by Ashley Hall
Sky started to climb down, but I shook my head. After a moment, she settled back against me. "What's going on? What kind of mission is this?"
I smirked and grabbed my cell. The pics might not be as crisp as those from a hi-tech camera, but I couldn't really cart one around on my bike. "You'll see."
"Say that phrase again and you'll see what I do," she mumbled as she crossed her arms.
"Is that a threat?" I laughed.
She was staring out at the playground now. "They look so carefree," she commented, sounding happy.
Not for long.
"They're screaming banshees."
"Don't you like kids?"
I paused, not sure how to respond, and ended up not saying anything.
We only had to wait another ten minutes before my target showed up. He parked about as far away from the playground as we did, but he stared intently at the kids, the expression on his face enough to churn my stomach.
Sky must've noticed my attention on him because she asked, "Who is he? Someone you know?"
I ignored her and snapped a few pics of him and his car. Couldn't get his plate from this angle but I had several of it already. Every move he made, I noted, and it didn't take me long to realize he was staring at one girl in particular. She broke away from the others to chase after a runaway ball and his head turned as if he was focused on her and her alone. That was the first sign of a guy getting ready to making a move—picking his mark.
"He gives me the creeps," Sky said.
"That's because he should." I growled out the words, pissed at the guy even though he hadn't touched the girl yet. Just knowing he wanted her was enough for me to want to knife him.
"Why?" She flopped back, and I glanced over my shoulder to see her glaring at me as if I was the one to blame for another man's crimes.
"He's a pedophile."
"You know that for certain?" She glanced at the guy again.
I shrugged. "Either he is already, or he will be if given the opportunity."
His body started to jerk rhythmically and then a little faster. I'd just done this earlier and watching him do it, knowing what he was thinking about, made me want to march over to his car, yank him out through the glass, and beat him bloody.
Shortly after he stilled, he drove off. We trailed him, but he didn't head toward his place. He went to a restaurant.
Perfect.
My tires squealed as I made a U-turn and zoomed along to his apartment. I parked a block down and jumped off my bike.
"What is your mission, Shadow?" Sky asked quietly.
"Like you said, we don't know for sure he's a pedophile. I just know he haunts that playground every day, usually for much longer than he did today. If he is, or is seriously planning to take advantage of an innocent child…" My throat grew too tight. "Stay here or come along. Either way, keep quiet."
I ran to the apartment, up to the third floor. All the way in the back was his door. It wasn't hard to pick the lock and just like that, I was in. I'd been tailing this guy for a month now and I knew most of his habits.
A moment later, Sky followed me. For some reason, that didn't make me feel any better. Yeah, I wanted to push her away but right now, I couldn't concentrate on her. I had to be focused. I had to be prepared for what would happen next.
Time was of the essence. His place was cramped and filthy, and in the back, I found his bedroom, and the jackpot—his computer.
"Why are we here? That guy… Shadow, I don't know about all of this…"
Her trepidation only grated on me. He wouldn't do a damn thing to her. She was too old for him. Didn't she realize that? He was a predator.
"Then leave. This is my mission. I have to do this."
Not willing to risk sitting in his computer desk chair – in case he had beaten off while sitting in it - I hunched down and typed away. His computer was password protected, but I had already done research on the guy. His name was Harold Johnson, and I knew his mother's name, his date of birth, his goldfish's name… the last turned out to be his password. Amateur.
From there, it was all too easy to find what Harold Johnson would have wished remain hidden. The pictures of young girls… in various states of undress… My stomach threatened to bring up my breakfast, the bacon burning in the back of my throat. Anger and repulsion filled me. Memories of darkened rooms and hands from a man I couldn't see reaching out for me… the fear, the self-loathing, the crying…
It took all of my self-control to not smash the computer screen.
"Shadow…" Sky's voice had finally stopped sounding nagging, but now it had taken on a more sympathetic tone, which was almost worse. "What is going on?"
"My missions…" My tongue felt too heavy for me to be able to talk.
I had dragged her in this far. If I wanted to push her away forever, I might as well tell her everything so she would never want to come back to me.
"When I was a boy…" Shit, this wasn't easy to talk about. I never talked about this. "My foster father…"
She reached out and touched my shoulder.
I shrugged her hand away, jumped to my feet, and paced the room, refusing to look at her. "He molested me, and ever since, I've been taking care of pedos in revenge," I confessed in a rush, unwilling to look at her to see her reaction.
"A one-man crusade?"
Now I had to know what she thought. I glanced over at her to see her wide eyes, but the rest of her expression, gave away nothing. "Me and my motorcycle club."
Holding my breath, I waited for her to pass judgment, to see revulsion fill her eyes, for her to show signs of fear, for her to run away screaming.
She didn't. What the hell was wrong with her?
I turned away. Maybe she'd leave if I wasn't watching her.
A moment passed. Another. I didn't hear any footsteps. Then I did, but they were heading toward me, not the door. Again, she touched me. Her hand slid down my elbow to my wrist and my hand, holding it as if she had every right to. "That's terrible. I'm so sorry—"
"Sorry? What does feeling sorry about anything ever do?" I narrowed my eyes. She still didn't get what my missions entail. "Sky, I'm not here to track this guy and build up evidence to turn him over to the police. Jail is too good for him. No, I'm here to kill him."
She backed away slightly, her hold on my hand lessening until she dropped it.
"Go on and leave," I taunted her. "Tell the police if you want. I don't give a shit what you do. Just leave me alone."
"What are… what are you going to do?" Finally, there was some real fear in her voice, but was it enough for her to leave? I wasn't sure. She had to go. Leave me to rid the world of these vile, disgusting excuses for men and to try to gain what little peace I could from inflicting my own personal justice… until I located the next guy.
"I'm going to wait for him to come home, and then I'm going to kill him." Simple enough.
Without waiting for a response, I marched to the door and stood in position, pulling my gun from my boot, cocked and ready. My trusty Smith and Wesson Glock 40, silencer already attached. It felt even more at home in my hand than the handle of my bike.
Steps sounded behind me and I lowered the gun, expecting Sky to walk around me and leave. She didn't, just stood a few feet away from me, slightly behind me but where I could still see her. It was like I didn't know her at all anymore, and I guess I didn't, considering she didn't even know herself right now either. How scary all this must be for her.
Not that I was going to allow sympathy to cloud my judgment or change my mind about what I had to do. She was not going to break my heart again. I couldn't let her back in. Not again. Never again. Fuck her. This was supposed to have sent her off in fear. Did she really want to witness my shooting him? Maybe she was naïve enough to believe that I wouldn't go through with it, not with her here. She was in for a rude awakening if she thought that was the case.
"Does he live alone?" she asked after several minutes of silence had passed.
"Yes.
"
More silence. Waiting was the worst part. The killing I could handle, but the buildup was the worst. Nothing at all like sexual tension. There, the longer the wait, the better the orgasm. With killing, there was a sense of accomplishment from ridding the world of a monster, but it only lasted for a second, if that. There were so many more out there. It would be impossible to find and kill them all, but my boys and I, we did our part to try and better the world, as twisted as it was.
Men like this one were a blight in the world, a pestilence that needed to be eradicated. My mission was to kill as many of them as I could before I die, a never-ending mission, one that might cost me my life. Some days, I hoped it would.
"How long have you been—"
"I would rather not talk right now." I shifted the weight on my feet. Tension was forming in my shoulders, but I wasn't about to move. Howard Johnson was mine.
"Shadow…"
"If you won't shut up on your own, I'll make you," I threatened, but there was no malice in my words, and from her slight scoffing sound, I knew she knew it.
"Shadow," she repeated, and the compassion she infused in my name was enough for me to want to turn toward her, to look at her, to try and read her and understand what she was thinking. How could she still be by my side?
But the sound of approaching footsteps on the stairs, growing louder with every footfall, had me refocusing my gun on the door. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the doorknob jiggled as Howard Johnson unlocked the door to his apartment. The door swung open and he stepped past the threshold. He didn't even have time to get his head completely up before I fired my shot. The bullet cut a clean path through his skull. Hollywood so got silencers wrong. Guns don’t make soft sounds. The sound of the shot is still audible, just not as loud as it would have been without the silencer. Nothing could ever completely mask the sound of a gun firing.
Without uttering a sound, Howard Johnson fell to his knees and slumped forward, dead. I tucked my gun away, stepped around him, and left. Sky followed me.
Mission complete. Time to start my next one. It never ended. It never would.
Chapter Six
Sky
I felt like I was living a stranger's life. True, that wasn't much different than how I had felt since I first woke up in the hospital room from the coma, but this was odd. It felt so surreal. Had Shadow really just done that? Had I really just watched him kill an unarmed man and allowed it to happen? The sound of the gun firing had seemed so loud… The silencer had made it a little quieter, but there was no mistaking that sound for anything else.
I stumbled down the stairs after Shadow. He was moving so fast, already at the bottom of the steps. God, my life was a mess. A roller coaster that was quickly spiraling downward out of control. I don’t understand how I got here. This morning I had actually woken up happy. Or at least not, lonely, scared and depressed like at the hospital. Shadow had been so good in bed, not exactly doting, but the way he handled my body, the way he knew just where to touch me left no doubt to his claim that we had once been together. But we had broken up, that much was obvious. Why? Had I learned about his missions? I would like to think that I wouldn't stand by a man who would murder innocent men. Well, the men weren't entirely innocent, but they should be tried before a jury and sent to prison for their crimes. Plus, he had basically admitted he didn't think that guy had touched a girl… but even I had to agree that if he had been given the chance, he probably would have, given all the sick pictures he had on his computer. Still, to just kill him in cold blood like that…
A vigilante, a self-justifying killer. That was what he was, what his entire motorcycle club was. I'd slept with a murderer.
Who had saved me from guys as bad as the one he'd just killed.
My foot missed a step, but I somehow managed to not touch the railing as I righted myself. I couldn't risk touching anything. Had I touched anything in the guy's apartment? I couldn't be sure, and considering I hadn't realized what Shadow's mission had been until he explained it to me, I might not have been careful enough. I might've left my fingerprints behind somewhere. Oh, God, what if the police investigated the murder and I became a suspect? Just by witnessing it and not coming forward, I was an accomplice. An accomplice to murder.
I covered my mouth to try and help stifle the urge to vomit. Finally, I burst out of the apartment complex. The sun hit me and I felt almost as if I was under a hot spotlight, with the sun accusing me of my crimes. I'd thought of Shadow as a sinner. I just hadn't realized how right I was.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Shadow… where was he? His bike had been right here… only now it was gone.
He'd taken off and left me behind. The bastard.
Maybe I'd been the one to break things off between us. Maybe that was why he alternated between being hot and cold toward me. Regardless, I had nowhere else to go, and I couldn’t stick around here. Not with the body of Howard Johnson, waiting to be discovered. So I started walking. I passed a library, backtracked and went inside. Using one of the public – thankfully they didn’t require a library card for use - computers I was able to track down the motorcycle club's address and directions. Karen, the nurse from the hospital had let me borrow her laptop so I could try to search information about myself to trigger memories, so I at least knew my way around the web.
It wasn't until I had been walking for a good half hour before the thought occurred to me that maybe I should've researched the nearest police station. Shouldn't I tell them what I knew?
But what good was the word of a woman who didn't even know her real name, or her birthdate, or anything like that? That would just make me sound crazy, and a little suspicious, plus there was that whole accomplice to murder issue too.
Shadow had known what he was doing by taking me along on one of his "missions." He was trying to push me away. Why had he even bothered to save me then?
Going back to that club… why should I do that? I should never want to see Shadow again but despite what he'd done, right now, he was my only link to my past, so I picked up my pace. Not two minutes later, a car slowed down, and the driver rolled down the passenger window. "Hey, you need a lift?"
I glanced at him. A college-aged boy with pimples on his face and glasses. Scrawny. A ride would be awesome—my feet were killing me—but I hesitated.
"Well?" he asked.
I quickly recited the address to the motorcycle club. "You aren't happening to go that way, are you?" I asked, torn between wanting a ride and feeling like it might be safer to walk, even though it was going to take me hours to get back by foot.
"Yeah, actually. Hop in." He jerked his thumb to the backseat. "If you'd feel safer, sit back there."
I did just that. The kid—Franklin—chatted about his classes and siblings and the weather, a real talker. I didn't mind. It helped to preoccupy my thoughts. Immediately after the coma, my body had been holding me prisoner. During therapy, something had changed. As my body grew stronger, my mind and thoughts had been what held me back, my new captor. Now my mind was threatening to overwhelm me again.
It felt like no time had passed when he pulled up in front of the clubhouse. "Here you go."
"Thank you so much." I climbed out and shut the door. "I'm sorry I don't have anything to pay you with."
"No worries." He gave a little wave and sped off.
See, Shadow? There are good people in the world, good guys. Not all of them are assholes. Not all of them are pervs. Not all of them deserve to be taken out by you.
As I approached the clubhouse door, I found myself hoping Shadow wasn't here. Maybe one of the other guys would be willing to talk to me. If Shadow and I had dated, the other bikers would have known me too, right? They could point me in the direction of my family…
If I had a family. What if I was an orphan or an only child?
God that would be depressing. It almost didn't seem possible for there to be a ray of sunshine in my life.
I scanned up and down the block. I
didn't think I saw Shadow's bike parked along the curb with the other motorcycles. It irritated me to realize I was sad his bike wasn’t there, which was stupid. I didn't know him well at all, and from what I had just witnessed, I should be completely repulsed by the very thought of him.
Knowing he'd been abused made his anger understandable but he was still in the wrong. If I could just convince him to stop, that his missions – these killings- wouldn't change the past…
Did I want to see if I could change him? Did I even have a role in his life anymore? We had dated, yes, but we had split up, and probably for a very good reason, though I imagine giving up the incredible sex had been difficult. Man that boy could fuck. God, I was still sore, and just recalling what I had done, what he had done made me wet all over again.
