Page 7 of Stryker
“I didn’t find her.” I’d already told him things would have been easier if I had some way to track her scent. My sense of smell wasn’t the most keen, but I had a way of sniffing out important things. Without some baseline, though, some piece of her clothing, a brush, anything that her scent clung to, my sense of smell was nothing short of worthless.
“Me, either. Where would I hide if I was a rich debutante?” He let out a frustrated sigh.
The wind kicked up and tickled through my hair. My shirt and pants flattened to my body and flapped a bit around me as I swayed a little with the wind. If I fell from up here… I’d shift midair and land on my feet. Heights didn’t bother me. Never had.
“Well, depends on how she thinks. Would she try to hide in plain sight? Or would she up and disappear off the face of the earth?” What I was really asking was if the beautiful, rich mark could handle not being in the limelight. Would she risk everything for those all-consuming likes and follows?
His growl told me he had no more idea than I did. Since he’d taken me under his wing and handled my initiation, we’d worked shoulder to shoulder on this one. I knew firsthand that the file on this woman, Luna Lawless, was about as thin as a file could be.
The ‘file’ was one sheet of paper. That sheet gave us her name, a photo, last known whereabouts, and the fact that she’d reported seeing a strange guy with a tattoo. The tattoo, described in great detail on the otherwise nearly empty sheet told us exactly who she’d seen.
A couple turned, a few blocks from Kat’s house and I watched them. Hand in hand, they walked into a little house on the corner, closing the door behind them. I focused in on them and my nose picked up their activities. I doubted the people after Kat would indulge in a smoke before heading out after her.
“Damn it. I don’t fucking know. So where have you been all day? Any leads? Anything?” Draco’s annoyance came through loud and clear over the phone. “And where are you now?”
I stiffened. “I tailed the thugs once I found them.” I’d only found them a few moments before they’d decided to try to kill Kat. The slippery bastards had ways to slip out of any noose. They were just some fucks that owed some money and proved their worth were used as henchmen, so the turnover rate kept us on our feet. The guys that tried to kill Kat would not be the same ones that came to kill her later. “And I’m around.”
“Are you being purposely vague?” His suspicion trickled into my ear and I growled a little.
“None of your fucking business.” We might not be actual blood brothers, but the brotherhood were more like brothers than most families. Not like my brother and I were, though. Declan was my best friend from day one.
“Don’t make me hunt you down.” Draco’s suspicion seemed to double.
“Don’t make me tell you your name is shit.” We’d joked around about how on the nose his name was. But he’d come from old-school dragons that still bragged about their lineage. For most of us, just the dragon blood in our veins was prestigious enough, but his family was proud of their particular origins. I didn’t know enough of our actual history to make a judgment call if it was impressive or not.
He snorted and the mood lightened. “Just check in regularly, okay?”
It was the kind of thing I would have said to Declan. I swallowed hard and sat across one of the metal beams, eyes still trained on her place. “Yeah, whatever.” I could smell her inside the house still. She’d told me she had to be to work, but I assumed something kept her home after all. I didn’t think she’d been dishonest—I could smell and sense dishonesty—sosomethingstopped her from working.
But while the smell of distress clung to her, it wasn’t that life-threatening terror I’d experienced when they were about to pull the trigger on her. So I doubted she was in any pressing danger.
“Bros before side hos.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed and hung up. As much as I gave him shit, I really appreciated everything he’d done for me. When he’d found me, I’d been at my worst, ready to take up fucking cage fighting to work out the rage. I’d been willing to give myself away and get shredded alive for it. But he’d given me a purpose. A choice.
And my life had been severely lacking choices or purpose.
Guarding this woman struck me as a betrayal. He’d taught me the rules and my insubordination might reflect poorly on him. Our protection doesn’t come cheap. We’re the people called when a president’s daughter needs a bodyguard. When some rich actor goes missing and it needs to be kept on the down low. When some important witness finds themselves in government protection. We’re the crew that keeps the important people safe and the bad guys dead. Except for this group. They’d found a way to circumvent our strengths with rotating lackeys, removal crews that would strip every bit of evidence from a victim’s life, and more members than anyone knew. They were the number one source of providing bodies for sex trafficking and the rising number of ‘suicides’ our city had seen as of late.
Because they don’t just kill people, generally. Usually they would make it look like their victims killed themselves. No investigation. No chance of being caught that way. The group that came after Kat were sloppy. They’d slipped up, made mistakes, and would have wound up with their guns to their temples by the end of the night if I hadn’t dispatched them.
A truck turned up the road a couple blocks from Kat and I homed in on it. An old man, alone.
We’d taken to calling the group Doubletap since they didn’t leave survivors. They tied up every loose end. They covered their tracks. The fuckers were masters and we had no idea how they got away with half the shit they did. They were nearly untraceable, and no one knew who was in charge. Hell, within their own ranks no one seemed to know who their direct higher-up even was.
The brotherhood had brought in several members to be questioned, but there were no answers to be had beyond the rotating lackeys, people owing them debts, and how each individual was a tiny cog in a huge, intricate system. And the fuckers would find creative ways to off themselves before we could even really take a crack at them.
The truck pulled into a house a block and a half away. The old man went inside, and I watched him go, my mind drifting back to Kat.
She’d been beautiful in a non-traditional way. Her spirit blazed like fire and her sharp mind intrigued me. The thought of her reaching out and touching my face filled my mind. I’d never shifted before anyone other than my brothers. It’s an intimate thing, a private moment. We’re vulnerable between forms. Even having changed before my brothers was a rite of passage, proof of my blood. Even though they could all smell it on me, formality demanded we meet in dragon form as well as human form.
I’d expected her to be scared. Nervous. I’d learned the hard way that fear makes people unpredictable. And unpredictable people are dangerous.
But she’d merely been surprised. Curious, even.
I shifted and found a new spot to perch on the tower. The cold metal didn’t bother me one bit as I watched a couple of kids circling her block on their bikes. Her neighbor came out and yelled at the kids, who flipped him off. The beaten-down neighborhood didn’t downplay her position and I wondered what had brought her life to this. She’d given me tiny clues; working two jobs, that her family was dependent on her working, but it sounded like she lived with both parents. So why weren’t her parents working?
