Page 37 of Take Her

And then, as I held the phone, it beeped again, as another message came in.

It’s been too long.

17

RHAIM

Idrove across town and circled the man’s apartment complex by summer’s fading light.

Sable had been right; the man lived in a shithole. Probably had thin walls, so I’d need to muffle him, but on the plus side I doubted his neighbors were the cop-calling type.

After that I drove home to my apartment, packed, power napped, and it was far easier to get up in the middle of the night than it had any right to be.

It was because part of my body was wishing it were still on the farm with Gracie—and part of my body still ready to get up in the middle of the night with thoughts of Lia.

I tried to write it off as eagerness to fight—it’d been a while, and I loved a good brawl—but there was no point in pretending my dick was going to punch anyone. I jerked off quickly, methodically, the same way I had ever since Isabelle had died, like I was relieving an animalistic urge, but instead of imagining Lia crawling over me like she had at the club, this time I was punishing her, a thousand different ways for a thousand different indiscretions. For coming into my life without warning, for trying to use me, for being related to her father, for being so young, for being so beautiful, for the strangely awestruck way she sometimes looked at me, for the curve of her ass, for what I was very sure she would be able to do with her tongue—I came with a shuddering gasp, but instead of feeling even a moment of respite, I felt like I was on fire.

Like I was alive again.

God. Fucking. Dammit.

I had been complacent in my grief, absolutely comfortable. I had wrapped it around me like a cloak, and buried all my hopes and dreams and now here I was, feeling them again. It was bad enough that the ice in my veins was thawing—why the fuck did it have to burn?

I looked at the cum in my hand and I hated her for it.

I washed it away though and pulled on all black clothing, because if I couldn’t make her pay, someone else was fucking going to.

I considered my options as I drove back to his apartment and parked several blocks away.

I wouldn’t put it past an agency to have created an entire backstory for this guy that you could bounce a quarter off of, and while I trusted in Sable’s witch-like powers with electronics, you never knew.

So in addition to a balaclava and my fists, I’d brought my Sig Heuer P365, a gun small enough to be called charming, if you weren’t the one about to get shot by it.

And when I got there, I gave my surroundings a cursory glance, making sure there was no one awake to see me, before I trotted up to his apartment’s second floor.

It only took a moment to let myself in, after bringing down the knit mask that covered everything but my eyes.

His place smelled like old diapers and cigarettes—and as I looked around his living room with a flashlight, there was a level of authenticity in the squalor the FBI was not known for.

I’d looked up the blueprints to the place online, so I knew there was only one bedroom, through a closed door. I walked back to it with soft treads, and while I was tempted to kick it open, I could hear a man solidly snoring through the cheap particle board. I carefully opened it up and then stepped inside. He was illuminated by a streetlight outside coming through wrinkled blinds.

He didn’t wake up.

He was clearly subpar.

Which made everything here even more confusing.

I padded over to his bed’s far side and planted a hand on the pillow that was lying skew there, in case there was a gun beneath it—then pulled out my own and aimed it at his head. He was in his thirties and sleeping like a child.

What the fuck was that even like?

“Wake up, Chad,” I said in my most ominous tone, and when that didn’t work, I kneed the bed.

He startled awake at that, and then saw me. “Oh—oh shit,” he cursed, with a frantic look in his eyes.

“Move and I will kill you. Answer my questions and you get to live.”

There was a moment when I thought that he’d be foolish—I saw all his decisions flowing through him, making him twitch, as the frightened part of him tried to run and leave the rest of him behind, but eventually he figured out his shit.