Page 104 of Watching Her

I took a deep breath, half laughing at the idiocy of what I was about to say. “Another stalker. This guy hides behind a keyboard.”

“Well, imagine that. Our methods are now considered passé.”

“Which brings me to another question. How about you? Have you gotten your rocks off yet?”

“The game is just heating up on my end, but I have no intention of allowing my time spent with the lovely author to end with anything permanent.” Xander’s answer was followed by a heavy sigh of his own.

Maybe we’d grown out of finding joy in the game and needed to step up our standards.

“Well, this is probably where I should remind you that we aren’t getting any younger.” An admittance I hated.

“Ouch. Why the hell are you destroying my perfectly pleasant day?”

“Because I need a favor and you’re the only man who can provide it.”

He hummed in the background. “For a price.”

“I will not say you’ve won.”

“I might need you to step in and help me with an issue.”

As I pulled onto the interstate, the same eagerness as I’d felt years before appeared. “Anything you need, my friend.”

“I’ll keep that in mind and grant you a favor.”

“Good. I need you to make contact with your most powerful bookish friends.”

Xander groaned. “I feel a nightmare coming on.”

* * *

In practicing the art of control, one technique was to maintain patience while assessing a situation followed by ascertaining if the enemy in question was worthy of being allowed to live.

For anyone who hadn’t grown up in my household, born into violence, would likely gasp in horror that I was daring to play God. Perhaps I was, although if there was to be any comparison to my father, the person doing so would walk away with the realization the lovely woman who’d captured both my imagination and my soul had been correct in her assessment.

I did have a conscience.

Granted, not much of one. No one could say I held my empathy for anyone, a few employees and my brother perhaps the exception. But I wasn’t the cold-blooded killer my father had been trained to be and had tried to force me into becoming.

Unless…

The person in question held a dubious past. Then the taking of human life became a no-brainer.

While I’d already determined that Thomas Atwood should die for his sin, what I’d learned by use of a trusted contact had made the decision even easier. If that was even necessary.

This wasn’t the man’s first rodeo. In fact, he’d stalked several women over the years, resulting in an arrest after an alleged appearance inside her home. For whatever reason, the charges had been tossed out. I’d also connected him to a case of rape and murder.

While in certain cases, I waited until the dark of night to act on my desires, I also hadn’t been interested in wasting any time with a human cockroach.

Which was why Thomas aka HotAlphaMan was currently residing in a chair, a gag in his mouth and shackled by chains I’d brought with me. Outright killing him would have been far too easy, albeit less of a risk.

Since when had I ever worried about being implicated in the problems I solved?

There’d be no trace of me left, just a dead body rotting as required. I sat behind his massive computer system, his chair placed so he could see exactly what I was doing.

Which was leaving a nice long trail of his ‘accomplishments.’

Why not ensure my interests were protected?