The problem was, once the panic and dissociation had worn off, I’denjoyedthe feeling of having removed a dangerous predator from the world. I’d enjoyed it way too much, in fact.
Living on the streets, you tended to hear about stuff.Badstuff. Even so, it had been pure insanity the first time I’d decided to remove a problem in a way that was, um...premeditated.
The asshole in question had been grooming little kids at a local karate class and taking nude photos of them being abused. So, I’d killed him. And I hadn’t gotten caught.
A couple of months later, I’d taken out a drug dealer who was whoring out his omega girlfriends—shooting them up with heat stimulants and then auctioning them to the highest bidders.
Word began to spread. People started coming to me directly with their problems. And if those problems felt like something I could fix without getting my stupid ass killed ... I fixed them. Permanently.
Matthew Knockley was my sixth target, not counting those early, heat-of-the-moment kills. He was also, by far, the biggest.
When a terrified omega boy called Adrian had tracked me down and handed me Matthew Knockley’s dossier, my gut had urged me to run the other way and not look back. Not only was this asshole the leader of a respected pack with a secret sideline in human trafficking; he was fuckingrich. Not to mention powerful and well-connected. If he died under mysterious circumstances, the police would give a shit about it.Lotsof people would give a shit about it.
But... Adrian’s story hit me squarely in the unresolved childhood trauma.
His sister had been taken. She was only eleven years old. And she wasn’t the first.
I knew what kind of life awaited underage omegas sold into the sex trade. I’d almost been one of them, if not for a careless truck driver and a deserted fuel plaza in the middle of the night.
So, I’d taken the job. And now, here I was.
“Sorry,” Mr. Sex Trafficker slurred, rubbing at his face with uncoordinated movements. “I feel... really tired all of the sudden.”
The tumbler—mostly empty except for a bit of ice, slipped from his grasp and hit the luxurious carpet with barely a sound.
I smiled, thin and tight. “Then you should sleep,” I told him. “Here, let me help you get on the bed.”
I grabbed his arm and urged him onto unsteady feet, helping him stagger the few steps to the ridiculous king-sized bed. He flopped back, boneless.
“Mmm,” he nearly purred. “You smell like...”
“Caramel latte?” I offered dryly.
“Heaven,” he finished.
I rolled my eyes and did a quick inventory. Satin gloves? Still on. Hair? Lacquered into an impenetrable chignon that wouldn’t shed any incriminating strands of DNA in the room. I dumped my barely-touched Midori sour down the bathroom sink drain, rinsing and drying the glass thoroughly before returning it to the mini bar.
When I returned to the bed with a few squares of clean toilet paper, Matthew Knockley was snoring deeply, his breathing too loud and too slow.
That much acepromazine might kill him on its own, but I wasn’t the type to leave things like this to chance. Opening my clutch purse, I pulled out the empty 10cc syringe hidden there and sat at the foot of the bed.
I removed one designer shoe from my victim’s left foot, followed by his sock. Finding a vein between a person’s toes was always a total pain in the ass, but this trick only worked if it got directly into the victim’s bloodstream. Patiently, I delivered ten syringes’ worth of air into Mr. Sex Trafficker’s circulatory system, taking care to go in through the same needle hole each time.
When I was done, I wiped the blood from the needle, capped it, and returned it to my clutch. I’d toss it in a dumpster somewhere far from here, where it would disappear among all the other drug paraphernalia. Then I pressed the wad of toilet paper hard to the injection site to staunch the tiny amount of blood seeping there.
The area would still bruise, but so far, no medical examiner had gone looking for toe bruising after what seemed like nothing more sinister than a garden-variety heart attack.
Being a successful business owner in the competitive world of trade logistics was probably a stressful career, right? That kind of shit catches up to a person eventually.
Knockley made an awful choking noise and jerked on the bed. Apparently, the air embolism had reached his lungs or his heart. I checked that his foot had stopped bleeding and wrestled his sock and shoe back on. I’d just flushed the blood-spotted toilet paper and was reaching for my clutch on the bedside table when a knock sounded at the door.
I froze.
“Oi, Knox!” called a voice with a faint Irish lilt, muffled by the thick door. “We just got some juicy gossip about the Mexico deal. You gotta hear this!”
I whirled around, my stupid brain seizing up. Should I try to hide? Open the door, dart past them, and make a run for it?
But I was too slow. The lock clicked. Whoever it was, they had a key card, and like an idiot, I hadn’t thought to engage the security latch once my target was down for the count. I was still standing there like a surprised statue when the door swung open to reveal two alphas—one with flaming red hair and a beard, the other an absolute mountain of a man with a black buzzcut and heavy five o’clock shadow.
