Page 100 of Ricochet

I opened my mouth to speak, but the chime of my cellphone alerted me to a text. Lifting the phone, I clicked on a message from Leon.

I’ve got something for you. Pick it up at the drop.

“What is it?” Aubree asked, as my stomach curled into itself.

I hadn’t planned a pick up from Leon. Had no idea what might await me there.

I set the phone back on the nightstand and looked down at Aubree. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

***

The drop was the place in an abandoned office building off Mount Elliott, where the Bojanskis often left packages for me—drugs, guns, whatever I needed. For months, they’d let me rent out the apartment atop their bar, a place where a person could stay completely anonymous, since no one fucked with Leon Bojanski. That was like messing with the Capo of the Gambino family.

While I should’ve been mentally preparing myself for Cox’s gruesome act of retribution, I, instead, wracked my brain, trying to imagine what Leon had left for me. A drop wasn’t necessarily good. A drop meant he didn’t want anyone tracking him.

Broken glass, decaying wood, and paper littered the floor beneath toppled furniture heavy with grime, and I trampled through them to the back room. Inside, a package lay propped against the wall behind the shelving unit with a typical note attached by a thin strip of tape: Nick.

I tore off the small piece of paper and opened the envelope. From within the dark depths of the packet, I carefully slid a cartridge out of the envelope and held it up to see what appeared to be an SD card inside.

A burning in my gut told me that whatever happened to be on the cartridge was bad, and part of me wanted to toss it, run from the building, and pretend I hadn’t seen it.

The logical side of me tucked it away into my pocket and exited the building.

***

Sometimes, I had a sense about things.

A half hour had passed since I’d collected the SD card, and although I still hadn’t checked out its contents, something told me that, at some point in the night, I’d find myself at a standoff between Aubree and whatever it’d call me to do.

Perhaps it was my own doubts about the future of our fucked up relationship, which shouldn’t have come to be, or maybe it was disappointment in allowing myself to fall prey to her charms every night, to be pulled into bed with her, where the only thought, the simplest thought inside my head, was making the woman scream my name.

Either way, I had a sense I couldn’t ignore, so instinct had me pouring a glass of wine from the bottle that I’d picked up on the way back to the mansion.

Aubree lay sprawled on her bed, reading Faulkner. As I approached with the glass of red, her eyes lit up. “Ooh! I’ve not had wine in so long. What’s the occasion?”

I shrugged, the very gesture itself a lie, and set the glass on her nightstand. “I thought it might get you drunk faster. Let me take advantage of you.”

Smiling, she lifted the glass from beside her and took a sip. “Mmmm. Piquant. I love a dry red.”

“I’ll leave the bottle here. I have to finish something, and I’ll come back to make sure you’re preheated.” The corner of my lip kicked up in a smile, in spite of the knots twisting inside my gut, and I exited her room, pushing through my bedroom door.

Once inside the closet, I popped the disk into the computer.

The file had been labeled, Collateral, and the knots in my stomach coiled tighter as I clicked ‘open’.

Screams spilled from a blackness onscreen that eventually opened up to an unfamiliar room. The camera panned down over the naked body of a woman, whose breasts bounced with the jostling of her body. It zoomed in on the cameraman’s dick slamming into her then back up her body in a shaky quality. His rapid breaths overpowered her agonized screams, and the view angled to the right, revealing her arms tied behind her back.

I’d no idea who the woman was—until the camera lifted to her face.

Narrow, bright brown eyes.

Jet black hair, fallen around her face.

Pale skin with a slight pink tinge.

Jade.

My heart caught, not so much for the woman on the camera, but for the one not on camera at that moment.