25. Ivy
TWENTY-FIVE
IVY
Jackal was a fucking prick. If he thought a little nudity was going to scare me, he had another thing coming. I stayed in there with a bullshit excuse just to make him feel awkward.
Except it was me marching out in a rush as I fled the scene, the sheer size of him, even soft, a shock to anyone’s system.
Nobody that shitty should be blessed with such a massive, perfect dick.
It wasn’t right. Wasn’t fair.
Still didn’t stop me from wanting to hop right the fuck on it.
Dingo still bounced around in his room, and Coyote was nowhere to be found, so I took refuge on the couch, grabbing the remote to flip through the channels on this fucking tv like I was a normal human being, relaxing at home at the end of a busy day, looking for something to binge. Instead, the reality was I was a fucking killer amongst killers, living a lie, avoiding the inevitable.
One day soon I’d have to face the reality that I had nothing planned for myself beyond finding, infiltrating, torturing, and killing the Neon Dogs. I didn’t know where or what came next. I was just winging it over here, and when Coyote had offered their lives in servitude, it felt like one more way to drive the stake in deeper. Jackal was all for dying instead, which only served to make the idea even more tempting. When I moved in with them, my plan was to cause them as many headaches as possible, then kill them when I got tired of playing with these little strays.
Instead, I was looking for more ways to get under their skin in the hopes they’d snap and give me a reason. Jackal was a fight at all ends, stonewalling me, going against my every word and order as much as possible. Dingo was indifferent, seemingly just along for the ride, but I couldn’t help noticing the sad looks he shot my way whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.
And Coyote.
Well.
That was complicated.
I was starting to wish he’d open his mouth and talk to me, as much as I knew it was unlikely, bordering on never gonna happen. He hadn’t paced the living room reading Shakespeare since I started staying here, and part of me wondered if that was because of my presence. Something in me, something small, regretted pushing him out of his small self-serving hobby the others didn’t know about.
Or if they knew, they weren’t vocal about it.
This plan of mine had grown legs of its own, and every day presented me with another opportunity to make their lives miserable. The more time I spent with the Neon Dogs, the more I learned, and the easier it was to find ways to get under their skin. The goal was to make life so agonizingly intolerable that they hated coexisting with me. Then, when they’d outlived their usefulness, I’d?—
I’d what, exactly? Could I just walk out of here after signing contracts? Could I reasonably expect my life to last long after a thing like that? I didn’t plan on returning to my old life, and I sure as fuck wasn’t going crawling back to my mother for protection or support. I left her and that life behind when I took to the streets and threw away my bank cards.
That was something for future me to figure out.
Right now, I had bigger fish to fry. Like how to get under Dingo’s skin today.
Coyote and Jackal were off doing recon for a new contract, one they had hand-picked. Dingo was supposed to be on house duty, which was their not-so-sneaky term for don’t leave the murderous bitch alone in our house duty. I wasn’t stupid. But letting them think I was ignorant of their plans was easier. Sooner or later, though, I needed them all out of my way so I could find out the truth about my father’s hit. I needed to know who fingered him and why, and the only way I could get that intel was to get deep inside their ranks, get access to their old files, wherever those were.
Someone like St. Clair probably kept impeccable records. If I could get access to them, dig my fingers in the past work of the Guild, I could let the long reach of revenge touch a few more lives.
Revenge didn’t have to end with the Neon Dogs. Making everyone involved pay for his death was nearly within my reach. All I had to do was move a few pieces around the chessboard of this game, and then I’d have so much more than I’d ever dared to hope for.
Dingo wandered into the kitchen sometime later, huffing and sighing over the lack of food in their fridge or something. I didn’t really care as long as it didn’t directly affect me.
After the tenth sigh, though, I was starting to lose my cool. Who exactly was annoying who here?
Another sigh left his mouth, and I snapped, whirling on the couch to lean over the back and stare pointedly in his direction. “Something bothering you, dog?”
He looked up suddenly, shock written all over his face, as if he’d forgotten I was even here. “The fuck does it matter to you?” His gaze turned longingly in the direction of the fridge, and he sighed again, prompting me to roll my eyes at the obvious display.
He was like a fucking child sometimes.
“Why don’t you go to the fucking store if there’s no food?”
“I already thought of that,” he muttered, picking his nails as I watched, my lip twitching at his disgusting habit. “Can’t leave the—I mean, I wouldn’t want to leave you here alone.”
My eyebrow joined my lip with a twitch of its own, admiring the balls it took to admit they didn’t feel like leaving me alone was safe. “Why not? I’m perfectly fine here on my own. Might just take a nap while you’re gone. ”
As if to punctuate the suggestion, I stretched and yawned, only half faking it. Sleeping on a damn couch was starting to get to me, and since I hadn’t slept in a bed voluntarily since the first night, when Coyote caught me slipping and dragged me into his, the poor sleep quality was starting to have adverse effects on my health.
I really hoped those contractors would be available to come and do some renovations soon. I could use my own fucking room, even if it was just temporary.
Dingo side-eyed me for a moment more, then seemingly decided to take me up on the offer, disappearing back into his room for a few minutes. When he came back out, he had on a jacket and shoes, and he slipped his key into the lock on his handle, effectively sealing me out—or so he thought.
Dingo didn’t realize I could pick even his locks.
It took him another ten minutes to work up the courage to leave, giving me a parting glance before he reluctantly closed the door and left me here unguarded.
I waited a whole five minutes before I commenced the breaking and entering.
“There’s no fucking way.”
Dingo’s room smelled like the ocean, like teakwood and sand and salt and sunshine, as if someone had scooped the beach up and placed it here, under his bed or something. The scent was so heady, so relaxing, I took a moment to breathe it in when I first entered the room.
And then I got to work, combing through his drawers carefully, intent on not letting him know I’d snooped. I didn’t care if they knew, per se, but the longer they were in the dark, the more I stood a chance of learning without them filtering what I was and wasn’t allowed to see.
I found the motherload in the bottom of his closet, where stacks of boxes labeled with a year on the side sat in wait, as if placed there by the hand of a benevolent god for my reaping. A quick shuffle through the stack told me there were only records here from the last three years, which wasn’t quite enough to cover the contract I was looking for.
I’d have to dig deeper to unearth the secrets of my father’s contract.
Dingo’s choice store was clear across town, and with his habit of taking his time in search of perfect produce, I knew I had at least an hour or two before he’d even head back this way. I sat down on his bed with a box from last year and pulled out a handful of manilla folders, each one labeled with a date and their unit’s name, the Neon Dogs. Curious, I unwound the little string holding the first one closed and dumped the contents out on Dingo’s duvet, spreading the multitude of photos and a well-put-together dossier over the wrinkles in the knitted fabric.
Three folders later, and I was left more confused than ever.
Were these men killers, or saints?
Every man, woman, and vermin masquerading as human in these files deserved the deaths the Neon Dogs had handed out to them, and then some. There were pictures with each completed file, along with a contract and bank records showing the transactions leaving an anonymous account, wired to an offshore account that likely was well out of reach of any government oversight branch.
So that’s how they did it.
Keeping the money offshore was brilliant, and as long as they laundered it right, it was a perfect little loophole. And from the records of the last year, these fuckers were swimming in money, though they didn’t exactly wear it on their sleeves.
If I hadn’t seen the fucking ledgers myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. Dingo's had a monthly recurring transfer to some bank in a place called Covenant Hollow, but outside of that, these men didn’t do much with the money they acquired from their contracts.
But why not spend the money if you had it?
And why was Dingo paying someone each month? Did he have a secret child somewhere? Maybe a secret family, a wife? Did the others know about his double life? Did they care?
Was today’s earlier fit over the lack of food in the fridge just a cover so he could buy time to go see them?
I shook my head, closing my eyes against the stupid, wild thoughts running rampant in my sleep-deprived brain. I’d been watching one too many TV dramas if I was creating a fake family and an alternate life for Dingo. Man couldn’t even keep a poker face when he was lying about something as simple as food. There was no way in hell he’d been able to keep a secret like this for so long.
I dove back in, determined to find some sort of weakness in the pages of their past.