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He cut the engine and stared at the decrepit warehouse in the moonlight. The full moon had been enough for him to turn off the headlights before turning down this street in an attempt to go unseen. He didn’t want to be here, but he’d been summoned by his hired assassin to this piece of shit abandoned warehouse in an equally abandoned industrial complex. God, he hated Jersey.
Stepping out from his car, he straightened his suit out of habit more than a need to be presentable, then continued forward, up the steps and through the doorless entryway. There he paused, listening to some sign of life. To his right was a gasping sound and he turned on his expensive heels and followed it between crates and detritus left behind when companies had closed to transfer their labor to cheaper countries.
He rounded the corner of the makeshift maze and stopped to take in the mess before him.Well, fuck. It was the only thought that rose from the irritation inside him when he came face to face with the infamous Wraith.
“You look like shit,” he commented with a sneer, while the assassin sat up from his cot on a shaking, sweat drenched arm.
“Fuck you,” was the only response before a coughing fit had the other man stepping back from the spit flying too close to his suit.
Once the hacking was over, the assassin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and the cause of the man’s declining health was very apparent. A blood stained bandage was wrapped around his forearm and the skin on either side of the gauze was red with discolored veins spreading outwardly like poisonous vines left to grow untamed. The world renowned killer had sepsis.
“I need a doctor who won’t ask questions.” The demand was made through wheezing breaths and painfully whispered words.
“I’m supposed to find you a doctor to patch you up in some clandestine location?” The words held all the disgust the other man was currently feeling.
He’d already spend over a million just to hire this asshole, and the job hadn’t been done. Now he was going to pay for more? Hardly. Thinking about the fucked job that had done little more than embarass Decker Mullins and his company was just turning his stomach with rage. He’d made the decision to contract that bitch’s death out to make the rest of his plans easier. He’d battled internally for weeks since he’d always envisioned being there when her life drained from her fucking eyes and her last breath shuddered out.
There was a reason the old adage of “If you want something done right, do it yourself” was so popular. He had a few plans on how he could handle Lake Harrington himself, but first there were loose ends to clean up.
He pulled the gun from the holster he’d carefully clipped to the back of his suit pants before coming here. He wasn’t where he was because he was a careless man. Hired or not, meeting a hitman in an abandoned warehouse was stupid without a weapon. Without a word he pointed the barrel of the gun toward the dying man on the cot and amusingly noticed the surprise on the assassin’s face as the trigger was pulled.
One more loose end tied up, he thought to himself as he studied the slumped man on the cot, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Pretty anticlimactic for a real life assassin, but he’d been circling the drain with that infection anyway.
Whistling to himself as he retraced his steps through the labyrinth of crates, he found himself much more cheerful than when he’d walked into the dump. He knew it had nothing to do with being the one to end an infamous killer, and everything to do with the fact that his initial plan to take everything from Lake before torturing her and killing her was back in play.
How did he want to play with his prey now? She was too protected with Mullins and his toy soldiers hovering constantly. But they weren’t watching her friends. Oh, that was an idea! A sneak peek at what's to come for her, acted out on the people she leaned on for comfort. He’d rob her of all support and hope before he slowly bled her like a pig.
He almost didn’t care that he’d wasted a small fortune on the dead man he’d left behind as he got in the car and sped back toward the city he’d left only hours before. Maybe he’d pick up another look-a-like on his way back just for practice. Knife skills had to be kept as sharp as the weapons themselves after all.
CHAPTER 21
LAKE
Iwas not one for the quiet routine of office life. I knew this fact early on and had structured my life accordingly. Yet somehow I’d ended up locked in an office building 24/7 and I didn’t even work there.
I’d spent the first few days following my arrival trying to work from my laptop, taking one of the open desks on Jack’s floor. It was just so futuristic in design and fun to look at, but working there was impossible. Day trading was boring as hell when the person working beside me was flipping through files on a very important celebrity that was hiring the company for her vacation trip to Europe.
But of course I’d been caught when Jack slapped down an NDA in front of me with nothing more than a pointed glance between me and the computer of my work neighbor. I didn’t sign it, but I also didn’t think he’d expected me to. It was his version of telling me to keep my mouth shut and my eyes on my own screen.
After that I’d given up work and abandoned my laptop in my room, opting to spend my time with Evan as he worked on healing. Healing really meant he couldn’t exert the muscles bruised in the wreck and since that meant sitting around constantly, I had his apartment added to my key access and spent my days on the couch with him watching TV and trying to keep him from falling into a depression about being sidelined.
Letting myself into his apartment, I stopped at the sight in front of me. The couch was empty and the TV was off. I heard someone moving down the hall and looked up to see Jones striding out to the kitchen, fastening his smartwatch to his wrist. I still didn’t know his first name and I think that was the ongoing joke for him. I’d seen him coming and going from his room in the apartment plenty of times, but any time I tried to get a first name, he’d just given me a soft smile and wished me well before heading out the door. None of the other men had given me anything either, just shrugging as if it was more fun to keep me guessing.
“Where’s your roommate?” I asked Jones before he stopped at the small bench by the door to lace up his boots. Each floor had been converted to hold two apartments each and each apartment had two bedrooms. With the amount of extra resources being spent on protecting me, every single apartment was shared, not even Decker was exempt. Although sharing an apartment with him was pretty much like having the place to myself. It had been seven days since I’d been locked down at Remington HQ and I’d barely seen Decker Mullins. When I did, it was always somewhere else in the building. He was gone before I got up and came back after I’d gone to sleep. Either he was working his ass off or he was just avoiding me.
“Gym for physical therapy,” Jones answered as he stood from the bench. “He left a note on the counter for you.”
“And if he’d left a note for you, how would he address it?” I was fishing again.
“Jones,” he responded with that same soft yet knowing smile before he left me alone in the apartment.
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It took entirely too long to remember which floor held the gym, and I wondered if my aversion to exercise had worked as a mental block during my tour of the building. I was still analyzing my own hatred of things like jogging when I stepped into the gym and took in the impressive set up. I had seen the door that led to this area but hadn’t looked in before.
I’d been in a number of gyms all over the world, usually to casually walk on a treadmill before a shake and sauna time with the girls, but this place was top of the line. The exposed pipes overhead gave the place an industrial feel, but the rows of free weights and benches were like new; every piece of equipment seemed top grade and present in this cavernous space. The walls were dotted with large flat screen TVs all turned to various news channels and muted. No daytime television for these men.
Speaking of men. I’d never seen so many hard muscles on display as half a dozen Remington employees used the various machines and weights. I knew they’d been built in a lab somewhere; I’d just found the lab. Chuckling to myself at my lame joke, I spotted Evan at the far end of the space, hands gripping parallel bars at waist height and shuffling along. He was gritting his teeth in obvious discomfort and I felt the need to pressure him to sit back in his wheelchair.
