Chapter 13
TARA
It had been a long mission today. We had to kidnap four men who had abused a woman. Sadly, all four of them had turned out to be runners. It had taken four of us to chase and capture the fuckers. That had been a cardio workout, for sure, before we got around to some torture and revenge.
The recruits weren’t involved in this mission. They were busy doing recon for the Russian operations.
This was Sloane’s mission, whereas the rest of us were just her support.
I was more involved in capturing the guys and navigating the streets today, so thankfully, I was clean.
I hated when blood got on all our clothes.
I didn’t mind it too much these days, what with Dominic having an entire crew that fed us and washed our clothes. Sami truly had chosen a golden man.
It was past three in the morning when I reached home. Sloane and Sami were at the safe house tonight, so Lena, Naomi, and I were the only ones to return a little early. All I needed right now was a quick shower, a long cuddle with Shadow, and an even longer night’s sleep.
With those three things in my mind, I stepped into my apartment, only to be jumped by my big baby. “Hey, Shadow baby.”
But this didn’t seem like his usual greeting. I quickly turned on the lights of my apartment and came to a screeching halt.
Something was off. My heart slammed against my ribs as my eyes scanned my apartment. “What happened here, Shadow?”
Immediately, Shadow jumped around in the living room, running circles around the dining area.
He then ran to the kitchen, near the cupboard where I kept his treats, and started lunging at them.
With my fingers clenched into a fist, I walked to the kitchen closet.
My confusion turned to certainty that something was very wrong when I found the pack of treats nearly empty. The pack was half full this morning.
My gaze turned to the sink, and sweat beaded atop my lips. My heart raced a million miles a minute as my breath turned choppy. Every single dish was clean. I never cleaned my dishes in the morning. It was one of my least favorite chores, so I left it for the night.
Goose bumps erupted along my arms as panic gripped me by the throat. Quickly, I pulled out my gun from the holster. “Anybody in the house, Shadow?” My voice trembled as I asked the question, and I bit my lip hard, hating the weakness in it.
Shadow barked. He wouldn’t have left the person alone if they were still in the house. The memories from my past threatened to escape the cage I kept them in, slamming against the iron bars and making me lose my grip on the present.
Yet I carefully walked along my hallway and stepped inside my bedroom.
A gasp tore through my chest. My room—uh—was clean. My comforter was folded. The bed was made properly. With my gun raised, I turned around and walked to my closet. The clothes strewn randomly across the floor were dumped into the laundry basket.
I searched through every nook and cranny of my apartment before quickly turning on my computer.
My fingers trembled as I clicked on the app linked to the cameras installed in my house.
Fear and helplessness collided inside me, creating a storm of panic as I searched every video feed and found nothing.
My eyes met Shadow’s. He calmly stood in front of me, unlike his usual behavior of jumping on me until I gave him food. Someone had fed him. Someone had washed my dishes. Someone had access to a tech person who had messed up my camera feed.
Only one person could do this.
What the fuck was up with that psycho?
I leaned back in my chair with a loud groan. My eyes fell on a small black device on the top shelf of my computer desk. “Motherfucker!” I shot up on my feet and grabbed the little device.
It was an audio recording device. Rage unlike anything exploded through my veins, blood like hot lava pulsing through my body.
All my fault. It’s because I encouraged this behavior. I secretly love it. Love the challenge. Love the single-minded focus on me.
I brought the device close to my lips and, with a deathly quiet voice that came straight from my dark, reckless soul, said, “Knox fucking Steele. You shouldn’t have broken into my house. Now, hide, motherfucker.”
I, then, slammed the device under my boot, crushing it. I turned to Shadow and swiped the pieces toward him. “Let’s find all the devices, baby.”
With every device that Shadow and I found, my blood ran hotter.
My anger turned to an inferno, lighting up every cell of my body.
My heart pounded in my chest, suffocating me on the inside.
The overwhelming urge to scream my lungs out was only restrained by the fact that I didn’t want that fucker to know that he had me rattled.
Scared.
Shocked.
Panicked.
Aroused.
Fuck.
He was following me. My heart fluttered in my chest, and the giddy feeling zinged through my body, leaving me aching. Somebody wanted me. My feet clenched as I looked down at the street across from the fifth floor of my apartment building and found him standing there.
His eyes were trained on my window. On me. I quickly pulled away from the window and clutched my racing heart in one hand while I pushed my other hand under my dress, inside my soaking panties. A whimper threatened to escape my lips, but I stayed quiet.
Just the thought of him standing outside my building because he couldn’t bear to be away from me, because he was obsessed with me, had arousal gushing from my core.
My eyes turned to the mirror across from me. The girl in front of me had a sick smile stretched across her face. She loved it. Loved being the center of someone’s obsession. Loved being followed. Loved being stalked. Loved that her beauty made boys do stupid things.
Not again. Not. Fucking. Again.
I slammed down the memories of the girl I used to be.
She got me into a world of trouble. She was obsessed with being obsessed.
And that had ruined my life. My own vanity had led me to the path of my destruction.
I had paid for my own pleasure and obsession with my beauty. My self-confidence. My entire identity.
It’s not your fault that someone threw acid on your face.
My therapist’s voice hammered into my skull.
Most days, I agreed with her. Some days, like today, when I could feel the heady arousal coating my thighs, when the feeling of being stalked made my heart race for entirely different reasons, I questioned her statement.
I questioned my own instincts.
A part of me wanted to punch the air in giddy delight that I could still get a man to stalk me. To be fucking obsessed with me.
He’s a cop hunting you and trying to gather evidence on you and your friends. He’s not obsessed with you, the other part of my brain—the burned and brutalized part—reminded me.
Knox Steele had broken into my apartment. My safe space. He’d installed recording devices and invaded my privacy. He had dared to stalk me. Probably to scare me and play with my emotions.
But he didn’t know me.
He didn’t know the power that Shadow Panther wielded.
He had decided to play games with me. But just because I hated this game didn’t mean I didn’t know the fucking rules.
I would show this fucker what happened when he tried to mess with me.
I grabbed the leash that hung near the door of my bedroom, put it on Shadow, picked up my favorite axe, and we rushed out of the apartment.
After a quick elevator ride down, we walked into the Wildcats HQ.
If the fucker had broken into my apartment, there was a one-hundred-percent chance that he’d broken into the Wildcats HQ.
The moment I stepped into the HQ, I dropped to my knees in front of Shadow and held a few broken pieces of the recording devices to his nose. “Find these, baby.”
Shadow sniffed the metal pieces and barked, then rushed around the entire headquarters, smelling every corner of the place.
While I tracked him sniffing up the place, I walked to my office.
It was still locked. The fucker might not have gotten in.
If he had, he wouldn’t have locked it back.
Knox Steele didn’t seem to mind leaving behind evidence of his stalking. The fucking audacity.
I unlocked my office, turned on the computer, clicked into the app connected to our cameras, and opened up all the small recording feeds on the screens. While it loaded, I stepped outside the office and went to the kitchen. Right then, Shadow rushed to me.
“You find anything, buddy?”
He ran to the cable machine, where I found the little black camera, almost camouflaged with the machine. Shadow led me to three other cameras, which I dismantled and stomped into a hundred pieces, then threw all the remnants down the fucking trash chute.
I’d have to get Shadow to check through everyone’s apartments for hidden devices.
But something inside me told me that I wouldn’t find the cameras anywhere else.
Knox Steele seemed to have a beef with me.
I was pretty sure the doorknobs led him straight to my apartment.
I had told Sloane not to have personalized doorknobs, that they were a security risk.
But she was obsessed with cute things and bringing tiny joys into our dark world.
I still remembered the unhinged, victorious smile on Knox’s face when I saw him the last time. He was after me.
A zing of excitement unfurled down my spine at that thought, and I squashed it with a growl.
I debated whether I should get Naomi and Lena downstairs, update them about Knox, and have Shadow check their places for cameras or recording devices.
But if Knox had broken into their apartments, they’d fucking know.
Just like I did. And they would be down here to check the HQ.
Their instincts were even better than mine.
Yet another clue that he might’ve spared their apartments.
For now, I’d let them sleep the night off.