Stalk Her

I smirked, because there wasn’t anything he couldn’t find.

He started tapping away on the keyboard, the light from the computer washing over his face, lighting it up. And then he turned the laptop around so I could see it.

“I compiled everything I found—where she’s from, how old she is, right down to if she has a fucking library card.”

I walked up to the desk and sat down in the chair in front of it, pulling the computer toward me and scanning the files he’d pulled up on her.

Barely even legal.

Last name and Social made up.

And when I saw she originally came from a shitty little trailer park several hundred miles over, I wondered who she was running from.

As if Shyne read my mind, he pulled the laptop back and started typing, presumably to pull up more information on her. He pushed the computer back toward me a few seconds later, and I looked at it, seeing the image of a man… his mug shot.

Henry Baldwin.

Forty-five years old.

Convicted of arson, armed robbery, abduction, and sexual assault.

I felt my nails digging into my palms, my anger rushing through me. “Who is this fucker?” He was obviously connected to Poppy, or Shyne wouldn’t have brought the information up.

“From what I gathered on him, a real lowlife, piece-of-shit motherfucker who has ties to some petty drug rings and local gangs in his area.”

I looked up from the computer to stare at Shyne. “Anything we’d need backup for dealing with?”

Shyne grinned slowly. “Fuck no, Butcher. Henry Boy and his connections aren’t anything you should be worried about.”

I grunted and nodded once. “What’s his connection with her?” That motherfucker better pray one of those sexual convictions didn’t concern my girl.

“Looks like he was fucking her mom and supplying dope to her.”

I cleared my throat and tried not to let my rage bubble over.

“I’m not sure what the rest of the connection is with the girl, but I can assume.”

I ground my teeth.

“She bought a bus ticket with cash, and the place she’s holed up in is dealing with her rent under the table, obviously cash only.”

I scratched my jaw, thinking all this over.

“She has a part-time job, not even one she’s had for a while. And she hasn’t gotten paid from Richie yet, so—”

“She stole money from him,” I finished his thought and stared into Shyne’s eyes, and he nodded once.

“That was my assumption too. But I can put some feelers out in her hometown and find out for sure.”

I shook my head. “Nah. No need. Doesn’t fucking matter if this guy wants to be trouble. I’ll deal with it.”

“We got your back, Prez.”

I grunted in approval.

I stared at the computer screen, knowing this asshole was going to be a problem. He wouldn’t give up, not with the knowledge he was used to getting what he wanted, that the circles he ran in probably called him boss. It didn’t matter, because I’d crush him. My fucking MC would destroy him.

He clearly thought he had some kind of power or claim over Poppy.

But what he didn’t know was I was one evil motherfucker when it came to being proprietary, and that possession was all for Poppy. If he wanted to go up against me, trying to take something from me that I wanted, deemed as mine, there would be one outcome.

Him in the fucking ground.

Chapter Eight

Poppy

“Thanks again for the help, Richie,” I said and lifted my hand to wave goodbye. I had a pocketful of decent tips, which made up for the fact that my feet were killing me, my lower back aching, and I had a tension headache.

But it was nothing a hot bubble bath couldn’t cure.

I closed the door behind me, all the drunks straggling behind from last call. One of them had his arm propped up on the wall as he threw up, and another one was all but having sex with a skanky-looking broad up against a truck.

Just another night at the bar.

I reached in my purse before I moved away from the bar, just double checking I still had my pistol. It had been my mother’s, one she kept under the bed, one she didn’t even keep loaded. Hell, she kept the box of bullets right beside it. Not like she would’ve known how to use the damn thing anyway, because she was wasted out of her mind every single night.

Maybe I should’ve left it with her. Maybe she was the one who really needed it.

None of that mattered anyway. She hadn’t given two shits about me when I lived with her, so I shouldn’t care about what was going on in her life now or if she was okay.

Part of me wanted to check up on her, call her and see if she was all right. She was my mother, after all, even if the only thing she ever did that classified her as a mom was give birth to me.