Booker
“I don’t know what to tell you, Booker. The apartment isn’t leased to anyone named Troy. The name on the lease is a corporation. All the paperwork makes it look like the apartment is used for business. I can’t find a single ‘Troy’ attached to anything you’ve given me. Even the phone tracks back to a corporation.” Stark sounded as frustrated as I felt. He was a man who was used to being able to answer the questions no one else could. “I can’t find anything useful on the corporation either. It’s a maze of offshore holdings and shell accounts. Nothing is tracing back to an actual human being.” He swore and I heard the click of keys on the other end of the line. “Whoever set this up is good. If there isn’t a back door I can find, then whoever put these pieces in place was a pro and knew exactly what someone digging around in their business would be looking for. They obviously don’t want any roads leading back to them.”
I looked at the phone in my hand. It was a burner. One you paid for minutes on, completely untraceable, and mostly useless. The GPS Stark pulled on it led me to a dive bar on Pearl Street. There were no less than five hundred college kids rotating between the various bars and restaurants that lined the busy street. There was no way in hell anyone would have noticed another student slipping inside and ditching a phone in the bathroom. My skin felt too tight and there was an itch of awareness on the back of my neck that kept my shoulders tense and a scowl on my face. None of this was adding up to a scared kid who lost his temper with his girlfriend because she was moving too fast for him.
“Karsen said the guy gave her the creeps. That he latched on the first day of school and she couldn’t shake him loose. She might’ve been out of the Point for a minute by then, but she will always have instincts honed from growing up in a virtual warzone. None of this is sitting right with me.”
Stark made a noncommittal sound and continued to pound on the keyboard. “I pulled all the enrollment records from CU and I’m shooting them over now. There are several Troys, three of them registered for computer science and computer engineering majors. Might be a place to start. I’ll ask Noe to look into the corporation the apartment is leased under. She might have more luck digging into where the money’s coming from.” His tone indicated he believed his pretty, equally brilliant girlfriend could do anything. She was magical in his eyes, and in reality, she was something pretty damn close to it.
Snowden Stark was a literal computer genius as well as a savant. He was the smartest man I’d ever met, and one of the most dangerous. We’d gotten close when he’d run into trouble with the former elected officials in the Point, which landed his girl in some hot water. Stark was always a mystery, cold and hard to read. But when Noe Lee, his perfect match in every way, got abducted and tortured, it woke something up in the almost robotic hacker that finally allowed those of us who wanted to be on his side to be there for him. I had his back when he needed it, and he had mine. He was the closest thing I’d had to a true friend since getting out of prison.
“I’ll have Karsen and her friend look through these guys and see if they can pick our boy.” I tapped my fingers on the abandoned phone and tried to work my way around the why of this kid putting so much effort into not being found. The only reasonable answer I could come up with was that ‘Troy’ isn't who he claimed to be, and he didn’t want anyone finding out who he really was. It wasn’t good. Someone burying who they were so deeply this close to Karsen made me twitchy and had my fingers curling into a tight fist around the dead phone.
“How is Karsen? I bet she’s a force to be reckoned with now that she’s all grown up. She was always kind of a baby badass, as much as it drove Brysen and Race nuts.” The question was innocent enough. Stark couldn’t know it was like a punch to my gut. Stark and Noe were the ones who kept me up to date on all Karsen’s comings and goings over the last few years. I’d begged, made a fool of myself, owed them endless favors, in order to get them to agree to keep tabs on the girl whom I was responsible for running out of town. In the end, Noe was the one who eventually took pity on me by setting up surveillance, calling me a lovesick fool. I didn’t deny it. Couldn’t deny it.
I wanted to tell him she’d come into her own, she was indeed a force, a woman secure in who she was and her purpose moving forward. But she wasn’t. The Karsen who existed here in all the fresh air and sunshine was a mere shadow of the girl who ran away from home. She was lost, listless, and looking for something, anything, to grab onto. Most of her fire had been snuffed out by easy living and monotonous days. Safety and security had dulled all her shiny, sharp edges and I hated it. Hated I was the one responsible for smoothing her out and polishing her into a porcelain doll that only moved the way she was supposed to, and not the way she wanted to.
I snorted and walked out of the bar, sidestepping a girl who didn’t look old enough to drink and a guy who looked like a linebacker. The girl’s jaw dropped when she caught sight of the rough side of my face and she blinked at me like an owl. It was a common reaction. The unscarred side of my face was easy to look at. I’d been a good-looking kid before getting locked up. The scarred side was shocking to some, but never to Karsen. Even when she was a bratty teenager, she’d never done more than skim her eyes over the mark I couldn’t hide, a leftover remnant from my misspent youth. I wore my ugly history and bad choices on my face for everyone to see, but Karsen didn’t bother looking at the very thing I always believed defined the man I was.
“She’s doing all right. She can’t decide where she’s going or what she wants to do with the rest of her life now that school is over. She wasn’t very happy to see me.” I couldn’t keep the grin out of my voice when I remembered the fire in her eyes as she coldcocked me. The old Karsen was somewhere inside of this new young woman. I would love to have the opportunity to coax her out to play. I missed her, and I wanted some time with her before I had to let her go forever.
“Race isn’t going to be too happy that you’re there. He know you left town yet?” Finally, the clicking of the keyboard stopped and I realized I had Stark’s full attention and he was worried about me.
I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “I’m still breathing, so my guess would be no. You wanna give a guy a heads up if you hear anything? I’m not leaving town until I find this kid, but Karsen should be on a plane home tomorrow. Hopefully, Hartman will be focused on her homecoming and not on the fact I forced myself back into her life.”
Stark snorted. “That guy has eyes in the back of his head and he can multitask like a mother. He’ll welcome Karsen home and send a hit-squad after your dumbass in the same breath. I’ll keep my ears open, but you, you watch your back. You’ve always been careless when it comes to that girl.”
He was so wrong. Karsen was the only thing in my entire life I’d ever been careful with, at least until her hero forced my hand. I muttered a weak reassurance that I would keep my eyes peeled and almost ran into the man standing in front of me because I was distracted.
Typically, I ran other men over. It wasn’t something I thought about, it was just something that happened. I was bigger. I was broader. I was meaner. I was twice as bad as they would ever be. I was so used to other men getting out of my way and giving me a wide berth, it brought me up short when the guy I nearly smacked into didn’t move an inch.
The shiny shoes should’ve been my first hint this wasn’t one of the loud and obnoxious kids wandering up and down the street. I recognized the brand and knew they cost as much as a semester's worth of tuition for most of these kids. The second clue this was not your run-of-the-mill man, one who would mumble and cower away after an encounter with me, was the hand decorated with big, glittery rings. They were ostentatious and obnoxious. They gleamed with enough gold and diamonds to rival the Crown Jewels. They also sat on a pair of hands as battle scarred and busted up as mine. I knew those hands well. I’d taken a hit from them more than once and watched in aggravation as they’d blocked more than one of the ones I’d thrown at the ruggedly handsome face grinning knowingly in my direction.
Unlike Karsen, life in colorful Colorado sure as hell agreed with Benny, or rather, with the man who was now Nicolas Benton. Benny looked good, happy even. If it wasn’t for the scar that slashed horizontally across his throat, a clear reminder of the man he had once been and the life he had once lived, I might not have recognized him. Love had taken away most of the bitterness and greed that used to make Benny an ugly son-of-a-bitch. Now his eyes glittered with mirth and his mouth tilted up without a hint of malice. If I didn’t know all the underhanded, sneaky bullshit he was capable of at the drop of a dime, I could almost convince myself to like the guy . . . almost. After all, he’d risked his neck and left a cushy gig in witness protection to help Stark get Noe back. I still couldn’t believe the guy made it out of that bloodbath alive. He had more lives than a damn cat and had used up every last one of them over the years.
I rocked back a step and let my arms drop loosely to my sides. I had no idea who sent him, but if it was Race, things were going to get bloody really fast and I needed to be able to react.
“It’s been a while, Ben.” I felt my jaw tick and I kept my eyes locked on his. The guy was quick and better with a blade than anyone I’d ever encountered on the streets. Just because he was domesticated now didn’t mean he hadn’t spent most of his life feral and unleashed like the rest of us predators. “Looking good.”
Benny spread his hands wide in front of him. The gesture was supposed to be nonthreatening, to show his hands were empty, but I didn’t buy it. Guys like Benny never went anywhere unarmed, especially if he knew our paths were going to cross. He was dressed in a pair of designer slacks that had to be tailored to fit him and a soft-looking sweater. The outfit screamed ‘Colorado Casual’ and did a good job of removing Benny from the ‘thug in a three-thousand-dollar suit’ I remembered from back in the day. You could remove the man from the violence that created and shaped him, but you could never take the consequences and repercussions from those actions out of the man. He had to live with the weight of that battered soul forever. Benny might look new and improved, but he was still a deadly weapon even if the safety was on.
Icy gray eyes raked over me and a smirk lifted one side of the other man’s mouth. “You look like shit, Booker. Did Nassir suddenly allow casual Fridays?”
I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my reaction in check. I was also a thug in a three-thousand-dollar suit. It was an effective way for Benny to remind me that we played the same kinds of games and our team wasn’t the one supposed to win.
“I’m not working. I’m on vacation.” Well, I was until some kid knocked Karsen’s friend around and gave me a bad feeling. It was all too easy to switch back to work mode when I thought Karsen might be in danger.
Benny chuckled and rocked back on the heels of his expensive shoes. He shoved a hand into the front pocket of his pants and I stiffened, watching to make sure he didn’t pull out a weapon. One of his dark eyebrows lifted and his smile turned sharp with the dark scruff of his facial hair. “Did you come to see the mountains? To take in all the sights? Or maybe you’re here to do a little skiing and hiking. Colorado has so much to offer.”
My back teeth clicked together in aggravation. “I’m not here to sightsee.”
He chuckled and gave me a wink. “No shit. Nassir called me an hour ago and told me you were in town and trouble was bound to follow you. He asked me to keep an eye on you while you’re in my backyard. Apparently, you’re not supposed to be here and some pretty dangerous people are going to be really pissed when they find out you didn’t listen.”
I lifted a hand and rubbed my scar. My fingers twitched when I realized what I was doing, and I bit back a defensive remark as Benny watched the entire motion with careful eyes. Having a tell in my line of work could get you killed. Not that I had much hope of avoiding that fate anyway. I didn’t bother to ask how he found me. If Nassir knew I was here, Stark had probably passed along my location. No one could keep anything from Nassir if he wanted to know something.
“It’s the teenager, isn’t it? Race’s little princess? You were always dangerously oblivious to your own safety when it came to her. I’ve kept my distance while she was at school. Didn't want to risk running into Bax. But I haven’t heard anything that would suggest you needed to come running and put yourself right in Race’s crosshairs.” He sounded genuinely confused and I couldn’t blame him. I had no idea why I couldn’t stay away anymore. It was like there was a clock ticking down in the back of my head, and it finally chimed at midnight. I was at a crossroads in my life and I knew there was no going forward until I laid eyes on Karsen Carter one last time.
It was also good that Benny was still avoiding Bax. The big bruiser with the star tattooed on his face may have mellowed out considerably since he stopped underground fighting for Nassir and started playing house full time with his feisty girlfriend, Dovie. But Bax was still a brute, and he had a long memory. He was never going to forgive or forget that Benny had a hand in Dovie’s abduction. Not ever.
“I thought you were done doing favors for the boys back home.” It was easier to change the subject than admit I had no fucking clue what I was doing here either. “And she’s not a teenager anymore. Hasn’t been one for a very long time.” That part felt very important to remind everyone.
Benny rocked again in his expensive shoes and offered a shrug. “Hard to turn Nassir down when he really wants something. He made my new life possible. I wouldn’t have Echo if it wasn’t for him, and I always liked you, Booker.” No one knew much about Benny’s new girl, Echo. Rumor had it they met under some stressful circumstances and Benny was willing to sell his soul to the Devil to make a life with her. My surprise at this must have shown on my face because he chuckled. “You keep to yourself and play by your own rules. It’s the quiet ones you need to watch. You never really know what they’re thinking. I always admire that in a man who has limited options. You aligned yourself with dangerous men and made them fear you. Race is smart. He knew there was no way to intimidate you into staying away from the girl forever, so he manipulated you both into a situation where broken hearts were the only outcome. That’s fear, my friend. He didn’t want to take you on one on one, because he knew there was a chance he might lose. I respect a man who can make someone as sharp and as calculated as Hartman feel that way.”
That was a lot to take in. I shouldn’t feel a burst of pride that another ex-con, another man who had so much blood on his hands it would never wash off, was impressed by how far I’d come, but I did. When I was in prison, it was guys like Benny whom I’d aspired to be like. They were the ones no one fucked with. They were the ones other inmates avoided and whispered about reverently. When I was weak, pathetic, and scared, I told myself one day I was going to have the custom-tailored suit and flashy car. I promised myself one day I was going to be the baddest motherfucker on the block, and no one, and I meant no one, would ever put their hands on me or hurt me again. Benny’s words of praise brought all those youthful fears and fantasies back to the forefront. I didn’t like to remember those dark days. In fact, I went out of my way to push all those memories down as deep as they could go. Unfortunately, I was reminded of them every time I looked in a damn mirror.
I sighed and lifted a hand so I could rub the back of my neck. I was so tense I felt like I was going to snap. “I thought I could apologize, maybe explain that things aren’t always what they seem. I don’t want to shatter her illusions of what it looks like when you love someone so completely that you’ll do anything for them, but there isn’t a way to tell her why I did what I did without breaking her heart all over again. I didn’t come here looking for trouble, but I seemed to have stepped in it anyway.” And wasn’t that just how shit always went in my life?
“What kind of trouble?” Benny’s voice sharpened and his eyes narrowed. There was the guy who could drop another man to the ground without a second thought. He’d magically appeared before my eyes with just the hint of something out of the ordinary. I knew he couldn’t be too far beneath the cashmere sweater and laid-back veneer.
“Karsen is supposed to be on a plane back home tomorrow and her roommate was supposed to be moving in with her boyfriend. The roommate called in a panic a little while ago because the boyfriend knocked her around.”
“Typical young love bullshit.” I could hear the sneer in his tone.
I shook my head. “That’s what I figured. Karsen enlisted me to go teach the guy a painful lesson. When we got there, he was gone. I had Stark try and track the kid down, and as it turns out, the apartment isn’t leased under his name, and he knew enough to drop his phone in a crowded area where no one would ever be able to recognize him or notice. He’s also using a burner phone. What college kid do you know doesn’t have the latest iPhone?” Benny and I exchanged frowns. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it, and I don’t know how much time I’m going to have to figure it out before Race sends his guys after me.”
Benny sighed as well and dragged his hand over his neatly trimmed beard. “Nassir is fond of the girl. He’s not going to like this.”
Nassir was fond of Karsen, but I was pretty sure I was in love with her, or as close to being in love as a guy like me could get. All I knew was I hadn’t been able to forget about her, even though that would have been the best thing for both of us.
I was getting ready to tell Benny that Nassir was the least of my concerns when my phone rang. Seeing it was Stark and hoping he had some info that would help me track down the kid, I held up a finger to quiet Benny and answered in a rush. “What do you got for me, boy genius?”
“You need to get to Karsen’s apartment, Booker. The roommate just called 9–1-1 and reported a break-in.” Stark’s voice was tight and I could tell he was trying to keep calm for my sake.
I ended the call without another word and reached out a finger to poke Benny in the center of his chest. “I need a ride.”
The other man swatted my hand away and lifted his eyebrows at me. “What in the fuck is going on, Booker?”
I curled my hands into fists at my side and stared at a spot somewhere over his shoulder, not seeing anything. “I don’t know, but when I find out, whoever is behind it is going to pray for a quick and painless death.” This was who I was, no prettying up the monster that lived inside of me. I was going to make them bleed, and I was going to watch them burn.