Chapter 9 – KADE #2
Jinx has been moving around the apartment while I talk, and now he reappears with a cardboard box.
He sets it on the coffee table and opens it, revealing stacks of photographs.
All of Sophia. Some taken from across the street.
Some from much closer. Some that could only have been taken from inside her apartment.
And some of a far more intimate nature that she could only have sent him, thinking she was talking to someone else entirely.
No one's sending pussy pics to this freak, that's for damn sure.
"Damn," Jinx breathes, flipping through the photos with a look of pure disgust. "This is fucked up."
My lighter stops clicking. The rage that's always simmering just under my skin starts to boil over.
"Tank, put him in the chair."
Tank drags Adam to the expensive leather recliner in the center of the living room, shoving him down hard enough to rattle his teeth. Adam tries to get up, but Tank's hand squeezing his shoulder keeps him pinned.
"Jinx, explain to our friend here exactly what's going to happen if he ever goes near Sophia again."
Jinx perches on Adam's lap like some kind of psychotic cat, taking the other man's chin in his grasp. The rings stacked on each of his fingers tink against each other with the effort. "Oh, Adam. Sweet, stupid Adam. You have no idea how much trouble you're in."
He picks up one of the photographs—Sophia getting out of her car, unaware she's being watched—and holds it up.
"See, the thing is, we know everything about you.
We know you convinced dear old Dad to lend you another million when you burned through your trust fund in record time.
We know you spend your days trading stocks and your nights jerking off to pictures of women who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
And we know you've done this before. There was that girl in Seattle, wasn't there? And another one in Portland?"
Adam's face goes white.
We've done our homework, dug into every corner of his pathetic existence. Cyrus is thorough like that.
"But here's what you don't know," Jinx continues, his voice dropping to a whisper. "We're not the cops. We're not bound by laws or procedures or the need to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. We're something much worse."
He leans forward, close enough that Adam can probably smell his overpriced cologne, and licks the sweat beading down the side of Adam's face all the way up to his forehead before whispering, "We're justice."
Nasty.
But Jinx always has been a bona fide freak.
That's why he fits in with us.
I take the box of photographs from the table, feeling their weight in my hands. Hundreds of pictures. Hundreds of violations. Hundreds of moments when Sophia thought she was safe.
"Cy, you find anything else we should know about?" I ask.
"Oh yeah," Cyrus's smug voice comes through the comm. "Our boy's got a whole digital collection too. Hidden partition on his hard drive. Videos, more photos, even some charming audio recordings of him whacking it while describing what he wants to do to her. From her closet."
The lighter in my hand clicks open, and this time I don't close it. The flame dances in the dim light and the shadows make everything look like it's already burning.
"Adam," I say, my voice deadly calm. "I want you to understand something.
We could kill you tonight. Right here, right now.
Make it look like an accident, or a robbery gone wrong, or just let you disappear completely.
No one would miss you. No one would even look very hard.
Not like you've clocked in to a nine to five in years.
And your social life?" I hiss a breath through my teeth. "Yikes."
The flame from my lighter reflects in his terrified eyes.
"But we're not going to do that. Because death would be too easy. Instead, we're going to give you a choice."
I hold up the box of photographs with one hand, the lighter with the other.
"Option one. You disappear. Tonight. You pack a bag, get in your car, and drive until you run out of continent. You never come back to this city. You never contact Sophia again. You never even think her name. And in return, we let you live your sad, pathetic life somewhere else."
The flame flickers, hungry.
"Option two. You stay. You keep being the sick fuck you've always been. And we come back. But next time, we won't be so gentle."
I bring the lighter closer to the box of photos. The corner of one catches fire immediately, the flame spreading across Sophia's face from where he took a picture from her closet.
"Your choice, Adam. What's it going to be?"
I drop the burning box into the marble fireplace. The photos burn beautifully. All that obsession transforming into ash and smoke.
Adam is sobbing now, tears and snot streaming down his face. "Please," he whispers. "I'll leave. I'll go tonight. I swear, I'll never—"
Jinx springs off his lap with a grimace. "Ew! This little bitch just pissed himself."
No surprise there.
Jinx decks him harder than he looks like he should be capable of, and Adam's head snaps back so hard I'm surprised it doesn't break his neck.
Jinx's rings leave nasty cuts along his lip, but they're already covered in blood and snot from Adam's sniveling, so maybe the cuts are from his fucking teeth punching through.
"What do you think, Tank?" I ask, looking over at my brother. "You think we're letting this asshole off too easy?"
It's a classic routine. Good cop, bad cop. Unfortunately for Adam here, not one of us is good.
Tank nods.
I grin.
"See, Adam, the thing about promises is that they're just words. And words are cheap. We need something more concrete."
I signal to Tank, who produces a pair of zip ties from his jacket.
Jinx holds up an old school digital camera, grinning even wider. "Say cheese, motherfucker."
We slice Adam's clothes off, leaving him shivering and pathetic in his expensive chair and his own piss. Jinx produces a ball gag from somewhere—I've learned not to ask where he gets this shit—and shoves it into Adam's mouth.
Something tells me this is exactly the kind of thing that would get Daddy to write him out of his will.
The camera flashes as Jinx documents everything. Adam in his underwear, tied up and gagged in his own apartment. Adam sobbing, looking exactly like what he is—a broken, pathetic man who preys on women who can't fight back.
"Unlike the pictures Cyrus is scrubbing, these ones are going to live forever," Jinx explains, still snapping photos.
"Digital copies, physical copies, copies hidden in places you'll never find.
If you ever come back to this city, if you ever contact Sophia or anyone she's so much as poured a fucking latte for, if you ever even look at another woman the wrong way.
.. these pictures are going to end up everywhere.
Your country club. Your mother's bridge group.
The front page of every newspaper in the state. And trust me, we'll fucking find out."
Click. Flash. Click. Flash.
"The psycho twink's not lying," I purr, leaning in. "Imagine trying to explain to your trust-fund buddies why you're trending on social media with the hashtag StalkingLoser."
Adam's muffled sobs are the only sound in the room besides the camera.
We leave Adam tied up in his chair, gagged and humiliated with a butter knife on the side table.
By the time he manages to free himself, we'll be long gone.
And by the time he thinks about calling the police, he'll remember the pictures and decide that maybe disappearing is the better option after all.
The three of us slip out of the building like we were never there. Cyrus brings the security system back online from his hidden perch, erasing any trace of our presence. The cameras will show nothing but empty hallways and normal building operations.
Back in the car, Tank starts the engine while I light a cigarette. My hands are steady, but the scar on my arm is still burning. It always does after jobs like this. Like it's reminding me why we do this work.
"Another satisfied customer," Jinx says from the backseat, still high on adrenaline. "Think he'll actually leave town?"
"He'll leave," I reply, taking a long drag. "They always leave when you give them a choice between humiliation and death."
"And if he doesn't?"
I flick ash out the window, watching it disappear into the night. "Then we make good on our promise. But we'll take turns watching his place for a few days to make sure he gets the memo."
Tank pulls away from the curb, and we disappear into the maze of city streets with Cyrus following from somewhere close by, hidden. Just four ghosts haunting the nightmares of demons who think they can do whatever the fuck they want.
The radio crackles to life. Cyrus, back at base already. "Job's done. Client's been notified. She says thank you."
Thank you.
Like we're fucking heroes or something.
And shit, maybe we are.
Maybe justice is just four angry kids who decided that someone's gotta make the monsters pay.