, using trees and hedges to hide ourselves as we make our way to his place.
Once we hit the perimeter of his property, Vic’s fingers go flying over his tablet screen, and Ransom and I wait while he works.
After about thirty seconds, Vic nods. “Security bypass is up. Let’s move.”
He takes the lead, creeping up Judge Asshole’s driveway, and then picks the lock on his front door, easing it open without a sound.
From here, we don’t speak. We’ve already gone over the plan fifteen different times, so we know what we’re doing.
We know the layout of the house from an old real estate listing Vic dug up online, and we know there are likely to be two places the judge might keep a flash drive: either in his office or in the library.
As long as the drive isn’t locked up in a safe or something, we can grab it fast and get out.
And if it is… well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But we’re hoping it won’t come to that.
We split up, Ransom and Vic peeling off to the left and down the hall to the library, and me to the right, hunting for the door to the office.
I move quickly, slipping into the room and heading straight for the large mahogany desk set against one wall. There’s a laptop sitting on it, and I check that first, but there aren’t any drives connected to the ports.
That would’ve been too easy, I guess.
I start rummaging through the drawers, finding mostly papers and a few questionable photos that look like they definitely aren’t of his wife.
“Fucking idiot,” I whisper under my breath. “Keeping this shit in the house, right under your wife’s goddamned nose.”
I reach for the drawer in the center of the desk, easing it open, but before I can look through it, a soft alarm goes up in the hall.
Shit. I freeze, holding my breath. The office door is set just enough ajar that someone would have to physically poke their head in to see me, but I don’t risk trying to escape.
The alarm shuts off a few seconds later, and I hear the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs.
“John? Is that you?”
His wife. Dammit.
She steps into the hall and I drop down immediately, hiding behind the desk and holding my fucking breath.
She comes to the office door and glances inside but doesn’t step any farther in. I wait until I hear her retreat and then give it a few more seconds, my heart pounding in my chest.
Her voice filters into the room from down the hall a moment later, and it takes me a second to realize she’s on the phone.
“Hey, honey. The alarm went off, and I thought it was you coming home,” she says. “You didn’t come home last night. Is everything okay?”
I roll my eyes because clearly it’s not okay. He’s been banging a hooker all night, and she has no fucking idea.
“Oh,” she says, sounding a little sad. “This is the third time this month you’ve fallen asleep at the office, John.
You really should consider cutting back on your hours a bit.
Yes, I know, but—” There’s a soft sigh as he cuts her off, and she’s quiet as she listens to whatever bullshit he’s spinning.
“Right. Yes, of course. Yes. I’ll go back to bed.
What time do you think you’ll be home tonight?
Alright. Well, I hope I get to see you then, if it’s not too late. Okay. I love you too.”
The call ends, and she sighs again before making her way back up the stairs.
I stay crouched behind the desk, counting out the seconds like I’m Vic or some shit, not daring to move yet in case she decides to come back down. It’s not even five a.m. yet, so hopefully she’ll go back to sleep, but I don’t want to assume that.
After several more long minutes, it seems clear that she’s gone back to bed. Letting out a breath, I ease up and go back to searching through the drawers. A few minutes later, Vic and Ransom slip into the room, Vic carefully adjusting the door back to the angle it was at before they disturbed it.
They give me a look, and I shake my head, holding up a finger.
Give me a minute.
They join me in my search, and after rooting silently through most of the drawers and shelves in the office, I finally spot a small flash drive that matches the description X gave us. I grab it and hold it up so my brothers can see that I’ve found it.
Ransom does a little jazz hands motion, and I roll my eyes, gesturing for them to go ahead.
Just as silently as we crept in, we make our way back out, heading off down the street to our car. The tension in my shoulders unwinds a little as we go, relieved that there were no unexpected explosions this time.
I guess X decided the flash drive was worth more to him than seeing us burn.
Now we just have to see if we survive the next job. And the next.
And the next.
“I feel bad for the wife,” Ransom says, shaking his head as we drive back to our place. “She sounded nice.”
I snort. “She sounded stupid. You don’t marry someone like that and think he’s going to be a good person. And how many times do you buy the ‘I fell asleep at the office’ bullshit before you start to get suspicious?”
“Too many times, apparently,” Vic murmurs.
Once we’re back home, we gather in Vic’s room, as usual. We’ve got the drive X wanted, but we still have to do the drop.
And that will be our opportunity to start trying to end this shit once and for all.
“As far as jobs go, that one was relatively smooth,” Ransom comments as Vic settles at his computer.
“Yeah,” I agree, rolling up my sleeves. “I don’t know if I trust it.”
“Well, there are always more chances for things to go horribly wrong,” he says with mock optimism, cocking a brow at me.
“Don’t remind me.”
The stitches in my side ache as I speak, another reminder of how quickly shit can spiral into chaos. They’ve been healing up well though, and Vic should be able to take them out soon.
“This should work,” Vic says, a note of determination in his voice. “So far, X has been able to make sure we never get a chance to see him at all. He clearly knows what my skills are, and he’s been avoiding them as much as possible.”
He’s not wrong about that. Every time we do a drop for X, he picks a spot that’s basically a dead zone. No security cameras, no traffic cameras, isolated and out of the way. A place that’s impossible to surveil to see who comes to pick up the drop.
But just because the drop point itself doesn’t have any cameras, that doesn’t mean we can’t find a way to get one there.
Vic has a shit ton of little cameras at his disposal, and our new plan is to leave one at the drop point, hidden well, so we can try to get a glimpse of whoever comes to pick up the flash drive.
It’s unlikely to be X himself, but maybe we can pick up some identifying marker that will lead us to X. It won’t solve the puzzle entirely, but it will be a thread we can pull on. A breadcrumb we can follow.
“Here,” Vic says, turning away from his computer and handing a small bag over to me. I flip it open, peering at the tiny button camera inside. “Hide it somewhere it won’t be seen, but where it’ll have a good view of the drop point.”
“Yeah, I know the drill,” I tell him.
“Good. With any luck, we’ll get a face. Either X’s or whoever he sends to pick up the drive.”
“And hopefully they won’t pick up on the fact that we placed a camera at the drop spot,” Ransom points out. “I know you’re good at your shit, Vic, and you too, Mal. But that’s always a risk.”
Vic nods, not looking offended. “It’s worth it, though. If I can get a face—any face—I can start putting the pieces together and we can figure a way out of this.”
I roll my neck, working out the kinks. “We’ve gotta do something. Sitting on our hands and obeying X’s every command isn’t going to get us anywhere but buried in shallow graves.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Ransom scrubs a hand through his hair. “Good luck.”
I give him a little salute with two fingers and then head down to my car, the camera and the flash drive tucked safely away.
The drop point is a few miles outside the city, in a run-down area. In the instructions X included in his last message, he told us to leave the drive in a drop box for what used to be a public library and is now just an abandoned lot.
I walk up to the rusted metal box and slip the drive inside, subtly attaching the camera to the side of the box at the same time, nestling it between several pieces of chewed up gum that someone stuck there.
It should have a decent view of anyone who comes up, and it’s small enough that someone would really have to be hunting for it to see it.
Just in case X is watching somehow, I make sure to keep my expression neutral, and I don’t linger. I head back to my car and drive home again, calling Vic on the way to let him know that it’s done and that he can message X to tell him the job is completed.
Now the only thing we can do is wait for something to happen.
Ransom is in the shop when I get back, actually organizing his tools for once since we haven’t had a car to work on in a while. I clench my jaw at the reminder of Ethan Donovan and his crew coming to our warehouse, and the memories of Willow that rise up with it.
Needing to blow off some steam, I head into the room just off the garage and spend the next several hours sketching out some tattoo designs and occasionally taking a swig from the bottle of whiskey I keep on the counter.
Finally, Vic calls us up to his room to tell us that someone picked up the drive.
Ransom and I both drop what we’re doing immediately, heading upstairs together. We crowd around Vic’s desk to watch the footage we picked up, and as we do, my lip curls in frustration.
“Shit. They’re mostly out of frame.” Ransom frowns, sounding disappointed.
“I couldn’t just stick it right to the front of the damned drop box,” I tell him. “That would’ve given it away.”
“I can scrub through the footage,” Vic says. “Going frame by frame, I might be able to pick something up.”
“Here’s hoping,” Ransom replies with a sigh. “I’m heading down to the shop.”
He steps out of the room, and Vic starts going through the footage image by image, trying to find anything noteworthy in it. I stick around to try to help for a bit, but only Vic can find this kind of shit interesting for long.
“Do you need me here?” I ask.
“No,” he says bluntly, not looking away from the screen. I chuckle, because things have always been like that between us. We’ve got each other’s backs, but we know when it’s best to let the other person just do the shit they’re good at.
“Alright. Then call me if you find anything,” I tell him.
He waves vaguely over his shoulder at me as I turn, about to head out.
But before I reach the bedroom door, Vic frowns and sits up straighter, glancing at one of the screens on the left side of his desk.
“Wait,” he says, a line forming between his brows. “Listen to this.”
He pulls his headphones out, turning the audio up, and I recognize Willow’s voice coming through the speakers.
“Oh, that’s okay,” she’s saying. “I understand having to work rough hours for sure. Seven is fine. That gives me more time to get ready.” She laughs, sounding a little nervous. “No, no. I just haven’t been on a date in… a long time, I guess. I think I’m going to be rusty at it.”
My eyebrows fly up into my hairline. What the fuck? A date?
Vic turns to look at me, and there’s something in his eyes that looks a hell of a lot like what I’m feeling right now.
Pure, raw possessiveness.
He doesn’t want her going out with some fucker any more than I do.
Is it the guy from the museum? The one who made her laugh?
The more I think about it, the more pressure builds up in my chest. I feel like a predator pacing in a cage, clawing to get out so I can fuck something up. So I can unleash the violence gathering inside me like a hurricane.
Fuck whoever this guy is for thinking he can take Willow out on a fucking date. She’s ours.
I turn on my heel again, heading right for the door. Victor doesn’t try to stop me—not that I expected him to. He wants me to do this just as much as I do.
I stride downstairs to get in my car again, passing Ransom on the way.
“Did Vic find anything?” he asks, glancing up as he wipes grease from his fingers with a rag.
I shake my head. “No. I’m going to Willow’s.”
“You’re—what? Wait, why?”
“Ask Vic,” I growl. Then I slide into my car and slam the door shut, peeling out of the garage and down the street.
All I can think about as I drive is that whoever this fucker is, he’d better not be at her apartment when I get there. He’d better not think he can touch her. He’d better keep his fucking distance.
Instead of getting lighter the closer I get to Willow’s place, the tightness in my chest just gets worse. It coils around my heart, squeezing for all its worth, making it hard to breathe and impossible to focus on anything but the one word repeating itself in my head.
Ours.