“I know,” Sebastian said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I wouldn’t have brought it to your attention, but he took the woman from the bank.” He sighed as he clicked another button, and a dead woman filled the screen. Her body had been dumped on the side of the road, naked, with small holes all over her body. It looked like the buzzards had gotten to her.
“Jesus Christ,” Grayson stood and started to pace. His face turned red, and he kept glancing at the picture. Grayson served eight years for rape, something he did not do, so jobs like this hit home too hard, and usually, we stayed away from them.
Usually.
“The girl in the photo, she was seventeen, set to graduate in May, going to Duke. She was a kid, guys. A kid. She needs justice.”
“We get two million out of it too,” Owen added, and the rest of us scoffed at him for being so damn rude about the situation, heartless. Owen’s mind never focused on the emotion of a case, just the cash. If the cash was worth his time, then the case was. He didn’t care who got hurt in the process.
“We aren’t keeping the two million. We are going to disperse it to women shelters around the country,” Sebastian said in a way that almost dared Owen to say something against it. Sebastian wasn’t just our I.T. guy, he managed the numbers, the money. He was the reason why we never had to do any of this again, but we worked for reasons like this.
Criminals who get out of prison and continue their rampage to ruin other people’s lives. We did the world a damn favor by getting rid of these assholes.
“Oh my god,” Quinn’s small voice startled me, and a few guys stood to block the tv a
nd the graphic photo displayed on it.
“Quinn,” I started to say, but I had no idea what to tell her.
Sebastian cleared his throat. “We were just discussing business. We can wrap this up and talk about it another time.”
“Who is that girl? Did you know her? Why is she on your tv?” Quinn rattled off question after question to me or us; I wasn’t sure. She tugged on the oversized sleeves of one of my green shirts that fell to her thighs. Her hair was wet from a shower, and she held a beer in her hand. She had on the same joggers as before, freshly washed every day for her. She paused just before entering the living room, waiting to see what we were talking about.
“I’m going to be straight forward with you,” I told her, taking a few steps in her direction. I didn’t get too close. I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to. “What we do isn’t legal.”
“You killed that girl!” She pointed to the TV and jumped straight to conclusions.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, annoyed with how she never let me finish explaining myself. “No. All of us, we are innocent men who were wrongly accused of a crime we didn’t commit. After we all got out of jail, we formed a group that stole from other criminals. We donate the money we make—”
“A portion of it,” Owen added. “We have bills to pay.”
Count on him to make things worse.
“So Sebastian is always looking up jobs for us to do.” I gave Owen a side-eyed glare, wanting to punch him in the face for giving away the selfish little detail. “This girl died from an inmate that served time in the same prison as me.”
She nodded her head slowly as she thought about what I was saying. “You guys are like vigilantes of the criminal world then? You’re criminals that steal from other criminals to try and make the world a better place?”
“You make it sound like a batman movie or something.” Grayson plopped back down on the sofa and laced his hands behind his head, stretching.
“Sweet,” Heaven added with a clap of his hands. “We are superheroes.”
“Don’t go putting your capes on just yet,” Quinn said, pressing her palm against her forehead. “You still kill people?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Any loose ends.”
“Innocent people?” she asked.
“People that get in the way or threaten to expose us,” Owen said. “It’s the way of the world, sweet thing.”
“Call me sweet thing one more time and I’ll bust this bottle over your head, buddy.” Quinn took a step forward and raised the green bottle full of Stella Artois. It would be a waste of good beer.
Owen tossed his head back and laughed, pointed at her, then slapped his hand on his knee. “You…I like you. You’re funny.”
“I don’t like you. You’re annoying,” she said, narrowing her eyes and pinching her face to give him a dirty look.
Heaven chuckled next.
“Shut up, Heaven,” Owen pouted as he licked his wounds.