Lost Cause (Killer of Kings 8)

Was he going to kill her now? She was too relaxed around him, forgetting how he violently murdered that man earlier. She should have kept her big mouth shut.

“You’ll stand beside me at all times, do you understand?”

“If there’s no one there, I can … stay home?” she asked, forever hopeful.

He didn’t confirm or deny it.

Her life sucked. Why did she have to get a job in that place? She was never going back there.

The man, her captor, climbed out of the car, and she tried the door to find that it was stuck. He’d put the child lock on the door.

Gritting her teeth, she waited. Even in her mind, she rarely cussed, but she wanted to.

After climbing out of the car, her captor grabbed her hand and led her across the road. One of the gangs was just at the corner. They seemed to be in a world of their own, and fortunately, they weren’t looking at them.

He got to her building undetected. “Your building has no security?” he asked, opening the front door.

“I live hand-to-mouth. Sorry if I don’t have posh security. Some of the neighbors have dogs.”

“Snarky, I like it.”

She rolled her eyes.

Cleo hadn’t seen anything out of place. Nothing to show that cops were waiting around. If they were, the gangs would have dispersed.

They walked up the three flights of stairs. A heavy scent of urine filled the air, tickling her nose. People could be so gross.

She was a little embarrassed that he had to see where she lived. She got the sense this man was used to a lot of luxuries. The watch he wore cost more than she could ever make in a year. His clothes were not threadbare or worn.

They arrived at her floor and Cleo stopped.

There was a silence that she had never experienced before. No sound. Her building never had no sound.

She licked her dry lips, suddenly in need of a drink. Her stomach twisted.

Her captor moved closer to her door, and glancing around him, she saw that it was partially open. What the heck?

He slapped his hand across her mouth, keeping her close to his side. In his other hand, he had a firm grip on his gun.

She knew nothing about guns. They terrified her.

When he scraped the tip of his gun across the wall, she wanted to ask him if he was crazy or had a death wish. She froze as a man stepped out, and her captor shot him immediately in the leg.

Within seconds, she was let go, but her captor lifted the man and dragged him deeper into her apartment. Cleo followed, slamming the door shut behind her. She felt violated, her private space invaded by this stranger.

“How many of you are there?” her captor asked.

For answers, the man screamed. He hadn’t stopped crying out since being shot.

She winced as her tattooed man slammed his fist into the guy’s face, holding his collar with the other hand. He was a powerhouse. And she had no doubt he’d done this many times.

He pressed a thumb against the man’s wound, making him scream louder. Cleo winced. It was hard listening to so much suffering. She wondered if her neighbors would call the cops or try to ignore the noise.

“Me. There’s just me. I was supposed to take her in,” the guy said. “The boss has been watching her, and I know she reported Marcus to the cops. It was my job to take her back.”

“To where?”

Her guy, he’d been right all along? Cleo was in complete shock. She’d gone to the cops for help and could have ended up dead if it wasn’t for him.