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“Do you have any idea what your plans are?”
“Past finding her? Not a fucking clue.”
“The other guys scattered to the fucking winds when Cerberus showed up right behind us at the compound, but I’m sure they’re still available for work if we need them.”
“Work?”
“I was hoping you had a bead on where fucking Cortez might have slithered off to.”
I shake my head. “They kept me in a cell except when they needed me for something. Other than people screaming and begging for help, I didn’t hear shit. I don’t even know if it was Cortez’s compound. The only hint that it might’ve been is Pirro. That scarred motherfucker used his name to garner respect at the fucking bar they took me from.”
His jaw clenches, his hatred for Cortez so thick and heavy that just hearing his name pisses him off.
“Why was that motorcycle club there in the first place?”
“Shadow, the VP, said they tracked a freshman girl there who was taken from Lindell University a couple of months ago.”
“They just go around looking for missing girls?”
“They take contracts. I think they use the money to aid in rescuing others. Their goal is to try and put an end to all of it,” Angel explains.
“A fucking futile task if there ever was one,” I mutter.
“Yep,” he agrees. “They think they’re better than us, despite the outcome being the same. They do it with a little more structure and that somehow makes them the fucking experts. Like we aren’t risking our lives for the same thing.”
I don’t argue with him but getting paid for what I do is secondary. I hate knowing people are suffering what I went through. I want to put an end to every man who has ever victimized someone the way I was forced to. I’d never abide by some code of ethics to do it, but I commend those Cerberus assholes for being capable of it.
“You think finding this girl will make what happened to you better, but I can tell you from experience, that it won’t.”
“I need to hear her story to determine what my next plan is.”
Silence fills the cab of the truck, Angel grunting on occasion when idiot after idiot races around him like he’s simply on the road to be in their way.
“She mentioned someone named Alani.”
“In what context?”
“Right before I was going to shoot her in the fucking head, she asked if it meant that Alani was going to be okay.”
I nod, fully understanding her position. I thought she was part of Pirro’s band of fucking perverted misfits too, but there was care in her touch when she treated my wounds. There was a softness in her reassurance without words that she wasn’t there to hurt me even though what she did caused pain and discomfort. She gave me looks, when it was my turn to hurt her, that she wasn’t going to hold it against me. She mentioned that they’d hurt us both if we didn’t comply. Pirro threatened her to control me. Why would he do that if she was a valued member of his team?
Alani, whoever she is, was her reason for doing all of it. They controlled her through that threat.
“Did Cerberus have a list of people they took from the compound? Was this Alani person one of them?”
Angel shrugs. “I got you out of there and that’s it. The others who were there weren’t my concern.”
And that’s the biggest difference between what we do and what Cerberus does. If they were there for one girl, but they stuck around to aid everyone else, then they are better men than us. Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any different, however. Going through what I went through makes me want to tighten the reins in my life even more, not stick my neck out further for people I don’t know. I accepted long ago that I wasn’t a very good man. I don’t have compassion or empathy for others. Some people are dealt a really shitty hand in life, but it’s not my job to pull them out of it. After this latest experience, I’m even less willing to risk my own safety.
“That’s all she said?”
“Didn’t have much of a chance to say anything else before Cerberus showed up and took over the entire thing.”
My skin crawls at the thought of them not showing up and Angel killing her. What would I have done if I’d woken up in the hospital to the news of him putting a bullet in her head? Would I be able to sit calmly and see things from his point of view? Would I have done the same if my job was to pull him out of that man-made hell?
Why does it even fucking matter?
I know the answer to that, despite not wanting it to be true.
