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I’mat her house within the hour. I wait for the police to depart, leaving only tape around the structure. Fucking idiots didn’t even check the area or bring in CSI. I break in through the back. The door is wood and easy enough to get through. I only have to duck under the tape and pick the lock, which means whoever took her didn’t use this as an entry point. I slide through the dark, stepping quietly over broken glass in the kitchen. Using my torch, I examine the scene. Chairs are overturned, and blood trails lead to the entryway where the lock is broken and the door is busted in.
They came in and took her unaware while she was drinking in the kitchen. She put up a fight, but not much. There were two, maybe three, from the boot prints. Military grade boots.
Retracing my steps, I check every inch, even getting on my knees, and that’s when I see it. Hidden beneath the sofa, clearly dropped and kicked under there, is a phone. I pull it free. It’s a simple burner, and the screen is busted and won’t turn on.
I pocket it, knowing exactly where I need to take it, and with one more look around, I leave as silently as I came, like I was never here.
My trip back to my cottage is quick. I throw my emergency EVAC bag and weapons into my car and speed out of the small village, leaving the silence behind as I drive to the city.
Two hours later, I’m outside of his mansion. He lets me through the gates, and when I pull up outside, the door opens. Spider is framed in the entrance, his woman behind him. She nods at me and retreats after kissing his cheek. He’s the best, one of Donald’s men… a man I used to work with before this. Before I became a ghost.
“You’re supposed to be dead, remember?” he snaps. “Retiring means no surprise visits. It means lying low—”
“I need your help,” I grind out, the words almost painful. A warrior knows when to ask for assistance, but I never did like owing this man anything. He tends to collect, and never in a way you want.
That surprises him enough to nod and allow me in. He takes me to the living room and remains standing, watching me. I don’t waste time, pulling the phone free and thrusting it at him. “You’re the best hacker I know. I need to know what’s on this.”
“Why?” he asks with a frown, but a cold, calculating curiosity gleams in his eyes. I wouldn’t fuck with him. What that man can do with a computer is terrifying, not to mention what he’s capable of with his hands. He’s an expert at wet work, and we share a strong respect for each other. Hell, he even helped me get out of the game, so if I’m here now, he understands it’s serious.
He sighs, knowing I won’t answer. “Stay here.” He takes the stairs two at a time. I wait with my hands in my pockets. My eyes flicker around, but I remain respectful. I hear some muttering, no doubt from his woman, and then ten minutes later, he’s back downstairs.
“Burner cell, bought at a shop in the city two nights ago by cash. There was a camera outside, it was a Middle Eastern man, ID ran.” He thrusts some paper at me. “There’s the address and car make and model. It’s currently inactive and nowhere on traffic cameras. There is this too. I tracked it back as far as I could. His last stop was an abandoned warehouse on the east side. It used to be owned by a newspaper company, but now it’s empty.” He passes it all over and shoves his hands in his pockets, watching me.
“Are you back?” Three simple words, but they hold a lot of questions and meaning. If I say yes, then I’m back in this world. There will be no getting free again, and I have already sacrificed and fought enough to do just that. You don’t just turn your back on the Clergy, you don’t just walk free from being an assassin, yet I did.
The only man in history to do so.
“No, this is just an errand. A day or two, then I will be gone again.” I incline my head. “Thank you for the information, I owe you.”
He waves it away. “Go then, I don’t want payment, only this.” He steps closer, his eyes narrowed. “Disappear. Go back to wherever the fuck you went to find peace. Not just for your welfare and my own work’s sake—I don’t have time to make you disappear again—but there is shit going down in the city we can’t have you in the middle of, understood?”
I nod, and without another word, I head back through the house and out of the front door. We may be respectful to one another, but we aren’t friends. We are just two monsters who live in the same darkness. It was a courtesy warning, and I need to make sure I heed it. I don’t want to piss him or Donald off, not after everything.
I told him I wasn’t back…
It was a lie.
I’m retired, I’m supposed to be dead, yet I know I can’t walk away. She was kind to me, and for that, I owe her my loyalty. She did not align herself with me because of what I’m capable of or out of obligation, she did it out of kindness, something I’m not used to.
The police will never find her. I know that.
No, this is my duty. I know the horrors she could be experiencing right now. As a woman, and an innocent one at that, she would never survive, she isn’t strong enough. I have to find her before whoever took her breaks her, if only for my peace of mind. How could I start my new life knowing the one person who has been kind to me, welcoming, is being tortured, even killed, and I could have helped? I can’t. My mind would never let me rest. Already, I feel anger and hatred clawing at me, demanding blood.
Boogeyman is back, and he’s on the hunt.
God save the poor bastards who get in my way.
