He yanked the door open and ushered the visitor in. The new arrival was a tall, Black man around the same height as Bishop. A tailored gray button-down clung to his broad shoulders. He would look perfectly put together, the sort of professional that always intimidated Kit when he ended up at too-nice coffee shops—except the stranger was clutching his suit jacket to his left arm.
The sleeve was soaked in blood.
“What’s your problem today?” the stranger asked. “No sympathy for the wounded? I just need sutures. I had to switch cars, left my bag in the…”
The stranger met Kit’s eyes. His gaze swept over Kit’s figure chained to the railing, confusion shading into shock on his face.
Then suspicion. “Bishop,” the man said, in a low, restrained voice. “What the fuck is this?”
“Darius,” Bishop started, but broke off when Kit shifted on the stairs—the handcuffs audibly clinking around his wrists.
Fuck this.
Lifting his chin, Kit met Darius’s gaze and said, “He’s holding me here against my will.”
Darius waited for the punchline. A laugh. A hint that Bishop was suddenly way more into bondage and roleplay than Darius had given him credit for. The guy always seemed so vanilla for an ex-cop vigilante.
But there was no punchline. Just a skinny white kid handcuffed to Bishop’s staircase, with red marks around his wrists beneath the baggy sweatshirt sleeves. Dark circles shaded beneath his eyes.
“Explain this,” Darius said coldly.
He knew Bishop’s job. A hell of a lot nicer than Darius’s own. Bishop killed for his clients, but he also killed for justice. His own twisted sense of remorse, as if each well-aimed bullet was another step towards redemption.
Darius just killed for money, and he felt no remorse at all.
Killing people was one thing. Abduction and torture weren’t out of the question either, for the right price, though Darius could afford to be choosy about his jobs now. Not like when he started out, shoveling every dollar he could into the gaping abyss of his mother’s debts. He even helped on Bishop’s cases sometimes. Darius’s version of pro bono charity work.
But what the fuck was Bishop doing, bringing a liability into his own home like this?
Bishop stepped between Darius and the stairs. Between Darius and the hostage. “I’ll explain in the kitchen.”
“Who is he? You brought him to your house?” Darius gestured at the living room, then hissed in pain, remembering the bullet wound. His drenched sleeve clung uncomfortably to his arm. “Is this a sex slave thing? Who do you think you are, your—”
“Finish that sentence and you’ll regret it,” Bishop snarled, his face hard.
Darius stared at him, trying to read the truth in the man’s eyes. Mixed with the old pain was a brand new uncertainty.
“Of fucking course.” The quiet voice startled Darius, drawing his attention back to the figure huddled on the stairs. The young man slumped against the railing. “You’re another of his psycho friends, aren’t you?”
Another. So the boy had met James already.
“Something like that,” Darius replied.
Blood dripped with a soft tap-tap on the hardwood floor.
“I’ll explain,” Bishop said. “But can I patch you up first?”
“This had better be good.” Darius took one last look at the hostage before following Bishop into the kitchen.
The jaded exhaustion as he called Darius a psycho. The vulnerability in those big green eyes. It was a combination Darius would find difficult to forget.
4
“Can I sleep here tonight?”
Twenty minutes later, Kit heard the garage door opening and closing. The attractive bleeding man—another of Bishop’s psycho friends, apparently—left without Kit seeing him again. Kit wasn’t surprised the man proved not to care about his plight. Bishop was too careful. He wouldn’t let anyone in the house if they actually had a chance of ruining his plans.
Whatever his plans really were.
