Chapter Six
Caymen
I’d been picking locks damn near my entire life.
See, both my parents had no business bringing a kid into the world, let alone fighting to get me back after the state finally stepped in and put me in temporary foster care.
They were addicts. And not in the ‘they struggle with addiction’ kind of way. They were junkies, pure and simple. They didn’t want to be sober. They didn’t want to ‘turn their lives around.’ They wanted to drink, shoot, and snort their way into oblivion.
My old man managed to hold down a job to feed the habit only because his uncle took pity on him and let him work construction.
My mom, well, she had a string of jobs for a while before she decided the easiest way to make money was on her knees or back.
So it was a string of Johns in the house as soon as my old man left for work each day.
Did he know?
I wasn’t sure how the fuck he didn’t.
But he never said anything about it.
As for my mom, well, she used to shove me in my closet and lock me in so I didn’t bother her while she was ‘working.’
The problem?
She would go from sucking or fucking right out to get her next fix. Forgetting about me being locked up. With nowhere to pee, nothing to eat, sitting in the dark on the hard floor until I found an old bobby pin on the floor.
I’d seen lots of shows at that point with people using pins of all sorts to pick locks. So I set my little seven-year-old hands to work.
The first time was unsuccessful, no matter how hard I tried.
I didn’t get out until my old man got home from work, heard me jiggling the knob, yanked the door open, then dragged me out while yelling at me for ‘getting myself locked in the closet.’
But after that, alone in my room while they partied with their friends in the living room, I practiced. And practiced. And practiced.
Until I could get out within seconds of trying.
So working on Noa’s lock was—literally, in my case—child’s play.
Straightening to see her standing there in nothing but a towel with a big-ass gun pointed at me, that was a brand new fucking experience.
And I liked it a lot more than I would ever admit.
As I looked, a bead of water dropped off one of her waves and slid down her chest, curving around her breasts, to disappear between.
I was hard from just that.
I didn’t know what this woman was doing to me, but I was fucking game, man.
“You turned my cameras up?”
“Expecting someone else?”
“Are you alone?”
“In here, yeah. Technically, no. My brother is parked down the road a bit.”
“Club brother?”
“Yeah. But also blood brother. Glad I made his ass sit this one out. He didn’t deserve to see this.”
“And you did?”
“Spent half an hour chained to a bed by you. So, yeah, I deserve it.”
“Thirty minutes? That’s a disappointing amount of time to pick a handcuff key.”
“Couldn’t reach for anything.”
“You should be more prepared than that.”
“Like this?” I asked, pulling the cuff key out of my pocket.
Her lips twitched a bit at that.
“Worried I might cuff you again?”
“Figure if I’m dealing with you, I should be prepared.”
“Well, luckily, you won’t be dealing with me. Get out of my apartment. It would be a real shame to mess all that up,” she said, gaze sliding down me, then back up, “with a bullet hole.”
A woman threatening to shoot me had no right to be hot. And yet.
“You’re not gonna shoot me.”
“You’ve yet to give me a reason not to.”
“How about I’m not here to hurt you.”
“And yet, you’re armed.”
“I’m not the one with my finger near a trigger.”
“You’re not the one whose home was broken into.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed, looking around, hoping to put her more at ease, since I didn’t think she was the kind of woman who was going to believe promises about not hurting her.
“You got the whole top floor, huh?” I asked.
It was a cavernous space that she kept as a giant studio.
Since she seemed like someone who was always paranoid about threats, I figured the layout had everything to do with there not being many places for someone to hide to catch her unaware—just the bathroom and closet.
Even her bed, which was toward the far left, was on a platform, so no one could climb under it.
The bathroom was just inside the door to the right. And behind that, was the kitchen and dining space.
Directly forward was her living room, featuring a lush blue corduroy couch and a large flatscreen on the wall. To each side and beneath the TV were glass door cabinets full to the fucking brim with DVD cases.
Someone was into movies.
I couldn’t say why, but it was nice to know that about the woman who, so far, was a complete enigma.
A few feet from the TV was another screen, but it was showing the camera feeds.
Somewhere between the couch and the dining space was an executive desk facing outward with a laptop and several notepads set on top with folders sitting beneath them.
“Like doing shit the old fashioned way, huh?” I asked, nodding toward the notepads, then the movies.
“No digital devices are safe. Everything on them can be recovered. Burnt paper can not. And it’s really stupid to ‘buy’ digital copies since you’re not actually buying them, you’re renting them.
And they can snatch them back at anytime.
Several of those movies aren’t available to watch anywhere and aren’t sold anymore.
There’s value in physical media. Even if they kind of clutter up a space. ”
“Big movie buff, huh?” I asked, walking over to the cabinets to peruse her collection.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but whatever it was, I was covered. She seemed to watch… everything. From big blockbuster superhero movies to indie films I’d never even heard of. Cheesy, borderline offensive early aughts comedies? She had ‘em. Rom-coms? Those too.
“We all have our hobbies.”
I looked back over, still finding the gun trained on me. “You really not gonna put that down?”
“You really not gonna leave my home?”
“Not until we have a little conversation.”
“I’m not interested in talking to you.”
“We could… not talk…” I suggested, gaze sliding to the bed, despite knowing this was not the time to be thinking with my dick.
“You into being fucked with a gun to your head?” she asked, making a chuckle escape me.
“Fuck,” I said, reaching to rub the back of my neck. “I just might be.”
“Why are you here?”
“To talk,” I reminded her.
“On your president’s order?” she asked. “Or Zayn’s?”
“We don’t take orders from Zayn. We work with him.”
“Sure you do,” she said with a snort.
“That’s funny?”
“If you think you work on a completely level playing field with an international arms dealer, then, yes. How many yachts do you have? Million-dollar sports cars? How many countries do you have homes in?”
“He takes more risks. That’s why he makes more money. We do just fine.”
“I’m sure you do. But he’s still not working alongside you. You’re working for him, whether you like that or not. And it’s not just that lethal Daniyal guy he has on his payroll. So you’ll excuse me for not believing you’re here in good faith.”
A part of me maybe agreed with her. We weren’t on the same playing field as Zayn.
But working with him made our work easier.
My brother and I joined up when he was already in the picture, but we knew that before he came around, not only did we have to source weapons (we still did), but we had to find people to sell them to. And then do the drops.
It was cleaner and less dangerous to work with Zayn. But so far, things had gone well. This was the first time a job went sideways. And we had no idea what Zayn was capable of when he didn’t get his way.
To be fair, though, he wasn’t angry with us.
This wasn’t our fuck-up. We never even had our eyes on the guns.
All we did was grease the right palms to get them into Florida.
The other guys were the ones who had possession of them.
Then, of course, Noa. And as much as I didn’t want to imagine that the guy we partied with all the time was capable of hurting a woman, the fact was that I didn’t know for sure.
Clearly, Noa didn’t either.
I couldn’t fault her for being paranoid.
“Look, I can tell you that no one suspects you of taking the shipment.”
“You’d be idiots if you did. But they were in my possession. And now they’re not.”
“Which is why we want to talk to you. To figure out what we can about these guys. How to get to them. Make them cough up the goods. Or point us to where they sold them.”
“I’m handling it.”
“Are you? ‘Cause it looks like you’re running.” I nodded toward the duffle bag and weekender sitting on the bed. Already packed.
“From the cops,” she said, rolling her eyes. “They don’t have my real name. And they can’t access the security system on my part of that warehouse. But if there were other cameras…”
“Where were you going?”
“Nowhere yet. I was getting changed then getting in my car to track down these idiots. If I need somewhere to crash after that until I’m sure the cops aren’t after me, I have somewhere. But I needed some of my shit.”
“Alright. But doesn’t it make more sense to have help to find them? They outnumber you.”
“Trust me, I can take them.”
“And if someone else is involved in this now? Can you take them too?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Noa, come the fuck on. Don’t be stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. We are all on the same team here. We should be working together.”
“I’m not on any team. I work alone.”
“Normally, yeah, but right now, this is something that involves all of us.”
“I will keep Zayn abreast of any updates. But I don’t need a half a dozen bikers tailing along while I’m trying to work. Not to be rude, but you stick out like a sore thumb. I’m sure the rest of your club brothers do as well. This needs to be done under the radar.”
“I’m not sure that’s an option.”
“So much for niceties, huh?”
“Still being… hold up,” I said when my phone vibrated in my pocket. “Just reaching for my phone,” I said when her posture stiffened.
She took a few steps to the side, watching my hand as it slid into my pocket, and only relaxing when she saw it was what I said it was.
“What’s up?” I asked after hitting the call.
“A car has been down this street three times. Could be nothing, but—”
But chances were, with all this shit going down, it wasn’t.
“Get out of here,” I demanded.
“I can—”
“Now, Dixon,” I demanded.
I moved toward the window, but I heard his bike rumble to life and pull off.
Not two seconds later, there were tires screeching.
And the first bullet ripped through the window.