Killian is a pretty laid-back guy—nothing bothers him—but he takes his jobveryseriously. Not only for him but for Archer.
Human trafficking has almost doubled in size in Jamestown, and that’s a problem. We take out one, and five more seem to pop up. Carson and I are the ones who take care of any outside jobs. We have an operation based on taking out people who don’t deserve to breathe. People who want to hurt women and children. Which leads me back to Susie—she knows a lot. A lot of shit we need information on, and we fucked up.
“I let Carson take this one while I waited in the van. He grabbed the wrong girl. Now I have one of Susie’s employees asleep in one of my spare rooms,” I explain, rubbing my temple.
Killian cusses under his breath as a chair scrapes across the floor, and the voices around him disappear.
“I’m going to beat the fuck out of Carson. And you, for that matter.” Killian exhales hard, the edge in his voice only dulling a tad. “You guys need to find her, and do it fucking fast, Emris. I am not explaining to Archer how you lost the only informant we have managed to dig up. She could bring this whole thing down.”
“Yeah, Carson’s heading back to the bar tonight, hoping she shows.” I drag my hand down my face. “I know we fucked up, but I will fix it. The only issue aside from that...” I trail off, not sure how to explain that I’m somehow obsessed with a girl I don’t know anything about.
“The girl?” Killian asks as if he’s waiting for me to catch up.
“Yeah...” I let out a deep breath. “She’s… I’m not sure. As soon as I realized we had the wrong person, we were already at my place. She fought so hard, Kill. I mean, she didn’t give up. I had her tied up downstairs, and she managed to get out, knock out Carson, stab me, and get out of the house.” There’s a sense of pride as I remember the past twenty-four hours. “Maybe I didn’t have my guard up as much as I should’ve, but fuck.” My cock hardens as the memory plays in a loop in my head.
“She sounds feisty,” Killian chuckles.
“She is. She’s fucking perfect, and I didn’t plan on letting her go.” I smile at the reminder before adding, “Still don’t, but something happened, and now she’s… broken? Sad? I don’t know, man.” I wait, praying that he has some logical advice.
“Well, with the line of work we’re both in, keeping women against their will is usually not a good idea,” he chuckles. “But I mean… if she has nowhere to go—let’s face it, I’m not the most logical man in the group. That would be Archer, but… maybe thisis a good thing,” he muses. I sit up straight in my chair, waiting for him to elaborate. “Think about it—she has to be close with Susie. I mean, she works at the same bar, and they are girls. Girls talk a lot.”
“Hmm,” I hum to myself, his words somewhat making sense. “They were whispering when we went inside to scope the place out,” I say. “But I’m not sure if she’s going to know anything, Kill.” I could be wrong. Brielle could be another piece of shit who is helping the enemy, but I can feel it in my gut—she’s not that kind of person. She has some fight in her, and that tells me she learned how to keep her guard up from a shit life. I don’t think she would be okay with helping traffic women.
“Keep her for now. Try to get close to her, maybe she’ll open up to you?” he suggests.
She won’t tell me shit. I also don’t want to use her for information either, but this is my fuck up, and if Carson can’t find Susie tonight, I might have to.
“Yeah,” is all I say as I think everything over.
I go on and fill Killian in on everything that happened with the roommate and Brielle.
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill that fucking piece of shit,” Killian says, shocked.
“Yeah, well, I can’t go around killing random people that I wasn’t hired to kill now, can I?”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.” We both laugh, and I start to feel a bit better.
“Now, back to helping your girl. Have you tried feeding her? Sunny D and those little Lunchable things are my go-to. They always make me feel better.”
Jesus fuck. This man is a child.
“Kill, I don’t think that would fix her problems.”
“I guess you could try and piss her off? Maybe that’ll snap her out of whatever pity party she’s going through?” Killian muses.
Maybe that’s exactly what she needs. I don’t take her as the girl who needs to be cuddled and pampered to feel better.
No, I need to piss her off. Treat her as the girl who can fight, who needs purpose. Get under her skin the way she’s fucking stuck under mine.
12
BRIELLE
It’s pouringwhen I wake up the next day. I’m not even sure what time it is with all the storm clouds covering whatever light the sun would normally give off.
I sit in the window seat, watching rain pelt against the glass. It’s as if the storm is mocking me for being locked up in this room.
The only reason I came here willingly was because, well, I have nowhere else to go.
