“Oh, my God, Harley. You fucked Hospital Hotty.”

Harley looked up at her friend from her seat at the nurses’ station before leaning in to hiss, “Yes. I’m the hospital hussy who fucked Hospital Hotty. Could you say it any louder, Stacy? I don’t think the people in the ER heard you.”

“So, you did? You did!!!” Stacy squealed.

Harley’s poker face was a talent she had learned from her mother and it was coming in handy. Stacy put her hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, I don’t blame you one bit. God knows you needed to get laid.”

“How ‘bout we leave the Almighty out of this?”

“So, c’mon! How was he? Was he good? How about his…you know. Is it big? Does he know how to use it? Tell me everything,” Stacy whispered eagerly as she leaned over the counter.

Harley couldn’t help but antagonize her best friend just a little. “Okay, fine. It was like fucking a Greek god. He definitely knows his way around the female body.”

“Did he make you come? And please, oh please, describe the dick,” Stacy whispered conspiratorially.

Harley arched a brow. “I lost count, okay?!” She grinned. “And, yeah, it’s plenty big. He’s a mighty, mighty man.”

“Fuuuck! No offense, but I wish I’d seen him first.”

“Should I be jealous?”

“No! I’d never break Girl Code 101. You know, never fuck your best friend’s man, no sloppy seconds. I would never let a guy interfere with our best-friendedness.”

“That’s not a word.”

“It is now, I just made it up. But seriously, ‘chicks before dicks’, you know? Okay, so, entirely different subject -- don’t look but have you seen the new janitor they hired? He’s fuckin’ creepy.”

“Great, now I want to look. Why would you tell me not to look so I’ll want to look? That’s not my definition of best-friendedness.”

“Oh, don’t worry, he sneaks around corners. You’ll see him soon enough. Oh, no, here he comes. Seriously, creepy creepazoid.”

“Great.” Harley rolled her eyes. “You willed him into our space.”

“Shit. I did, didn’t I?” The look of angst on Stacy’s face made Harley cover her lips with her fingertips as she struggled to stifle a laugh.

Stacy turned and uttered a polite, “Hi,” to the man pushing the mop and bucket toward them.

“Hello, I’m Stan. New hire. Nice to meet you.” He stuck his hand out and now Stacy had no choice but to shake it.

That’s what you get, girly, shake that creepy claw, Harley thought to herself gleefully until he stuck his hand out in her direction. She reluctantly shook it, noting his hands were rough and scarred—like they’d been cut up in a knife fight.

“Stan, huh? But you have such a beautiful accent. Are you Mexican or something?” Stacy asked guilelessly.

He smiled, but Harley thought the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You have a good ear, chica. I’m Colombian but my mom just liked the name. She said people would take a man named Stanley seriously.”

“But you go by ‘Stan’,” Stacy said with a frown.

“I don’t like being taken too seriously,” he chuckled easily.

Harley was more concerned that he couldn’t or wouldn’t look at her. He was looking past her, at something over her shoulder. She didn’t trust anyone who couldn’t look her in the eye.

“I have to go now. First night on the job, lots to do. Nice meeting you ladies.”

They watched as he rolled the industrial mop/bucket combo down the hospital corridor.

“Don’t even start.” Harley pointed a finger at her friend before she grabbed her hand sanitizer and lathered her hands and arms down. “I don’t normally get my bitch-switch flipped so fast, but that guy’s weird. You’re too damn trusting. Seriously, Stacy, don’t ever get in an elevator with him alone.”

“This is what happens when you have your nose stuck in a book all the time, Harley. Your imagination gets skewed. Now you think everyone’s a serial killer.”

“No, that’s not true.” Harley wagged her finger from side to side. “He wouldn’t look me in the eye and did you see how scarred up his hands are? Looked like he stabbed someone and either the knife slipped or they fought back. Statistics show that in a knife attack, the attacker often gets cut worse than the victim. True story.”

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! You read about serial killers all the time so that’s all you… Oooh, looky there, it’s Hospital Hotty, rawwrrrr.” Stacy shamelessly admired King’s sexy, smooth gait as he approached the nurses’ station.

“Quit looking at him like you’re taking his clothes off. Go get your own Hospital Hotty.” Harley was shocked by the wave of jealousy that rolled over her.

King sauntered over to the counter, ignoring Stacy as he blatantly eye-fucked Harley, licking his lips as his gaze zeroed in on her chest. “I brought you lunch.”

“Where’s it from?”

“King’s kitchen,” he said with a grin. “I made you a sub sandwich with a little of everything on it and chips, with a fruit cup.”

“A fruit cup,” Harley drawled, sticking out her hand to take the bag.

“Yeah, I went to the store and bought lunch supplies for you. I also went by your house and got you some clothes and a few girly things you might need and took them over to my house.”

“King. You don’t have a key to my house.”

He shrugged. “Keys are for losers.”

Harley shook her head and pursed her lips on a harsh exhale. “We’ll discuss this later. I’m not sure if I introduced you to my best friend Stacy.”

This time Stacy was more than willing to stick her hand out to shake, but Harley intervened. “Not before you use this,” Harley stuck the hand sanitizer out, not relenting until two pumps were successfully deposited in her best friend’s hand.

Stacy rolled her eyes and tilted her chin toward Harley. “She’s convinced the new janitor is some kind of serial killer. All I’m convinced of is that she reads too much. Oh, and he’s Colombian.”

A wave of suspicion rolled through King. Was it just a coincidence that the new janitor was Colombian and that he just happened to show up so soon after the hit on Luis? King didn’t believe in coincidences. He’d be looking into the janitor’s background.

“Not possible. One can never read too much,” Harley groused.

“Nice to meet you, Stacy-The-Best-Friend. I’m King.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Stacy purred, vigorously pumping his hand a little too hard. Harley watched King’s eyes widen and forced herself to will away thoughts of Stacy rubbing her middle finger against his palm in a secret code of Hey baby, I want to fuck you. She shook off the unfamiliar possessiveness that clawed at her insides as she stared at their joined hands.

King abruptly dropped Stacy’s hand and turned to Harley. “I’ll be here to pick you up at the end of your shift.” Before she could argue, he interjected, “Don’t argue with me, Harley. Remember,” he said smugly as he took a few slow steps backwards, “I dropped you off, so you’ll need me.”

“I’ll need you.”

“Mm-hmm. To give you a ride.”

Somehow Harley couldn’t help but think that comment held double meaning, some double entendre meant for her ears only. Harley cleared her throat when she noticed her friend eyeing King’s ass was he turned and continued his progress toward the elevator. “Hey! Girl Code!” she hissed.

“Okay, okay, but it doesn’t hurt to look.”

Harley begged to differ.

Yeah, she’s fucking him. Whore! Stan watched from around the corner as King handed Harley a brownbag lunch. Why couldn’t he be like King? Why couldn’t he have a woman like that? But that wasn’t his life, was it? No, women looked at him with disgust.

That Harley bitch had acted like she couldn’t even shake his hand. She’d noticed his scars, too, and hadn’t been far off the mark about how he’d gotten them. He and his trusty knife went way back. Most recently he had used it in a grand gesture of devotion to Valentina. He had stabbed the actress Estrella Estrada so deeply with that knife, he had nearly taken her head off.

He learned something that day: stabbing women was a real turn-on. The knife became an extension of his body. It was just another way to be inside a woman; just another way to fuck a woman. That was something he rarely got to experience -- not willingly, anyway. He could jack off into Valentina’s panties or fuck a toy vagina, sure, but a knife gave him feelings like nothing else.

Stabbing women was personal. Suffocating women was personal, too. He liked the way their eyes would fill with terror and then he’d lean in real close to watch the small veins start to burst. If they tried to close their eyes, it was easy enough to use his fingers to pry them open. Petechial hemorrhaging, that was what they called it on all the crime shows. Yeah, he was a fucking artist when it came to petechial hemorrhaging. He liked leaving such an incredibly confident calling card for the coroner -- but he still liked stabbing better.

It was the sense of control that really turned him on. He got to choose how deep the knife would go, whether to stab straight in or slice her up. It was all up to him. And it was wonderful. Then there was the whole blood thing. Watching the crimson life force ooze out of a woman was incredibly liberating. It was the one time when he could truly be himself and not give a fuck what anyone thought of him. Women weren’t so high and mighty when they were begging for their life, as bright red blood began to froth and roll down their chin after he’d punctured a lung.

The first time he killed someone had started out as an accident but had become a truly defining, cathartic moment in his life. A prostitute had tried to rob him and he had become enraged at her audacity. So he stabbed her with the pocketknife he carried for protection. He knew he was onto something special when his cock started getting hard as she had slumped to the floor.

It had only been a few minutes since he’d gotten off in her mouth so he had viewed the unexpected erection as a sign of virility. When she eventually stopped breathing, he had checked for a pulse and found none. The finality of that moment had been intoxicating and his cock had continued to firm up to the point of pain. Her utter stillness in death had made him want to pound his fists against his chest like a wild animal. The surge of joy and satisfaction he’d derived from snuffing out her life had left him euphoric. So he’d fucked her again, hard.

He hadn’t experienced that same delicious high since. He missed it. He had found his calling, though. Harley would be his ticket to an early retirement once he extorted the Ramirez brothers. And when she had served her purpose, he’d fuck her and kill her and fuck her again. And that made her special – so special that he’d had a hard time looking at her earlier. He had been afraid that how very special she was would show in his eyes.

Yes, Harley was the cartel’s big weakness and he couldn’t wait to capitalize on it to secure his future -- and they would fucking respect him for it.