“Perfect,” I say, sliding back into character. “You’re gonna get in your car, drive home to that kid who needs you, and forget what my and my buddy’s faces look like. You’re especially gonna forget what happened here tonight.” I suck in an uneven breath, feeling like scum. I’ve never hit, threatened, or fucked with a girl like this, but I push through, knowing my hideous acts are saving her from Brock making her his next target.
I bring the gun to her head. “If you don’t do what I said—and decide to call the cops—once I get out of prison, I will hunt your coke-sniffing ass down, and knife your body open from your dirty cunt all the way up to your chapped lips. Ya hearing me?”
Whimpering, she nods. “I—I am. God, I am.”
“Good.” I stare into her dark, chocolate eyes, hoping she can see I’m not the monster she thinks I am. I release her chin and, with the gun still pinned to her head, I glance at my watch. “You have one minute to get dressed and disappear. Your time begins . . . now.”
She snatches her purse from Brock, gathers her clothing, and—without getting dressed—scurries out of the warehouse, her sobs piercing my ears as the door slams closed behind her.
“Fuuuuck,” Brock groans, swinging his fist through the air. “I should’ve had you test the code before I killed Bobby. Come on.” He starts for the room harboring the coke. “We have to yank up the shit and get the hell outta here.”
Numb, I stare at him, unsure of what either of us has morphed into. Willing my body to move, to react, to do something, I follow Brock, my heart thumping at dangerous levels as he punches the code into a security panel flanking a metal door.
A long beep, a red light turns green, and bam: I’m staring at enough pearl to keep the entire Eastern Seaboard geeked up for months, if not years.
On top of accessory to murder and threatening the shit out of a minor, I’m about to add theft to my growing list of immoral acts. No amount of visits to the confessional booth is gonna get me outta this one . . .
I enter, my eyes landing on endless stacks of kilo bricks lining a room the size of a small office. If I had to estimate the street value on the shit, it’d be somewhere around fifteen to twenty million.
“Grab that.” Brock points to a black duffel bag cushioned against a filing cabinet as he starts swiping the coke from the shelves.
I walk over to the bag and lift it, my bicep getting a workout from its weight. Other than a small body, there’s only one thing that can be inside it. I set it on top of a wooden table and unzip it, my intuition proving right as a slew of AK-47s, a shiny twelve-gauge shotgun, and at least twenty pistols hit my line of sight.
I dump everything onto the table and lean against the wall, my arms crossed as I watch Brock fill the bag. Nerves mounting, my head begins to fully digest what’s gone down. What started as a normal pickup ended in complete chaos, two assholes losing their pathetic lives because of us. I didn’t pull the trigger, but Bobby and Dom’s blood is on my hands as much as Brock’s.
Movements carried out with quick precision, and stare narrowed on mine, Brock continues to stack out the bag. “We should’ve gotten rid of her.”
“I wasn’t gonna let you kill an innocent kid,” I mutter under my breath. “I get that you snapped when Dom threatened Amber—so did I—but that’s where it needed to end.”
Having nothing more to say, I turn and walk out. Barely stepping foot into the open warehouse, a pang of nausea razors through me as my gaze lands on Bobby and Dom’s bodies. I clamp my eyes shut, nightmares of what I’ve turned into—what I have yet to become—seeping into my thoughts.
I snag a breath, aware with everything in me that I’m never gonna be able to look at my mother or grandmother without fearing they’ll smell the stench of my lies, see the demon hiding beneath my flesh.
My heart trips, knowing I’ll never hold Casey the way I used to without feeling diseased, the warmth my arms once brought to her turning into icicles.
I exhale, my conscience screaming out that if I ever touch, taste, or take Amber, I’d spread nothing but poison over her beautiful body, not an ounce of me capable of giving her what she needs, what she deserves.
Taken by the evilness ravishing the air around me, the last remnants of who I was finally disappears, leaving me tainted, broken beyond repair.
I open my eyes, blinking my vision into focus. Another pang rips through me—this one rocking my skull—as the realization hits me that there are cameras all over us. Close to cracking, I head for the main office and locate the surveillance equipment. After ripping the cables from the control module, recovering the disks, and snatching up the monitor, I haul ass back into the warehouse, everything tight in my grip.
“Christ. I forgot about that shit.” Brock slings the duffel bag over his shoulder, his attention frozen on the cameras watching us from above. “I’m not worried about our prints because neither of us has a record. And, besides taking Dom and Bobby’s guns, mounds of other fuckers’ prints are all over this place. But the cops gotta have some kind of technology that can hone in on our profiles, right?” His eyes shoot to mine, concern lining his face. “Don’t you have to destroy the cameras or at least bring them with us? We can’t just leave them here.”
“They don’t need to be destroyed.” I brush past him, making for the back door. “And yes, we can leave them here. The video feed’s stored on the computer’s hard drive, not the cameras.”