Black
The garage door slams shut behind me after I looked to confirm her van was gone, the deep thud vibrating through the floor and into my jaw. The rage I feel is a white-hot, consuming thing, but beneath that rage is a cold, hard diamond of absolute certainty.
She conned us. She fucking conned us all.
I glare at the three stacks of cash Blue left on the kitchen island. It’s an insulting, paltry fraction of the haul she decided we were allowed to keep. It’s less than a quarter of what we risked our asses for. That money was supposed to be our reset, our escape from the trenches. Now, it’s a joke.
Green is standing in the doorway, his muscles tight with tension beneath his black t-shirt, his face hard with a mix of fury and disbelief.
“A trick and a treat? That sexy little psycho took our money, the owners' dog, and left us a thank you note, Black.” He spits the last word like a curse. “She conned us out of everything, including our ability to think straight for hours.”
Red walks back in, tossing the dog leashes from the chair onto the ground with disgust. “The cameras are recording again so make sure to keep your masks on.” He stops in front of me, his hazel eyes intense. “What’s the call? Do we cut our losses here or go after the money and the girl? Because if we go after her…” He throws a hand through his hair in frustration. “It’s going to take every dime she left here for us to track her, find her, and then what?”
I don't answer right away, my mind whirling. I walk over to the pile of scattered, lipstick-stained blue velvet dress fabric and run the back of my knuckles over the soft material. She left pieces of herself behind, the torn dress, the sticky cum on the couch, the memory of her perfect, throbbing pussy clamped around my cock. She even left the goddamn blue lace thong on the kitchen floor. Yes, she took our money but I think she took something that matters even more, her spark, her fire, her chaos. If I’m honest with myself, I want that more than the money.
I look up, meeting my brothers’ eyes, and the smirk I feel spreading across my face isn't one of anger. It’s possessive, primal, and utterly satisfied. Both their eyebrows raise in surprise at my grin as I stare at them. First Green starts to nod and then Red huffs out a laugh and says, “We hunt her and get back what she took from us.”
I cock my head to the side with a frown. “Hunt her? Yes, but to me the money’s secondary. We can call it the price of admission to Blue’s show. For me, it’s the girl I want.” I growl, cracking my knuckles. "She wasn't an innocent bystander like we thought, she was a predator running her own revenge con. She’s everything I didn’t know we needed. Our fourth. Our perfect match.” I spear my brothers with a searching look. “I want her. The only question is, do you?”
When they both nod in agreement, I walk past them, my boots heavy on the hardwood floor, and head straight up to theoffice where she’d made her statement. The follow me up and we all take it in again. I stand in front of the wall, looking at the photos of the dead victims, the letter opener stabbed through the plastic couple's faces, and the red words dripping like blood.
YOUR GREED KILLED THEM ALL
“This feels like more than a heist to me.” I murmur, reading the message again. “This might be personal for her. We should take pictures of all these obituaries. It might give us a clue to who she really is.”
Red pulls out his cell and starts taking pictures of every paper taped to the wall. “If she did do this for some kind of justice, she’s better than we are.” He barks a laugh.
“Fuck, I know she’s better than us. She conned all three of us while naked and half drunk!” Green leans against the doorframe, his mind already zeroing in on the new mission. “She took the dog, Skipper. That mutt belonged to the pricks who own this place. It proves she has a soft spot…a weakness.”
“It proves she’s not a monster,” I correct him, a dark edge to my voice. “She took the dog from those rich assholes because those people clearly suck.” I study the note she left for us again and think back to the night we spent together and turn to my brothers. “Yeah, she was full of sass and attitude but there were moments…”
Green nods, “Moments that felt like more than just sex, right? Even though we just met, there was a connection…between all of us.”
I hum in agreement. “I swear I saw regret in her eyes after. Not regret that we had sex but that it couldn’t be more. I’m betting she left that note as a challenge, and she took our money to force us to chase her. She might not admit it, but we found something really rare together. I think she wants to be found, but she’s going to make us earn it.”
I turn to Red. “Hack every traffic cam, every security feed in a ten-mile radius. We look for a vehicle matching the description of a late-model, rusting sprinter van, preferably with a tiny, ridiculous dog peeking out the passenger window.”
Red nods, his grin full of anticipation and waves at the papered walls. “I’ll get all of this uploaded and start digging deeper on it at the same time. Someone up here on these walls will be the clue we need to nail her down. She’s going to have to lay low for a while after this shit hits the fan so we have time to track her before she disappears into thin air.”
I look at Green. “You’re on supplies. Get us a place where we can lay low ourselves while we work. I don’t think Cartwright will figure out it was us that hit him but he might, so better we aren’t where he can find us easily. Use the money she left us to buy any intel we can.” I stare at my brothers with determination. “We’re not running; we’re hunting.”
I feel the adrenaline rush, cleaner and more intoxicating than the Patrón she’d dosed us with. She might have given us a trick with our treats but I don’t think she knows what she started.
I look at the picture of the house owners, pinned to the wall like a butterfly, and then I look at the paper she left on the pillow, the black ink bold and careless.
“She thinks this is over. She thinks we’ll quit.” I laugh, a low, dangerous sound. “She just started the greatest game we’ve ever played. We’re going to find her, we’re going to keep her, and we’re going to take her to a whole new level of game play.”
Black
Our search quickly burned through half the stack of money Blue left us. Green used the money to pay off a pricy private investigator in Seattle to run parallel searches while Red stayed chained to his laptop in the temporary apartment we snagged near the airport. The rest of the haul, whatever Blue stole from Lamott, plus our own take from Cartwright was gone, scattered to the wind in her busted-up van.
We didn’t call the cops, and we certainly didn't call the owners of the house. Our world was silent, focused on one goal, finding our fourth.
The six and a half weeks since Halloween had been a blur of desperation and surveillance. We took every picture from the walls of that rich prick’s office, every obituary, and fed it to Red’s custom search engine and kept digging until we had her real name. Just as we suspected, our girl was a victim of that asshat. It was her mom’s obituary mixed in with all the others on those walls.
The newspaper crinkles under my grip, the headline screaming about some “mystery gift giver” in Seattle.
Twelve more families have come forward stating that they received envelopes of $10,000 cash along with a note offering condolences for the loss of a loved one. That brings the reported number to 68 families that received a whopping total of $680,000. The one thing these families all have in common is the death of a loved one from not being able to financially access the medication needed to manage their condition. Some are speculating these anonymous cash gifts are from disgraced Big Pharma CEO Chad Lamott, who was arrested last month for fraud and insider trading in a bid to garner sympathy with the jury pool before he heads to trial. Mr. Lamott is best known for buying the patent of a…
