11. Ivy
ELEVEN
IVY
Six kills.
Six targets I’d stolen out from under their noses. Six weeks, I’d stalked them from close by, haunting their dreams, dogging their steps, making them wonder when and where I’d strike next. Tonight was the last one. I planned to stick around where I knew they’d spot me, wait for them to show up, and incapacitate them with a gas grenade. From there, I could stuff them in the trunk of the car I had on loaner, transport them to the warehouse, and take my sweet time killing them, one by one.
Except here I was, stuck watching my coworker and her boyfriend suck face over the top of the bar as I scrubbed the forty or so glasses that never got used but always seemed to get dirty.
“Regina, are you going to make out with him all night, or are you planning to help me close down?”
Regina reluctantly pulled away from her boyfriend, whose name I refused to remember despite the million and one times she talked about him to anyone who would listen, with a little wink and a smile that told me exactly what they’d be doing the minute they got out of this place and into a semi-secluded place. She huffed in annoyance and marched over to the mop bucket, dragging it behind her pitifully with a woe-is-me look in her eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, Ivy, I got it. I’ll mop, you wash.”
She hated work in general, but damned if she didn’t despise the dishes. I couldn’t blame her—during our weekday shifts, there was an old man who would come in and sit right in front of the sinks so he could watch our tits bounce while we scrubbed various glasses and mixing tools. It was creepy as fuck, but we couldn’t afford to skip out on his fifty-dollar tips, so we suffered it and cashed out at the end of the night.
It wasn’t like men who weren’t paying didn’t ogle us, too. At least we could benefit monetarily from this fucker.
She dragged ass so long that I’d managed to wash all the dishes, clean the bartop, and counted the drawer before she made it back around to me with a bucket of now- filthy mop water. “Can I just pay you twenty bucks to finish for me, Ivy?” Her gaze darted to the doorway where her boyfriend lingered, talking animatedly into the phone at an obnoxiously loud volume. “Chad is waiting for me, and I don’t wanna keep him waiting.”
Her annoying giggle made me cringe in secondhand embarrassment. God, I was willing to do anything to get her out of here before they started pawing each other in front of me.
“Make it thirty, and you’ve got a deal.” I knew damn well I could get out of here still in enough time to get changed, get ready, and get set up in time to intercept the Neon Dogs. I knew where they planned to be tonight, thanks to my little bug, and I knew damn well they wouldn’t waste time once they got there, but I had time. Besides, I’d work faster without her.
She handed over the cash and rushed out the front door, Chad hot on her heels, his hands already playing grab ass on his way out.
I’d had a few boyfriends when I was younger. The last one was in college, when I was a different person. Dating got hard once you dedicated your life to killing men in revenge. So, outside a few one-night stands and drunken bathroom hookups, I hadn’t bothered with the opposite sex in a while. I wasn’t above using my hand when the urge to release some pent-up sexual tension arose, but there wasn’t room in my mind for that sort of shit. Not when every waking moment was carefully calculated to progress my goal, and every sleeping moment was spent reliving that horror show of a night or imagining all the ways I could fail and what would happen to me if I did.
A half-hour later, alone with my thoughts for far too long, I finally locked the doors, set the alarm, and walked out the back exit, tossing my apron in the passenger seat as I slid into the car’s driver’s seat. I swore at my lack of foresight as I realized I forgot to pack pants for today, staring down at my prissy-ass pleated black work skirt .
It’ll have to do.
I tore off my work tee and replaced it with a short cropped hoodie, spray painted with the Neon Dog’s moniker—that stupid bright-ass smiling face, twisted and warped into something hideous and frightening. I slipped into my own mask, a pink neon thing with a wicked grin that I’d attached a gas mask filter to the inside of to compliment their rainbow of colors, and slung my supplies over my shoulder in a satchel.
I had a knife, three knockout gas grenades, zip ties, rope, and three blindfolds.
I was prepared.
After all this time, it was finally going to happen. I was going to put these fuckers in the ground where they belonged. I’d finally get the retribution for my father that I’d been searching for. My whole life’s purpose, finally coming to a head.
And I’d never felt more alive than in that moment as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed to the affluent part of town, passing carefully through the back alleys of neighborhoods I’d once lived in. I knew the kinds of people who hung around here. Rich, affluential people with cares that rarely extended past their own noses.
I cringed inwardly as I pulled into the alley behind the row of storage buildings where their target was supposed to be tonight. My car was too loud to keep running, so I killed the engine and slipped out of the damn thing, checking the numbers on the storage units as I walked past them one by one, searching for the number I’d heard the guys mention when they made their plan of action last night.
Three thirty-one, three thirty-two, sheesh, how many of these units were there?
I came to a corner and prepared to stroll around the corner, the trusty bat I’d bought when I returned Jackal’s tossed casually over my shoulder when I heard a familiar voice ring out in the alley between unit buildings .
“Alright, man, let’s get this over with. I’m not in the mood to play with my prey tonight.”
Dingo, the one I’d drugged in the club, sounded tired and very much not in the mood for games. He’d be an easy target tonight. I waited to see if I could hear the others and place them in relation to my position, but they either weren’t talking yet or they were busy doing other things.
In the corner of the alley was a dumpster, and from the looks of it, it was close enough to the side of the building for me to climb up and give me a better vantage point. The options were either that or walking right up to them, assuming they wouldn’t react fast enough to stop me.
I couldn’t take unnecessary risks. This had to work tonight, or I’d lose the element of surprise and put them on guard. And breaking back into the Guild to kidnap them from there was a no-go. I could gas them while they slept, but hefting three grown-ass men out of there without getting caught would be damn near impossible.
A minute later, I’d managed to climb up to the roof, and I was now watching from above as the three targets I’d stalked for so long all three took their bats to a man who’d likely earned far worse than that punishment.
Unlike most of their targets, this one wouldn’t be getting a ride behind their bikes for his troubles. The instructions were to leave him in his storage unit for his partners to find. A warning, if you would.
My plan was simple—let the dogs do the work, let them have their kill, and then slide in at the last minute with a gas grenade, knock them out, and toss them in my trunk. Once they were tied up and gassed out, I’d have around an hour to get back to the warehouse and get them trussed up just how I wanted.
I could do this.
Adrenaline pumped through my veins as I watched the blood fly from the tip of Jackal’s bat, new wounds appearing as he grinned wickedly and landed blow after blow on the whining, sniveling cretin laying on the concrete in a puddle of his own piss, from the looks of it. I crouched lower so I wouldn’t get spotted when they turned and started dragging his body into the storage unit, then slipped to the edge of the roof, reached a hand inside my satchel, and sighed in relief when my hand closed around the smooth cylinder of a gas grenade.
Showtime.
My hands were shaking just a tad as I clenched the metal canister in one hand, the pull ring in the other, and prepared to tug the little metal stick out and throw the damn thing.
I only had one chance to get it right.
Maybe I shouldn’t do this from above. If I don’t get the angle right, I could miss.
I shimmy-ed down the side of the building again, but this time, I missed the damn dumpster. Thankfully, I had practice falling from heights I shouldn’t fall from, and let my knees absorb the impact like a cat.
The dogs were arguing with each other when I got back within hearing range.
“Something feels off about tonight, man. We had six weeks of getting our kills stolen out from under our fucking noses, and now the copycat is nowhere to be seen?”
Jackal sounded paranoid. Good. I’d have paid good money to see his face right now. But hearing it in his voice was almost as satisfying.
The stoic, silent one sighed in annoyance, mumbling about hurrying up before he returned to being silent again.
Dingo, ever the leader, sounded like he was a dad in charge of two unruly teenagers. “I swear, you two are the biggest bunch of conspiracists I’ve ever met. Why does everything have to be fishy? Just be glad we’re back in business.”
Now.
I pulled the pin and rolled the canister gently across the ground, ducking back around the side of the door to the storage unit as the knockout gas began to hiss out of the grenade, filling the air in seconds with a huge cloud.
“What the fuck?”
Jackal and the others didn’t have time enough to react. They didn’t have masks that would protect them from the effects of the chemicals rapidly entering their lungs. They were toast, destined to be my victims from the moment they stepped foot on my father’s property.
And now, they were all mine.
I listened as one, two, three bodies fell to the ground, their systems already fighting a losing battle against the gas. I pulled a second from my bag and tugged the pin out of it, too, holding it like a beacon in my hand as I strolled around the side of the door and into view.
Dingo was leaning against an old trunk in the corner, his hand over his mouth, a futile effort, though I had to hand it to him. His eyes were hidden behind his mask, but I could see the moment he realized they were screwed, because his whole body went rigid, and he uttered a single word from behind the cheap plastic as his hand fell to his side and his body went limp.
“Fuck.”
Jackal knelt beside an already unconscious Coyote as I moved to stand in front of him. His mask lay on the floor beside him, abandoned without a care in the confusion. His eyes pinned me in place, though his movements were sluggish and obviously not a threat.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his hands balled into fists on his thighs as he struggled against the effects of the gas. “What the fuck do you want with us?”
My arm rose as if possessed by a demon, perhaps one of his making, even, and pointed the gas straight at his face. He inhaled it and laughed, perhaps finally resigning himself to his fate .
“Fuck you,” I spat, anger taking over me in the moment. “I want to make you pay.” I shoved a single booted foot in the center of his chest, sending him sprawling on his back with a groan of pain. “And now,” I continued, settling that same booted heel against his throat, the urge to stomp out his life suddenly very real. “Now, I will.”
The last thing he saw was the incoming side of my bat as I took it to the side of his head and knocked him the rest of the way out, my snarling laughter echoing in the metal box as the lights went out behind his eyes, sealing his fate.
I finally had them.
And now, I would make them pay.