A Little Bit Obsessed (A Little Bit Unhinged #1)

Chapter 1

Alligators Are Helpful

WES

“This is messier than when we give them one of my pies.” I’m in the doorway of a Fort Lauderdale apartment, staring at a very dead middle-aged white man on a beige area rug in the living room.

Fuck me. This isn’t just messy. It’s a disaster.

“Seriously? Death by your mince pie is disgusting.” Noah casually lounges on the expensive gray leather couch, careful to avoid the red splatters that he put there during all the stabbing.

Luckily, that should easily wipe off the leather.

Noah pushes up his dark-rimmed glasses to rub his eyes. “They foam at the mouth.”

“At least with pie, there’s no blood,” I grumble, adding a swear under my breath. This carpet is no longer beige. “And you’re in no place to criticize my techniques right now.” I wave my hand at the pile of predator on the ground.

This one was wealthy, and he’d lure young immigrant women to this shitty apartment where he’d beat and fuck them, and recently escalated to killing. He liked Venezuelan and Colombian women in particular.

“Did you fly down here to lecture? Or help?” Noah glares at me from across the room.

“Both. On the beige rug, Noah? Really?” I gesture at the large area rug that’ll have to be disposed of.

“Well. It didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped.”

“Oh really? You had an actual plan for where the blood would splatter?” I cross my arms and arch an eyebrow.

“A semblance of one.”

“Be serious right now. What’s the plan?”

This morning, my brother snuck out of our little Maine lake town, drove to the Boston airport, and got on a plane to Florida.

He waited until I was elbow-deep in testing out a tweaked apple pie recipe for the Portland Springfest pie competition in March.

I wasn’t paying attention to my phone and must’ve missed the geo alert notifying me that Noah was out of the area.

He’d counted on that. As soon as I realized it, I raced to follow him. He’d probably counted on that as well.

“I don’t have a revised plan just yet. But I’d have figured it out without you, you know.” He yawns to emphasize how unconcerned he is.

“You would have, huh.” For fuck’s sake.

“And anyway, I have a psycho younger brother who obsessively tracks me, so I knew he’d come eventually to help sort it out. That’s you, by the way.”

I close my eyes for a beat and pray for strength. Protecting my brother from himself is almost a full-time job.

“Are you sure there aren’t cameras?” I say when I’m ready to face this.

He shrugs.

“Did you check the hallway?”

Noah blinks and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. One look at him and you’d think he has a boring desk job as an accountant or financial advisor, not a side hustle as a serial killer.

I swear to god.

“Not yet.”

I just stare at him.

“It’s an old-ass building. There’s no way there are security cameras.”

While Noah talks and justifies why he went off plan, I’m coming up with one that’ll take care of this mess and get us back to Maine.

It takes three hours to thoroughly clean the apartment and drag the man’s body and heavy rug out of the building and into the rental car for disposal.

Noah was probably right—there was only one camera in the stairwell, and the lens was smashed to bits.

I hacked into the city’s closest street-view cameras, which are on a bigger road a few hundred feet from the apartment building’s entrance.

I don’t think they would catch anything considering the distance and angle of the cameras, but just in case.

By the time I’ve done the best I can to cover our tracks, it’s the middle of the night.

Dark is helpful cover when you’re filling a trunk with a body and blood-splattered rug.

“You’re getting sloppy.” I let out a long breath and lower the window in the rental car as I pull away from the apartment building. This was a mess, but I’m enjoying the warm Florida air, even in the middle of the night. February is cold as fuck in Maine.

I hope we didn’t miss anything and this little side quest of Noah’s doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.

“Yeah. I know. Sorry.” To his credit, Noah sounds genuinely remorseful.

“I need you to stop going rogue.” I glance over at him in the passenger seat. “For your protection. And mine. You promised you’d be more careful, and we’d agree on targets and timing.”

“I know. But this guy was scum, Wes.”

I sigh. He’s right.

Noah and I both spend too much time on the dark web. He canvases chat rooms and message boards for targets, and has an anonymous contact who feeds him information. I’m on there searching for information and clues so we can vet the targets and locate them. He’s ideas, I’m execution.

The man Noah killed was named John Williams.

Williams fit all our criteria.

He targeted young women.

He was a rapist.

He’d already killed at least two of the women he assaulted.

Police don’t often prioritize solving cases of assault or murder of immigrants, sex workers, or homeless women.

Because the women Williams targeted were so far from home, they didn’t have families here on the ground demanding attention to their missing person or homicide cases.

Some of those families probably don’t realize their daughters are even gone.

The cops are fucking it all up, as they often do in these kinds of situations.

We pick up what the police drop. Usually in a more organized fashion than this. I wanted to wait for more information on John Williams, but Noah never wants to wait once he has someone on his radar. He gets hyperfocused on eliminating them before they can eliminate anyone else.

Which, fair.

We’ve been doing this for a decade, but lately, Noah’s gotten sloppier. He doesn’t like that I try to slow him down.

My phone buzzes in the cup holder, and at the next red light, I click open a new notification on Gone, the highly encrypted app I use to communicate with clients.

CC95

Can you help me find someone?

The message fades and fades until it disappears completely within seconds. Screenshots are disabled within Gone, but obviously I’ve found a way around that when needed.

But I have no idea who this CC95 person is. Usually people find me through referrals. It’s not like there’s a directory of people who do my kind of people-finding work. I’ll respond to CC95 later, after we finish cleaning up the mess in our trunk.

“I got directions to a spot,” Noah says, staring at his phone.

“Yeah? Better be good.”

“We’re in Florida,” Noah says. “Lots of creepy places to ditch bodies.”

And he’s right.

Two hours later, Noah takes over driving as we leave the Everglades and head to Orlando to catch a flight back home. You couldn’t pay me to live in a state where you can toss a body into a swamp and reasonably assume that alligators will take care of the mess for you.

With Noah driving, I finally have a chance to open Gone again to respond to the message that popped up hours ago.

Noah and I both have multiple streams of income.

I take cybersecurity project work for corporations via a freelance agency.

It’s boring as shit but I get paid well.

On the side, I find people for significant sums of money.

According to the IRS, Noah’s main source of income is renovating cabins in the spring and summer.

And we’re hobby serial killers, which I realize sounds a bit fucked up. No one pays us to kill people. We do it for the greater good.

Everyone’s fucked up in their own way, I guess.

The sun is starting to rise as we approach Orlando, and I’m half tempted to suggest we keep driving west and get some beach time in before heading back to the freezing-ass Maine winter.

Me

Who are you looking for?

CC95

My husband

She responds instantly, and I’m not a huge fan of her answer. Domestic disputes aren’t really my thing.

Me

Who is your husband, who referred you, and who are you?

CC95

His name is Shane Robertson, and I want to serve him divorce papers. My brother, Jake Callahan, referred me. My name is Callie Callahan

So much for keeping things cryptic via Gone. She’s just throwing out full government names like she has no sense of self-preservation.

“Callahan,” I say, turning to my brother. “I just got a job request from someone named Callie Callahan. Her brother is Jake Callahan, and he referred me.”

“Callahan as in the crime family?” Noah glances over at me, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t know. I guess.” I usually don’t do much work with crime families because of what happened a decade ago. And a crime family domestic dispute sounds extra dangerous. Still, my curiosity is piqued. Piqued enough to find out more information, not to necessarily agree to the job.

Me

Let’s meet to discuss. I’m out of town right now. End of this week? You pick the place and time

CC95

Okay. Friday, Maine Coffee Co in Portland at 3pm?

I agree and put my phone down. I usually don’t meet in person, but I want to be able to read body language while she explains what she needs. I can usually tell if someone is lying or being sketchy.

“While I have you as a captive audience, should we talk about the list?” Noah glances over at me.

“For fuck’s sake, you just took a guy out. You want to plan the next one already?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

I can’t imagine where Noah would be without me.

We weren’t born like this. We were made into what we are today by shit that went down a long time ago.

I used to hate what we do way more than I do now. When I’m in doubt, I remind myself that without us, there’d be so many more women and girls hurt.

We couldn’t save our sister, but we can save others like her.

“Alright. Let’s talk about your list.”

Noah nods to his backpack, and I pull out his notebook. As we talk, I make a mental list of things to work on later tonight.

Including researching Callie Callahan.