Wicked Nightmare (Shattered Souls #1)

1. Chapter One Cam

Chapter One: Cam

My bed was empty when I woke this morning, as I expected it would be. After sex last night, Lakey left to go do the stalking thing she enjoyed for God knows what fucking reason. Groaning, I rolled over and checked my phone. Sixteen missed calls and seven texts.

Fuck that.

Stretching, I forced my feet to the floor.

Shower time. My mind replayed last night.

The bar, the music, the way Dani had laughed too loud at everything I said and leaned into me with her body weight, her hand on my thigh before I'd even bought her the second drink.

Cute. She made it easy. They always did when they were the type of person who thought they deserved whatever they wanted, consequences be damned.

Lakey had found this one. Number twenty-seven. My birthday present, delivered in a morally corrupt package for us to wipe off the face of the earth.

Twenty-seven for twenty-seven.

We'd been watching Dani for three weeks.

Lakey spotted her first, outside a grocery store on Second, dragging a little boy by the arm hard enough that his feet left the ground.

The kid couldn't have been older than four.

He'd dropped a juice box, and she'd yanked him so hard his shoulder popped and he screamed.

Not cried. Screamed. Dani had looked around the parking lot, checked if anyone was watching, and then leaned down and said something to him that made him go dead silent.

The kind of silent Lakey and I knew. The kind where the words are worse than the grip.

Lakey had been sitting on her bike across the street, eating a breakfast burrito. She'd stopped chewing. I wasn't there, but she told me about it later, and the way her voice went flat when she described it told me everything. There was no discussion. No debate.

Dani went on the list.

The list had started small, back when we were eighteen and fresh off the Karma situation.

At first it was personal. People who fucked with us, people who fucked with people we knew, but over the years it had become something else.

Lakey had rules. She only wanted people who'd earned it.

People who hurt kids, people who beat their partners, people who preyed on the ones who couldn't fight back.

She'd find them and I'd set the trap. Sometimes it took weeks of planning.

Sometimes Lakey would clock someone in a parking lot abusing a child and I'd have a drink in front of them within forty-eight hours.

The competition had been her idea, obviously, to see who could find the mark.

She kept a tally on a piece of paper taped to the inside of the bathroom cabinet.

Lakey was winning, 16-11, because she had a knack for being in the wrong place at the right time.

That ADHD brain of hers didn't miss a thing.

She'd be in line at a coffee shop and come home with a name, a license plate, and a physical description that read better than a damn police report.

Happy birthday to me.

Dani had been a three-week project. Lakey had followed her, watched her patterns, confirmed the kid wasn't a one-off.

It wasn't. Dani was rough with that boy every time Lakey saw them together, and the bruises on his arms told a story that neither of us needed translated.

We'd grown up in that story. We knew every chapter.

So last night, I'd played my part. Met her at the bar, turned on the charm, let her think she'd gotten lucky. She came home with me willingly. I'd let her fall asleep and then texted Lakey.

She's out. Come kill my present.

On my way. She had added a knife emoji at the end, and I smiled before heading to the bathroom for a shower.

Her and Dani were gone before I was out and when Lakey was back, I washed the blood off of her before fucking her to the video of the kill.

Over seven years of this and we'd gotten it down to a system. A sick, beautiful, efficient system that kept us both sane and kept the kind of people who hurt kids from breathing the same air as everyone else.

We were far from perfect. We enjoyed killing too much, but if we didn’t put a system in place, we’d be living in a ghost town.

Lakey was hungry for death that way.

Turning the water to just short of scalding, I relaxed against the counter as the bathroom fogged.

I lathered and washed, my cock hard at the thought of shoving Lakes against a wall and taking her until I'd fucked the adrenaline out of both of our systems. Contemplating taking care of the problem, I opted to ignore it instead.

She'd be home soon enough, and the wait would make it better.

It always did with us. The buildup, the tension, the way we'd orbit each other for hours after until one of us snapped and the other was already moving.

Lakey was...

How do I describe the only person on earth I gave a shit about?

Perfect. That's the word.

Standing at 5’1", 110lbs soaking wet, she looked the perfect little doll, but inside she was the devil incarnate.

We'd been through shit together. More shit than anyone should have to withstand in one lifetime and because of that, my beautiful little psycho got a free pass for almost anything she wanted to do.

Stepping out of the shower, I grabbed a towel and dried myself off, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

Practicing my smile, I chuckled. Yeah, on the outside I looked like every girl's wet dream, but my insides were twisted, infected with a kind of rot that doesn't just go away with buzzwords like 'therapy' and 'meds'.

I wasn't built for normal. Neither was she, and we'd stopped pretending a long time ago.

Grabbing my phone off the side table, I messaged Lakes to ask where the fuck she was.

My phone buzzed just as I pressed send.

Breakfast time, asshole. You're late.

Running my hand through my hair, I looked at the time. I’d completely forgotten we were meeting at the diner for breakfast this morning and I was, indeed, late. Lakes was a lot of things, but one thing she was not was late. She hated when I ran late.

Shit, sorry babe... Be there in a minute. I messaged back as fast as my fat fingers could.

Throwing the phone down and grabbing a pair of grey sweatpants, I rushed through getting ready. Effortlessly sexy, as Lakes calls it. She's not wrong.

Another buzz. It's fine, I'm just gonna head to the boutique across the way and grab a new necklace. Text when you're there.

I grinned. She only ever bought herself something when she'd done something naughty. And she'd make it a fun game trying to figure out what it was this time. Though, given that her particular brand of naughty last night involved karambits and a cliff, I had a pretty good idea.

Grabbing my bike keys off the key rack, I locked the front door and headed to the elevator, pressing P to get to the underground. As expected, Lakey's bike was missing, but mine was waiting. The second love of my life. Sitting down and starting the engine, I smiled, seeing a red kiss on the mirror.

Oh, she'd been a bad girl and was looking for punishment. The parking door couldn't open fast enough before I was ripping to our spot. Grabbing a space along the curb, I didn't bother paying. Those fat fucking parking maids can suck my dick.

Here, babe. I messaged her before going to our table, far end at the back, where we both had a view of the street. I took the time to check my GPS, and a small smile crept over my lips. She had been a very naughty girl last night.

After the cliff, she had gone to the gas station and spent an hour there before the dot had moved to the same place it always moved.

The tree. The little girl's tree. She'd sat up there for hours, watching through the window, doing whatever it was she did when she went there.

At first, I'd found it weird that she'd just sleep in the tree across the street and watch this kid through her window.

But she told me she found it oddly comforting.

That she had some kind of weird voodoo connection with her.

A therapist might say it had something to do with the trauma Lakes had experienced in her own childhood, but I wasn't a fucking therapist, and this wasn't a paid counseling session, so we didn't go there.

Lakey didn't care about anyone or anything except for me, and the feeling was mutual, but that kid had gotten under her skin in a way I couldn't explain and she couldn't either. So I left it alone. There were worse things my girl could be doing at 3 a.m. than sitting in a tree watching a child sleep. She’d been doing it for seven years already, why stop the tradition now?

The bell jingled and I looked up. My breath caught as she walked into the cafe, her long legs skipping in time to the static beat coming through the speakers. Fuck she was a vision, even if she was wearing some ridiculously gaudy bright pink shirt that said Welcome to Sunny City on it.

She squealed and gave me a hug before settling in beside me and flipping through the menu.

"Hey, babe, how was last night?" She sounded nonchalant to any eavesdropper, but I knew that tone.

"Great, you?" I smirked, sipping my coffee.

"Oh, you know, same ol' same ol'." She hummed, those haunted eyes of hers boring into mine. "Mine was a bit more—" she leaned in dramatically, "—exciting."

"Yeah? Where'd you go? You didn't come home."

She giggled. "I was just around. Doin' stuff. Some guy at the gas station wanted to hook up, but you know..." she held up her thumb and index finger before whispering tiny dick.

I rolled my eyes. She was trying to get under my skin. Lakey would never touch another man, in the same way I’d never touch another woman.

"So, whatcha ordering today?" she asked, her leg bouncing under the table as her brilliant blue eyes bore into mine.

"Same as always, Pinky, eggs benny."

She smacked my arm. "How many fucking times do I have to tell you that I'M brAIN and YOU are Pinky." She put her arm up to grab the waitress's attention. "Fucking moron."