“Teenager?”Reece asks as he tapes up the body.
“Nineteen.Twenty in a few months.”
Reece chuckles.“Yeah, they’re all assholes at that age.I was.Weren’t you?”
“Still am.Hey.How’s your grandmother?”
Reece grins.“In remission.Thank fuck.Apparently she’s made lots of friends in treatment, too, so her social life is more interesting than mine.”He hoists the body over his shoulder.“I’ll get this out to the truck.What project am I billing this to?”
“2740.”
“That’s, like, the internal code we use when we don’t have anything else to bill to, right?”
“Exactly.We had a client a few months back who had tasked us with tracking down suspected trafficking victims.The names of the abductees were being pulled from their client list.We tracked down all the victims we could, so technically the project is over.This is us cleaning up loose ends.”
This is me needing to cut the head off the monster.I’ve learned too much to think the world can truly be rid of evil, but I’m sure as fuck going to take as much of it with me as I can before I go.
Even though sometimes I’m one of the monsters.
“Got it.”Reece gives me a halfhearted salute and lugs his bloody package out to the loading bay.Meanwhile, I tap out one more text, because I’m tired as hell and I never can leave well enough alone.
Liam: If you don’t come the hell home after class, I will hunt you down.
Chapter Two
Ravi
“Hey,Rav, you know you get more benefit from the weights if you’re actually moving them.You taking a nap right now or what?”my sort-of friend Troy asks.
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I give an apologetic shrug.“Sorry.Did you want to use this one?”
“Nah.”Troy, who’s perched on a nearby weight bench, shakes his head.“Trying to make sure you’re still with us is all.”
Of all my sort-of friends, he’s the one who seems to notice me most.I’m not sure why, but it’s kind of nice.He’s right though.At the moment all I’m doing is taking up space.
If my mother were here, she’d pinch my ear and tell me not to laze around.
“Oh.Uh.Thanks.Texting my guardian?”Calling him that feels weird.Calling him anything feels weird.He isn’t a parent.He isn’t a friend.He’s… I don’t know.He’s Liam.
“Is he on your ass about the warehouse thing still?”Next to Troy, his roommate, Adam, pipes up.
“He doesn’t think I should be here working out.”I shrug again, because I’m not sure what else to do.Liam’s always been sort of protective of me, but it gets worse as I get older, not better.“At least he hasn’t found out I’m failing biology yet.”
My friend PJ looks up from the mat he’s been stretching on.“From what I’ve heard so far, this Liam guy sounds like a prison warden.You didn’t OD on purpose.It’s not like you have an addiction.Guy knows you’re an adult, right?”
“I wish he’d understand I was trying to help people.”I sigh.
There were innocent people being held in that warehouse.Trafficking victims.Liam can bluster all he wants, but one thing I’ll never do is ignore people who need help.It hurts too much to do nothing.Especially after what happened to my parents.After knowing I was close enough to do something, and I didn’t.
“Can’t you tell the guy to fuck off?”Troy asks.
Sometimes I’d like to.A lot of times, really.But.Well.“He’s paying my tuition, right?Until things change, I feel like I kind of have to keep him happy.”
There’s one small problem with that, though.Nothing makes Liam Masters happy.
I adjust my feet against the leg press and start counting reps again.I try, anyway.I barely make it to ten before my phone buzzes again.Liam’s mad because he doesn’t like how I answered his last message.
“He’s making me stay at his place ever since the accident,” I complain to nobody in particular.“He keeps yapping on about where I am.I’m pretty sure he’s tracking my phone.”
