Seventeen
Shooter
"Honey, I'm homeeee," I drawled, pushing open the door, only mildly concerned that she hadn't locked it like I told her to. I was in too good a mood to lecture her, partly because I was getting pancakes, but mostly because, well, the woman who was making them for me.
As I was staring at the syrup selection at the bodega around the corner, I couldn't help but agree that Dade was right; it didn't take weeks or months to figure out you wanted someone. It took me just days. In fact, it took me minutes if I was being completely honest. Having the days, that just reinforced what I already knew. I liked her. I wanted her around. And I didn't just want her around for a quick fuck when I was in the mood, though I would happily fuck her to the end of the world. I wanted her around. I wanted her in my kitchen whipping up whatever popped into her head. I wanted her on my lap when I got together with the guys. I wanted her to integrate herself with the women, to see that she could fit in. I wanted her sleeping in my bed; or tossing and turning in my bed so I had to pin her so she could finally get some rest. I wanted to peruse the fucking food store with my hand in her pocket as she tried not to look mortified.
I wanted her.
And it wasn't terrifying like I thought it would be, to realize I found a woman who I wanted more than sweaty nights with. It should have freaked me out, made me want to run as far as fast as I could. But it didn't. If anything, I felt a deep kind of contentment that was at once both foreign and familiar.
I knew she would fight it, fight her feelings for me. But I also knew she was feeling what I was feeling too. Unlike me, it didn't comfort her; it scared the shit out of her. She was convinced that if she let a man stay around her long enough, he would realize she wasn't worth staying for.
Well, I was just going to have to prove her wrong about that, wasn't I?
The smile was still tugging at my lips as I kicked the door closed and moved toward the kitchen.
And that was when my heart skidded to a stop inside my chest.
Because everything was wrong.
Her pot of water on the stove was bubbling viciously, the water already half evaporated. The flour was overturned, sticks of butter on the floor, sugar spilled everywhere.
"Fuck!" I screamed into my empty apartment, the bag falling out of my hand as I reached for my cell, flipping off the stove before I ran out into the hall.
"What's up, Shoot?" Breaker's voice said calmly in my ear.
"He got her," I said, tearing down the stairs and exploding onto the street, looking frantically around.
"Who got who?"
"Luis got Amy," I clarified, moving down the street though I knew it was pointless. "I left for five fucking minutes and he got her."
"Shoot are you sure she didn't..."
"I'm fucking sure and I need you to call Lo and Wolf and fucking anyone else you can think of and get them in on this." With that, I disconnected, throwing open the door to Paine's shop, making the girls staring at a portfolio jump and yelp. "Paine!" I called, my voice hitting an edge that I didn't even recognize.
"Shoot, the fuck are you..." he started as he came out of the back, but his face fell as he looked at me. "No..."
"Yeah," I agreed, hands clenching and un-clenching at my sides, itching for something to do, but having nothing.
"Out!" he barked at the women who immediately dropped the portfolio and rushed to the door. We followed, moving out onto the street. "How long?"
"Five, ten minutes," I said, reaching for my phone as it rang.
"Shoot," Lo's voice said in my ear. "Everyone's on it. I need details so I need you to get your head in the game."
"I went out for syrup around the corner. Got back, went in, kitchen was a mess."
"The door, was it broken?"
"No she must not have locked it."
"What about your outside door? That has a lock too."
I hadn't even looked at it to be honest. I had no reason to on the way up. I rounded the corner of my building again. "Nothing, Lo. If it was fucked with, it was picked."
"Okay. There's a camera at the shop next door..."
"On it," I said, turning back and charging into the pawn shop. "Need your video footage for the camera outside," I barked at the hulk of a man behind the counter who moved to scoff at me. And, well, I didn't have time for his shit. I pulled the gun out of the waistband of my pants, cocked, and aimed. "Right fucking now," I demanded and he nodded and waved us into the back.
"Shooter, breathe," Lo said calmly into my ear. "We're going to find her. She's going to be fine."
"She's not like you, Lo," I said, closing my eyes as the shop owner screwed around with his computer. "Or Janie or Alex. She put on a good show, but she's not a hardass."
"Much as I like that description of me and the girls, Shoot, I'm sure she's stronger than you think. And she's only been gone a couple of minutes."
"Lo... it only takes a couple minutes to cause serious damage," I said, my stomach turning sour.
"Don't go there. Not yet."
"Right about fuckin' now, buddy," Paine said to the shop owner, his smooth voice sounding threatening.
The shop owner hit a button and pushed his chair back so we could look. Paine reached out and rewound the footage until I saw something that made my world feel like it was falling apart. Three men moved out from behind my building, one of them being Luis who walked ahead of the others. The other two, who were unknown to me, had a struggling Amelia by the arms, her legs kicking out as they lifted her off the ground to remove her leverage to struggle away. "Fuck..."
"Yeah," Lo agreed. "Janie just brought up the footage over here."
"Already?" despite myself, I felt a surge of amusement at how fast they got shit done.
"It's a pawn shop, not the CIA," Lo said. "Okay so that's Luis. The other two I don't know but Janie will ferret out who they are. Doesn't look like we got a car. Where the fuck did he park?"
"Down the side street," I said as I watched them disappear from the camera view. "There's no cameras down there. Half of it is abandoned."
"Getting Alex on the traffic lights. Any idea what he drove down in Alabama?"
"Mercedes," I said automatically. "Black. New. That's all I got."
"Narrows it down," she said, calm as ever while I felt like everything inside was splintering apart.
"Cash, Wolf, Reign, and Repo got the call. They're on their bikes looking around. But my guts say we need to figure out where they're taking her. Too much traffic around here to find them on the streets."
"Half of this part of town is fuckin' abandoned, sugar," I said, knowing they could be anywhere.
"Yeah but they wouldn't know that," she said. "Not until they got here anyway and they couldn't have been here for long. Maybe ask Paine about the guys down in..."
My head whipped in Paine's direction and he straightened. "Where do the Third Street guys get their heroin, Paine?" I asked and his eyes closed as he exhaled, his head tipping up to the ceiling for a second. "Don't want to ask it of you, man," I said, shrugging.
Paine ran a hand down his face and nodded tightly, moving out of the back room and I followed. " 'Preciate the concern, Shoot," he said, getting back onto the street and throwing himself into his Challenger. I got into the passenger because, one, I needed something to do, and two, someone needed to be with Paine where he was going. "But it was bound to happen eventually. Couldn't expect to stay away forever."
"Got yourself any guns in here?"
"Glove," he said and I flipped it open, checking the clip, then handing it to him. One of his hands was at twelve on the wheel, the knuckles light from holding it so hard as we left the industrial part of town behind and steadily made our way into the part that made any decent person do a quick K-turn and get the fuck back out again. It wasn't even a part of town I felt all that comfortable driving around, but it was a part of town that Paine used to walk, used to help run.
We pulled across the street from a half-dilapidated apartment building, a few guys perched on the front steps. Down the block, a few girls were standing around, fanning themselves in the heat. Didn't take much for me to know that the girls belonged to the guys. And by 'belonged' I meant worked for. By 'worked for' I meant 'turned tricks for'. Fuckin' Third Street Gang and their whores and smack. Some things never changed.
Paine unfolded himself from his seat as I rounded the front of his car. The guys on the stoop looked at me oddly but seemed to dismiss me until Paine got onto the street, gun shining in the hand at his side. Then they were on their feet, one running inside the building, the others attempting to make themselves look bigger. It might have been years and faces may have changed 'round those parts, but everyone knew Paine. Everyone also knew that Paine was out; he was straight; he had to do some horrible shit to get that way. So him being back, well, they knew that wasn't good news.
"New blood," Paine greeted, his voice having a kind of deadness that made a sliver of ice slide through my insides as we moved to stand on the sidewalk a few feet away from them.
"Paine," they greeted, jerking their chins up at him.
"Ain't here to get to know you," he said a little roughly, making me watch his profile. I knew Paine for a long time. He was friends with Breaker before I ever got the balls to run from my Pops so he was a big part of my life. And while Breaker knew him when he was still involved with Third Street, I didn't have much to do with him at the time. I didn't see this side of him. I didn't see the coldness. I didn't get the sensation of heartlessness, because that was so far from the Paine I knew and loved that it was hard to reconcile that they were even the same person. But there was Paine standing next to me with dead eyes and a tone that was reserved for the scariest kinds of criminals. "Made it pretty clear I don't give a fuck 'bout this operation anymore when I fought my way out."
"Then why the fuck you here?" the bolder, also younger and stupider, of the two asked.
Paine made some sort of growling noise low in his chest that effectively shut the kid up. The door behind them opened a second later, the other young kid behind a man who was taking up the whole doorway. My head snapped up and I felt a deep kind of knowledge settle in as I took in his familiar caramel-colored skin, his wide, strong body, his light eyes. There was no mistaking it, the leader of the Third Street Gang was Paine's fucking... brother.
From what I knew, he didn't have brothers, only sisters, sisters I had met.
I'd never heard a word about a brother.
But there he was.
"Long fuckin' time, Paine," he said, nodding his head.
"Not long enough," was Paine's response.
"Came here just to dish out attitude."
"Came here to find your supplier," he countered and his brother stiffened slightly.
"Ain't got no business in our business anymore."
"Became my business when Carlos stole Shoot's woman."
His face snapped to me, took in the gun in my hand. "The Shoot? As in Shooter?" he asked.
"Yup," was all I could manage.
"Enzo," he said, giving me a chin jerk before turning back to his brother. "Interesting friends you keep."
"Luis Carlos," Paine said, cutting through the crap. "He been through here?"
"Ain't your place to ask."
"Don't fuckin' test me, Enzo," Paine said and I could see his fist grip his gun harder and I realized whatever bad blood there was between those two went deep. "His woman was sittin' safe and sound in his apartment and that piece of shit gets in and drags her, got the fucking camera footage, drags her kicking and screaming out of it. So you cut the shit and you fuckin' tell me if your supplier has been through here today. If he asked about a safe place to hide out for a while."
"Why would I do you any favors?"
"Because, mother fucker," he said, his voice positively lethal and all the men on the steps stiffened, "if you don't tell me in about ten seconds, I am going to call Breaker. And then I am going to call Hailstorm," he dropped and there were shared glances. "And finally, you stupid shit, I am going to call The Henchmen. Let me tell ya, nothin' will make me happier than tearing your shit apart."
"You really want to be making enemies?" Enzo asked, cool as could be, like that wasn't the most petrifying threat that had ever been uttered.
"I really don't want to fucking be here," he corrected. "But my boy's girl was taken and we want her back before that slimy piece of shit causes any damage that can't be fixed."
"You want me to turn on my supplier. You have any fuckin' idea what that would mean for business?"
"You being watched? You get that fucking lazy, man?" he asked and Enzo's eyes got smaller. "If you ain't bein' watched then no one knows we were here or why we were here. So stop dicking around and point me in a direction or maybe I'll let you and your boys find out how Shooter got his name."
"Gotta tell ya," I agreed, nodding, rubbing the muzzle of the gun across my temple, "if there's a day when I could use to shoot someone, this is it..."
Enzo exhaled a pained breath. "Down on Madison," he finally supplied.
"Building," Paine demanded.
"All you're getting," Enzo countered, crossing his arms over his chest. And, judging by the way Paine jerked his head, Enzo meant business. That was all we were getting. But it was something. It was a direction. It cut out the countless other streets in the area.
"Let's go," I said, nudging Paine.
"Yeah," he agreed, giving Enzo another hard look before turning and making his way back to his car while I dragged my phone out of my pocket.
"Lo, find me some place on Madison where they could be keeping her."
"On it," she said, snapping and relaying the order to her people.
I hung up, turning slightly as Paine whipped the car into a neck-achingly fast K-turn, and studied his hardened profile. "You alright, man?" I asked cautiously. I got a tight nod. "Sorry you had to come here..."
"Didn't have to do it," he corrected, shaking his head, each foot further away from the neighborhood making him relax more and more. "I wanted to do it. I like your girl, man. Want you to be able to have her around. Definitely don't want that piece of shit dealer with his hands on her."
"I appreciate it, Paine. Know that wasn't easy for you."
Then his head twisted and a small humorless smile toyed with his lips. "Bound to happen sooner or later. I'm just glad it happened in a way that was at least productive." He took in my face and his tone softened. "Shoot, it's still only been minutes. No more than forty. We have a street. We have the best in the area on finding a building. We're gonna get her back."
"Yeah," I agreed, not bothering to mention all the heinous, awful things that could happen to anyone, especially a woman in the span of forty minutes. Paine didn't need that; he already knew and it wouldn't help either of our moods to bring it up.
It was strange for me to feel the endless pit of fear and worry inside. I was never that guy. I was the guy who, as Breaker would put it, was "incapable of taking serious shit seriously". I didn't get worked up. I certainly never got practically crippled by it. Even among the chaos of shit I had been involved in personally and professionally, I always managed to stay calm, keep my wits, go in cool.
All of that was ripped away with the endless loop of a flailing, screaming, terrified Amelia being torn away from the place she thought was a safe haven playing through my head. I never should have left her alone, not even for five minutes. What the fuck had I been thinking being too busy playing house with her to remember she was in fucking danger? She was paying the price because I didn't have my fucking head in the game. If anything happened to her... anything... I would never forgive myself for it.
Then a thought crossed my mind that had a strange, unfamiliar tightening feeling squeezing in my chest: she was right to think she didn't belong. She was a good girl; I lived in a bad world. I called people friends who had connections in street gangs, who beat people for a living, who could assemble a small, lawless army within minutes of a call. She wasn't ever going to be as safe with me as she would be with another man, someone with a vanilla job, someone who didn't need to carry a gun on their body at all times.
When I got her free, when I fixed her situation, I had to let her go. It was selfish to keep her when I knew I was no good for her.
That tightening thing in my chest intensified and I gritted my teeth, realizing that it was a feeling I was going to be intimately acquainted with once all was said and done.
Fuck.