Chapter 7 #3
While we were busy entering the property from the window, he’d arrived right behind us and snuck in through the building’s main door. I didn’t need to know what happened afterward, so I went back in reverse to all the street cameras on our way, noticing the cop following us—but not too closely.
Long minutes passed as I went through one camera after another, a sense of dread creeping into my blood the closer I got to our building. Every camera I checked, he was there. Right behind us on his motorcycle.
Knox Steele hadn’t started following us midway from a random crossroad.
The motherfucker had started to follow us from our building’s main fucking entrance.
He’d arrived from the opposite avenue, not even pausing near our building.
It was as if he knew that we’d exited our building and turned onto this particular avenue.
It was as if he’d seen us exiting the building.
But he wasn’t patrolling the building. He’d arrived from—I went even further and checked—his precinct.
The dread that had been slowly creeping up my spine shot up to my brain, pinging all my senses and blaring a code red alert through my body.
He was watching us.
With lightning speed, I opened the feeds from the cameras I’d installed in the entirety of the parking garage.
I went back to today’s recording. It took a while to go through twenty-four hours of footage, pausing every time I saw a large man walking through the garage.
And I had no clue as to how many days had passed since the fucking cop had eyes on us.
My gut told me he had cameras in our building. Or across from our building. But if it were across, he wouldn’t have been able to follow us so quickly. It had to be somewhere in the basement.
Fuck.
There was only one way to find out quickly.
I stood and pulled out my mask from the back pocket of my sweatpants. After securing it on my scarred side, I pulled up my hoodie and turned to Shadow. “You ready for a little walk, baby? Who’s gonna go downstairs?”
He immediately barked and bounced around. “Yes, you are. Yes, you are.”
I looked at the clock in the main hallway after stepping out of my office space. I had been glued to the screen for the past two hours. It was close to morning already.
Fucking cop, ruining my sleep.
The HQ was utterly silent. Dominic, Lena, and Naomi must’ve all gone back to their apartments, which were all upstairs. Naomi was right above the HQ, Lena above her, Sloane and I on the floor above her, with Dominic and Samaira on the top floor of the building.
I walked into our private elevator and hit the Level 1 parking button. If he’d entered the parking garage, he would’ve started installing the cameras from there.
The parking garage was eerily quiet because normal people slept and woke up at normal times.
My eyes took in the whole space, and I walked to where I’d installed my own cameras, which gave me the maximum coverage from the best vantage point.
The question was, if the cop installed his own cameras near existing cameras, would he risk detection, or would he prefer to hide his cameras and sacrifice the best vantage points?
The moment I reached my first camera, I saw it. The cop was fucking bold, I’d give him that. He had his camera installed right under mine.
I jogged to the storage unit, Shadow right on my tail, and dragged out a stepladder.
Leaning it against the wall, I climbed up the rungs until I was face-to-face with his camera.
I stared right into it, my eyes burning with challenge.
Arrogance pumped through my veins as I flipped him off, then snapped the tiny camera right off the wall.
I dropped it to the floor and slammed my foot on it over and over until it was just a pile of broken plastic pieces.
Plucking one of the largest pieces from the pile, I brought it to Shadow. I held it under his nose and cooed, “Shadow baby, smell the piece. Smell the man.”
Shadow was my sniffing master. We’d been training together for years. He could detect hidden bombs, drugs, and anything that I asked him to find.
He sniffed the piece I held and got down to sniffing the broken remnants.
“Yes, baby. Just like that. Find me all the cameras. Every single one.” I rubbed his scruff as Shadow started to turn around. “Good boy. Let’s go.”
For the next two hours, that was exactly what we did.
Find the camera. Flip off the camera. Smash the camera.
Find. Flip off. Smash. Repeat.
Find. Flip off. Smash. Repeat.
Find. Flip off. Smash. Repeat.
Over and over again. Until all forty-seven cameras were reduced to dust.
But I knew the kind of crazy that was Lt. Knox Steele. If I were him, I’d manage to reinstall the cameras. I’d manage to have my eyes on him.
Now that he’d seen me and knew my place of work—I still wasn’t sure if he’d figured out I lived here as well—and knew that I was onto him, he wasn’t going to stop.
Whether he would hunt me down tomorrow or savor the chase, only time would tell.
But if he was going to chase me, keep his eyes and ears on me, I damn well would have my eyes and ears on him too.
The game wouldn’t be fucking fun otherwise.
He started it, but I was damn well going to finish it.