Vigilante

by Jessica Gadziala

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  RIGHTS

  DEDICATION

  - ONE

  - TWO

  - THREE

  - FOUR

  - FIVE

  - SIX

  - SEVEN

  - EIGHT

  - NINE

  - TEN

  - ELEVEN

  - TWELVE

  - THIRTEEN

  - FOURTEEN

  - FIFTEEN

  - SIXTEEN

  - EPILOGUE

  - BONUS MATERIAL

  - DON'T FORGET

  - ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  - ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  - STALK HER!

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  RIGHTS

  DEDICATION

  - ONE

  - TWO

  - THREE

  - FOUR

  - FIVE

  - SIX

  - SEVEN

  - EIGHT

  - NINE

  - TEN

  - ELEVEN

  - TWELVE

  - THIRTEEN

  - FOURTEEN

  - FIFTEEN

  - SIXTEEN

  - EPILOGUE

  - BONUS MATERIAL

  - DON'T FORGET

  - ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  - ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  - STALK HER!

  VI

  GIL

  ANTE

  -

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

  Cover image credit: istock.com/ stevanovicigor

  DEDICATION

  To the righters of wrongs.

  And everyone in need of a vigilante.

  Also to everyone who needed the lye info.

  It's true, btw.

  Just sayin'

  ;)

  ONE

  Luce

  The body was half-melted in the tub. The lye was doing its job beautifully. It was heated to over three-hundred degrees. In case you were wondering, in case you have a douchebag who beats you or know of a pedophile who isn't 'reformed,' you have to heat the lye to dissolve a human body. Three hundred degrees and two or three hours, and you will have a tub full of post-human fluid the consistency of mineral oil. Then you can just pour it down the drain like nothing happened, using a catch to get any possible bone shadows, crush those up, dissolve them again, then drain that as well.

  If you have the time and want to make sure there is no chance of anything ever leftover, sulfuric acid does the job in about two days, but can cause third-degree burns, and the fumes are enough to send you running from the room.

  After that, you just need some running water and a couple bottles of bleach. Then it was like that person never existed.

  I obviously have a lot of experience with removing bodies. This is mostly due to the fact that I take a lot of lives. I do this killing without shame, without regret, and with a clear mother fucking conscience.

  Some bastards don't deserve to walk the earth.

  I make sure their footprints aren't lasting.

  "What can I say, Harold," I started, flipping open his wallet as I leaned against the sink vanity. "Actually, can I call you Harry? I think we're intimately acquainted enough to use nicknames, wouldn't you say?" We had spent some time together before the messy dying and melting part happened.

  I always gave them a chance to fess up, to take the easy route and go to jail. But as I took the photos out of the wallet, explicit sexual images of small boys, and tossed them in the tub with him, I knew the reason he didn't want to go that route. The twenty some-odd years he would do if the feds started digging like I had been digging, wouldn't be easy time. He'd spend a lot of that time with a dick up his ass for raping little boys. A fitting end, I believe. Eye for an eye and all that. So that was why he got the chance to choose that option.

  He didn't.

  So that was when the killing started.

  The killing was fast. It was the clean-up that took the longest.

  I didn't just have to get rid of his body. I had to go on and wipe all that nasty shit he plastered all over the dark web. That was no easy feat either. But it was just part of the job.

  For my troubles, the five grand he had in his Bitcoin wallet would be transferred, washed, and put into my own.

  Most jobs left me out of money, not gaining any. And while I did shit because it was right, because the system failed the population, because sickos like Harold could walk free, I was still human. I had to eat. I had black hoodies to buy. I had lye and bleach to stock up on. Normal shit.

  So Harold's contribution to the cause, albeit unwilling and unwitting, was going to do some good.

  "At least something came out of your sorry ass existence."

  There was a telltale, all-too-familiar vibrating at my hip. Not a cellphone, of course. It was old tech, most thought the stuff of museums, but in case you were curious, yes, they do still manufacture pagers. And I had one. They were reliable due to low traffic, anonymous thanks to the code you had to reach me with, and easy to smash if you needed to clean shop and delete traces of it.

  The 8.0 was the code for who was calling.

  The 422 was the reason why.

  Yes, if you were interested, there were 500 codes you could possibly call me with. And I remembered each and every one of them off-hand.

  Let's just say I got a lot of pages a day from one of over two-hundred contacts across the country. After a while, that shit becomes as ingrained as the mother fucking alphabet. There was no forgetting it.

  A 442 was pretty pressing, but that being said, I was a careful SOB, and I never made calls from my bunker. That just wasn't worth the risk.

  I only had another twenty or so before I could pull the drain and get to work on the bleach. I could be heading into town in a bit to call back and, likely, get the lead on what would be my next case.

  An hour and a half later, Harold Grains was officially no longer even a speck of human; his dark web presence was gone, replaced with a warning page from me, like I always did; my clothes were embers in a firepit, and I was five grand richer as I stopped into She's Bean Around for my usual fix.

  "Hood off. We want to check out that pretty face of yours," Jazzy, one of the smartass, hot-as-sin owners called as I stepped in. Jazzy was all sass, unsettling honey brown eyes, and her medium-dark skin that I still couldn't tell if it was because she was half-black or half-Latina. Whatever it was, it was working for her with her curvy, just shy of chubby body with great hips, ass, tits, and thighs.

  "You can eye-fuck me once I've had my coffee, Jazz," I demanded, dropping the money on the counter. "One for Barrett too," I added. At her blank look, I shook my head, remembering that while he was a huge caffeine addict, he usually made it in-house. "Large black, dollface," I said, tossing a ten into one of the tip jars. They changed daily, requesting you put your money into the one you liked more.

  That day, it was Dexter and Hannibal.

  "This isn't even a fucking contest," I scoffed, almost annoyed that anyone would have put money into just
about any other fake serial killer above Hannibal Lecter. I mean, with his origin story? Come the fuck on.

  What could I say, I was passionate about my flicks.

  "Last week we had Hunnam and Momoa," Jazzy said as she reached for the pot of coffee with a smile. "It practically caused a gang fight. Those Hunnam chicks are, ah, passionate."

  "Did he win?" I asked as I took the coffee.

  "A lot of women aren't into blondes," she said with a shrug. "All I know is, I took home almost a hundred in tips thanks to that one. We're thinking of doing a Harry Potter versus 50 Shades one. We're a little worried there might be blood spilled."

  "And vote tampering," I agreed with a smile. "Keep it sexy, Jazz," I called as I turned to leave.

  "As if it was possible for me not to," she agreed, and I walked back out onto the streets of my town with a smile.

  Navesink Bank.

  It was simply where you went if you were a criminal on the east coast. Why, you might ask? Because with all the other criminals around, it was easy to get away with shit. Plus, the police force was corrupt as fuck and you could, quite literally, get away with murder in broad daylight with witnesses if you knew what palms to grease. Evidence just so happened to go missing a lot. And witnesses rescinded their testimony. Or fell off the face of the earth.

  It had been my home for the better part of a decade.

  It had been my place of business for almost as long.

  As such, I knew where I needed to make my calls. Hence the extra coffee.

  Barrett Anderson was a computer whiz, private investigating, code-breaking, verifiable genius. Literally, he had papers. He was also careful to the point of paranoia, so he did sweeps for bugs every morning when he opened. That and, well, he had bomb-ass wifi.

  He also didn't give a shit if I came in twenty times a day to deal with work stuff.

  "Got you a coffee," I announced as I walked into the shoebox he conducted business in. It was small and dark and a disaster. There was a desk to the middle and back, covered in files, books, and about five coffee mugs. "Only five today?" I asked as I put the to-go cup down.

  "It's only nine, Luce," he reminded me distractedly.

  "You have a computer out? Must be serious." Barrett, while better at computers than most so-called hackers, was careful about when he used them. He did most of his work on paper. In Polish. And, just to make sure even a Poland-native couldn't read it, also in code. He used computers when necessary, then destroyed them. He literally had a desk drawer full of cheap ones he bought in bulk.

  "Collings," he agreed, barely paying me any attention, which was just how he was, so I wasn't offended.

  "Detective Collings?" I clarified, moving away. Didn't matter that he was retired and was a pretty chill guy, I wasn't getting anywhere near that shit. "Just making a call," I declared, moving back into his bathroom. There was nothing but a robotic message on the other end, proving to me again how good some of my contacts were. They could be, and often were, every bit as careful and paranoid as I was. They were, after all, handing me information that could lead to the death of another person. No one wanted that tracing back.

  "Busy week," I murmured to myself after I ended the call, pulling apart my burner, pulling out the sim card, and walking back out. "You mind?" I asked, pointing to the microwave he kept in a corner. Barrett wasn't a man who heated up leftovers or cooked ramen in the office. He was a man who knew that microwaves were the best way to fry electronics.

  "Help yourself," he invited, and I threw the shit inside and turned it on. I stood there for a second, watching the pieces inside start to warp and catch fire, then turned to look at Barrett again. It wasn't my business. He and I were both loners. We handled our own shit. But there was something too tense about him right then, something that made me feel like I needed to say something. "If you need another set of eyes on this," I offered, nodding toward his laptop, "let me know."

  He didn't answer.

  The microwave beeped.

  The flames died.

  I waited a minute, then grabbed the destroyed pieces and headed outside.

  "Catch you next time," I called, not expecting an answer as I yanked up my hoodie and walked down the street.

  I didn't have friends.

  Men like me, who did what I did, who came from where I came from, we didn't get to have something as clean, as normal, as friends. I had contacts. I had fans of my work. I had people I interacted with on a daily basis who knew nothing about me.

  That was as good as I could hope for.

  In a way, it was enough.

  It had to be enough.

  Because it was all I could have.

  I parked at the bottom of the hill, knowing from experience that nothing, save for maybe a heavy-duty truck or an off-roading vehicle could make the trip all the way up. By the time I reached it myself, my legs were screaming, as they always did, and my lungs were burning. My home, or bunker as I generally called it seeing as there wasn't one damn thing homey about it, was set back another twenty minutes inside the woods, built there by some crazy survivalist doomsday fuck a couple generations back. Must have cost him a fortune to not only build an above-the-ground structure, but also sink a whole other one.

  Waste too, seeing as he obviously croaked before his version of apocalypse came.

  But, hey, it worked for me.

  Especially since, if you looked into the structure, all that was on the official city plans was the legal blueprints for the small cottage. There was no evidence of the bunker below. Hell, I hadn't even known when I bought the place. I just wanted the seclusion of the woods and the so-called 'castle defense' of being on a high hill looking down at possible threats coming up.

  I likely never would have found it if I didn't hate mirrors. There was an enormous one in the basement of the cabin, all gilded and full-grown man-sized, taunting me, mocking me, making me face up the person I had been made into.

  When I went to pull it off the wall, though, it wouldn't budge.

  Because it was built into it.

  Which sent me on a two-day hunt to try to find the switch which was also concealed, this time behind a clever fake-front of DVD spines with a trip switch.

  Then there was the massive underground bunker complete with plumbing, well water, lighting that was provided by the solar like the rest of the house, air filters, beds, food stores, and since it was buried, it kept cool year-round, and was completely airtight.

  If I were someone who believed in signs, that would have been one.

  As it was, it was just a golden opportunity that I used to my full advantage.

  I reached into my pocket for my key, half-dreading another full night of research. No rest for the wicked, as the saying goes.

  I didn't hear anyone.

  I didn't see anyone.

  I didn't smell anyone.

  But one moment I was about to head into my very secluded home.

  The next, I was taking a baseball bat to the back of the head.

  And everything went instantly dark.

  TWO

  Luce

  "Fuck," I growled, coming slowly toward consciousness. That slowness was proof of the fact that I hadn't just been bashed in the back of the head. No, the fog over my brain, the dryness in my mouth, the weird atrophied feeling to my muscles, yeah, that could only mean one thing.

  Once I was out, someone drugged me too.

  I let out a sigh, my eyes drifting open to find the source of the cold hardness beneath my cheek. A basement floor.

  Yeah, that was about right I guess.

  While I had never been taken down before, men like me didn't get the luxury of being surprised by it. It was only a matter of time. Someone was going to get me someday, want to pull me apart, want to melt me in a tub, want to bleach me down the drain.

  Maybe a part of me was hoping for another couple weeks, let me take down that newest scumbag I had heard about, but I couldn't say I was exactly broken up about it either.

&nb
sp; This was my fate.

  I was never going to live to ninety and sit on a front porch bitching about how good things used to be when people knew their neighbors and electronics didn't take over the world. First, because fuck neighbors. Second, because electronics were the shit.

  But I knew I would be lucky if I made it to forty without ending up in a cell or a grave, no matter how careful I was.

  Why now? Yeah, that was more what was on my mind. It wasn't like it was when I first started out, when I was willing to just... take somebody out on the street or in their own car, no doubt leaving a shitton of evidence behind. It wasn't like I had gotten careless. My methods were even more strict than ever before. I also hadn't taken anyone out who I had considered a risky target. No crime bosses or any shit like that. The last risky move was taking on some shits running a pill mill. But I took out the whole operation. There was no one left to want vengeance.

  I took a breath, feeling my lungs burn, as I forced a swallow, rubbing my tongue against the roof of my mouth to get rid of a film I felt coating it.

  Fucking poison.

  I rarely worked with it. It was too unstable, too unpredictable, too hard to fucking come by.

  Poison to kill? Yeah, that shit was easy.

  Poison to keep someone out, to keep them down, to keep them weak? Yeah, that spoke of a professional. That spoke of years of studying poisons, of experimenting with them.

  "Great," I hissed at myself as I forced my weighted arms to move to press into the floor, willing the strength back to push my weight up so I could look around. All I could see was darkness and a cinderblock wall not too far off.

  Poison people were like knife people.

  They lived to play with their toys.

  I had the distinct impression that I was about to be a very large, very trapped, lab rat.

  You know, I might have been a real shit, I decided as I managed to plant one hand on the cold, dirty floor, and find enough strength to propel me onto my back, but I didn't fucking play with my victims like a cat with a mouse.