Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
GRANT
I thought about bringing Kit’s knives with me to gut this Aaron Jamie douche but decided against it. I’d rather she be the one to use them the first time and if anything goes wrong, it wouldn’t take a ton of digging for someone to find the metalsmith that made them for us. I’ll finish Aaron Jamie on my own, with my own knives. It’s sunny out in Seattle, which feels like a miracle but I’d prefer the rain. People don’t pay as close attention when the weather is bad, they’re focused on themselves and getting inside, not who they pass on the street.
“It feels so good!” A girl runs out in front of me and stretches her arms out. She turns her face up to the sky and sighs with a happy smile. She has the same innocent look my sister gets when she’s happy. It doesn’t take a lot to make Elise happy, though. She would definitely be spinning in circles on the sidewalk over the sun if she was here.
“Let’s stay outside today. All day!” Her friend says and joins her with her arms over her head. She lifts a hand to shield her eyes as she soaks up the sun.
Forget the bad weather, the sun is going to do the trick for me today. No one is going to look twice at me if they’re worshiping the sun. A perfect day for murdering a deadbeat. I keep walking, keeping a careful eye on the people I pass and sure enough no one looks at me. They’re busy taking selfies or basking in the sun.
I pull my ball cap down lower, adjust my aviators and stay focused. Aaron Jamie’s apartment building is just up ahead. It’s in a decent part of town but the building is older, more run down than the rest, which is a plus. Places like this don’t normally spring for security cameras. I slow my steps and pretend I’m taking a selfie of the sun like everyone else and scan the front of the building. It’s only three stories and hasn’t been remodeled since the nineties, if the wavy cube glass of the storefront on the bottom floor is anything to go by. There's not a camera in sight, just a banged up door that sits opposite a speaker and a list of names. I get close and scan the names. A second later I see the one I’m here for.
It could only be the fucker with two first names that uses them to make one fucking normal name. A.J.- Apartment 17, 3rd floor is scribbled in Sharpie next to the intercom but I don’t bother hitting the buzzer because someone is coming out. I catch the door before it swings shut and walk inside the building. It’s dark and cool here and I have to let my eyes adjust after the bright morning sunlight before I head up to the third floor. I listen closely for sounds from the other people in the building to try and gauge just how much someone will be able to hear when I rip dear old A.J. 's shitty head off. I’m surprised at how little I hear. Only dull music thumping and the slam of a door here and there as I walk up the narrow staircase is promising. The walls aren’t paper thin and I feel a little of what the girl spinning in the sun felt when I see the apartment door I want come into view.
I don’t fuck around scoping the hallway. I walk right up to the door. There isn’t a soul around when I knock on the door and step to the side to wait.
A normal person wouldn’t open the fucking door because of a mysterious knock or the fact that when A.J. looks through the peephole of his apartment the only thing he’s gonna see is half of my face hidden by my hat.
“I don’t know. It was a woman! She didn’t let me see her face and she had a voice changer.”
But he’s not normal. He’s the kind of person that makes a living off of stolen moments. He’s a bottom feeder that uses pictures of people that matter to pay for this rundown little apartment. That means he’s going to fucking open the door. He wouldn’t want to miss a hot tip or connection with someone able to line his pockets. I start counting the seconds and I get as far as twenty before I hear the chain slide and the door opens just an inch.
He’s on high alert after last night. Turns out, just because Aaron Jamie has two first names, he’s not a fucking idiot.
“What do you want?” Aaron Jamie says. I can hear him trying to be tough but it doesn’t work that well because his voice shakes. He’s nervous.
“I’ve got a lead. Think you might want it. It’s from her.”
We both know the her I mean. The bitch with the voice changer. I don’t even have to hint at a big pay out to get him to open the door.
The door opens and I hear him shuffle to the side. “Come in.”
I pull on my leather gloves as I enter the apartment and scan the space. It’s small, cramped with too big furniture and shitty, stained carpet. Nobody is gonna even think about trying to get the blood out when I’m done with Aaron.
He’s going to just be one more shit stain on a carpet that should have been ripped out a decade earlier.
Aaron’s back is to me when I close the door behind me and lock it. He freezes and looks over his shoulder at me when he hears the lock click.
“Why did you do that?” he asks and the dumb fuck is looking at the door and not me.
I lower my glasses and the movement pulls his eyes to me. “I could ask you the same thing about last night.”
“Listen, man. It was just a misunderstanding.” Aaron holds up his hands and stumbles back when I flick my sunglasses back up my nose and pull my knife out. “Fuck, oh shit.” he whispers.
“The woman that hired you. How did she contact you?”
“I-uh, she emailed me.”
“Open the email. Now,” I tell him.
“What are you doing here?” he asks and I take a step towards him.
“I’m just here for information. That’s all,” I lie and Aaron nods like he believes me. I know he doesn’t but we play the game all the same. He grabs a laptop off the cramped kitchen table and holds it up.
“I’ll show you.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, man.” He sits at the table and I go to stand right behind him. I’m not taking any chances and letting him email or message someone that I’m here. I point my blade at his back. The second he so much as hits the wrong fucking comma I’m going to slit his throat before he can make a sound. If I hear Rafe bitch about a thing with how I handle this, I’m going to beat his ass.
Aaron clicks on his screen and a few seconds later the email pops up. I frown when I see there’s at least a dozen emails in the thread he shows me.
“First email, when did she send it? Show me.” I nudge him with my knife and he whimpers but the email comes up almost immediately.
“It was three months ago,” he swears and I see it right there, February 5th is the first email. The same week we all got to Seattle for filming. That tracks with the photos and the frequency we’ve been getting them lately. When By The Way first started filming, it was huge news. Everyone was curious about the production and the fact that Rafe and I were finally working together. There were so many photos then that it was easy to miss any from Kit’s past.
I know that’s why she’s rattled. It’s not just the fact that we’re being watched everywhere we go or that this limp dick fucker thought he could photograph Kit in a private dining room. It’s that goddamn prom photo. There’s something to that night. This mystery bitch with a voice changer that’s been emailing Aaron James for three months has something to do with it. I know it. I can fucking feel it and my gut is never wrong.
My instincts have kept me safe when I should have been caught. Those same instincts told me Kit was the one for me. They’re screaming at me now that this woman has everything to do with Kit’s blast from the past photo surprise.
The first email is just an intro.
I have a local job for you. 500 a photo.
There’s a phone number and I tap my knife against Aaron’s shoulder while I think it over. It’s probably a burner but it’s more than we had before.
“You said she has a voice changer. You ever meet her in person or is it all phone calls and emails?” I ask and take my phone out to take a picture of the number.
“J-just phone calls. We email sometimes but she calls when she wants me to do something for her. I saw her once but it was too dark to know what she looked like.”
“What does she have you do? You follow Kit around?”
“No, of course not!” From the way he sounds you wouldn’t know that I caught him peeping on my woman getting eaten out by my boyfriend in our private dining room. “Mostly it’s just dropping off photos to the papers.”
I stop tapping my knife and press it into his shoulder. “You drop one off this week?”
“I-uh, yeah, earlier this week.”
Jackpot. The photos came from Aaron and the bitch cosplaying as Deep Throat. I knew it.
“Those photos ended up in the papers, didn’t they?”
He squirms and whimpers when I dig my knife into his shoulder. I know when I draw blood because he gasps and jerks forward like he thinks there’s a way out of this. I grab his shoulder and yank him back into his chair.
“No.”
“What were the photos of?”
“Just her out with her friends at brunch. That’s it. I swear!”
Two weeks ago Kit had gone out with Alana for brunch without us. Good to know those photos were coming.
“How does she drop them off if you don’t see her?”
“ Oh god. I knew I shouldn’t have opened the door. Why the fuck did I-”
“How does she drop them off?”
“I-she comes when I’m sleeping. They’re always there in the morning. I don’t know anything else other than that. She drops the photos off with instructions and when I do it, there’s cash the next morning.”
“Like the fucking tooth fairy, huh?” I raise my knife and slam it into his shoulder.
Aaron Jamie screams and I clap a hand over his mouth. I gotta give him credit, he bites down and screams, tries to draw blood, but the leather on my gloves is too thick and I slap him upside the head before he can do anything else.
“You little bitch. You bit me. Really ?” I tuck my knife up under his chin and tsk . “Do it again and I’ll put this knife right through you. Turn your brain to fucking mush, you got me?”
I’m going to do that anyway, but I let him think there’s hope. It’s always fun when they think there's a chance they’ll get away. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single person not think they were going to get away from me…at least, at first.
There’s a moment when they know they’re done.
That moment isn’t fun.
It’s fucking sweet .
“And you fucking stabbed me!” He hisses and tries to turn his head but all I do is shove the knife harder until he stops. “I don’t even know who she is. Oh my god.”
“When does she contact you?” I ask and reach forward to scroll through the emails. I look for a pattern in the dates. I count the weeks, the days of the week he’s contacted but there’s nothing. It’s random and there’s nothing in the emails more than a notice that there will be a job soon with a payment amount. The only thing Aaron Jammie sends back is a yes or no to taking the job.
“It’s just Kit she wants. Why?” I ask when I see the email directions: Get her picture tomorrow morning. She’ll be alone.
Someone’s been following Kit when we aren’t around.
There’s seventeen emails that he’s been sent and out of those, fifteen are specifically about Kit with directions and times on where he can find her. Whoever is behind this has been busy. I didn’t think there were that many photos focused just on Kit, not really. Someone has been after her and I’m a fucking idiot for not seeing it sooner. Rage comes quick and hot and I take a deep inhalation like Maria has been ordering me to do. I count to ten and it helps some. When I let out my next breath it’s easier to think and not act on impulse.
I click off of the emails and search up snuff porn. I hit play on the first thing that comes up and a woman’s scream fills the air while I think about keeping Aaron Jamie around for longer. I think about torturing him in the hopes that he might remember something, but I don’t. I might not have noticed someone targeting Kit but I’m not dumb enough not to know that Aaron Jamie is a dead fucking end.
I sigh when I get to the end of the email chain and see there’s nothing after last night.
“You haven’t emailed her. Why?”
“Because it’s too fucking much. Y-you came after me last night and that was never part of the deal and now you’re here. I can’t do this anymore. I won’t!”
I hum and step back from him. “You’re right. You won’t.”
There’s a subtle shift in the air, something that feels electric and frenzied but heavy all the same. It’s the feeling that descends when I’ve decided. When they realize there’s no getting away. Sometimes they feel it and sometimes they don’t. Aaron James feels it. The porn on his computer keeps playing and a woman begs.
He throws his arms out like he’s going to try and make a run for it. “Fuck, no! Please, I-”
“Hey, hey, it’s all right,” I tell him as I step into his space and jerk my knife up against his jaw like I said I would. Aaron Jamie is shaking and trembling. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s pissed himself. “Wrap your hands on the knife. Take it.”
He freezes. The glimmer of hope feels bright. He sees a way out. I know he does.
“W-what?”
I give the knife a wiggle and lean down to whisper in his ear. “Take the knife. Everything’s going to be okay. I’ll leave.”
“You’ll go if I take the knife?”
He puts a trembling hand on mine and I tsk . “Both hands now. Come on and take it. That’s all I want.”
“B-but why?” His voice is a rasp, so low that I can hardly hear it over the moaning and screaming playing on the computer.
“Because then you can’t follow me.” He wraps another shaking hand around the knife and squeezes it. “Stay still. I’m leaving.”
There’s a hitch to his breath and I feel him relax. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
When Aaron Jamie exhales, I jerk the blade up and don’t stop until I feel the blade slam against bone. I don’t know if it’s in his brain but I twist my knife for good measure. I let him go and he slumps forward and falls onto the table, his hands still on the knife while blood gushes out of his useless body and onto the screen. When the cops find him they’ll think he was into some kinky shit that went wrong and move on.
The city has bigger problems than one less parasite like Aaron Jamie to worry about. I step away from him before the blood gets to me. Everything looks the same as when I entered the apartment. And because I’m no fucking liar, I leave just like I said I would and lock him into his ratty apartment with gory ass porn playing while he rots.
I almost feel sorry for whoever finds him.