Breaker hesitated for a moment. Then he moved so fast he was almost a blur. I found myself trapped between his body and a hard concrete wall with the business end of a pistol pressed into the soft flesh beneath my chin, angled at my skull.
“You think you’re smart,” he spat, digging the gun in deeper. His icy blue eyes stared into me with a promise of violence that made me tremble. “Hope you’re smart enough to keep your mouth shut so I don’t have to paint this fuckin’ wall with your brain.”
Adequately cowed, I muttered, “I… I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”
He held me there for what seemed like eternity before a grin stretched across his face. “You’re damn right, you won’t.” Holstering the gun beneath his cut, he let me go. “I think me and you are gonna have a good time together, Sasha.”
I’d had about all the “good time” I could handle. On shaky feet I followed Breaker out of the Serpents’ basement, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
***
Still wearing the tank top and mini skirt I’d squeezed into last night, I sat in my car, parked in front of my apartment, staring out the windshield and wondering what to do. I’d been in this exact position since I took an uber home over an hour and a half ago, and I was no closer to an answer.
I’d found the missing girls.
I was still trying to wrap my mind around what I’d seen in the Serpents’ basement. The cells… the cots… nothing about that situation looked permanent. The room had reeked of sex, which meant the bikers were probably doing whatever they wanted with those poor girls as they waited to move or sell them. I needed to free their victims before they disappeared for good.
In a perfect world, I’d go to my sergeant and tell him what I’d found. But here in reality, I’d gone behind his back, while suspended, to do the very thing he’d taken my badge for.
Sorry, sir. I know you told me to stay away from the Serpents, but I dressed like a hooker and walked into their bar to seduce one. He drugged me and we had crazy monkey sex before he took me down to his dungeon and tried to throw me in a cage.
The chance of him listening to me was probably about as good as the chance of me keeping my job. But dreading my inevitable unemployment was not what kept me from reporting what was going on in the Serpents’ basement.
“You think I give a fuck about pigs? That I don’t throw them enough bacon to stay in their pen and out of my shit?”
Breaker had been so confident, so unafraid of getting caught, that I couldn’t help but wonder why. We’d been dealing with this influx of missing girl cases for months, and I was the only one who openly suspected the Serpents. How many girls had been locked in that basement? I had twenty-nine missing posters hanging behind my desk, but those were only the ones with friends or family members who cared enough to file a police report. Homeless girls went missing every day, and nobody gave a shit.
Why did Breaker show me the dungeon?
That was the question I couldn’t get past. I didn’t fit the mold of the gang’s normal victims. I wasn’t in high school, he clearly hadn’t researched me or he would have found out I was a cop. And, I’d approached him, not the other way around. Yet, he’d shown me the basement and tried to lock me up with the other girls. Breaker wasn’t stupid or careless. He wouldn’t have made a move like that without a certain level of confidence his ass was covered.
He had people who’d protect him.
I didn’t want to believe the force was dirty, but it would explain so much: why Wilkens had a coronary over me looking into the Serpents, how evidence against the club seemed to always disappear, why none of their cases went to court.
Why so many witnesses had ended up dead.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Goosebumps sprouted up my arms as I mentally ran through the recent Serpent cases I’d been looking into. How many anomalies could be explained away by a police partnership? I thought about marching back into my house, firing up my laptop, and continuing my research, but no doubt Wilkens was still monitoring my access.
Besides, I had other shit to worry about. Before releasing me, Breaker had made me promise to come back after work this evening. If I didn’t show up at the compound in ten hours and forty-two minutes, he was going to come looking for me.
There had to be someone at the department I could call. Surely they weren’talldirty. But who could I trust? I’d heard far too many stories to pretend bad cops didn’t exist. There was an officer in Vegas who used to troll the streets for prostitutes then threaten to haul them in for some bogus charge if they didn’t give him a blow job. Mom was terrified of him.
Power isn’t some magical energy that completely changes a person. It’s more like a megaphone that amplifies whatever’s inside. Assholes will be assholes, whether they wear a crown or clean toilets for a living. And unfortunately, I knew quite a few assholes who only chose the badge because they lacked their own country to rule over.
What about an anonymous tip?
Anonymous tips could be submitted through the department website. Since I knew how easy IP addresses could be tracked, I wouldn’t use my laptop to submit the tip. I’d go to the library and use one of their computers.
And what could I write? Who would see it? Would the department bury it? Would it get back to Breaker? He’d suspect me. Then what?
I’d be of no use to those girls or the department if Breaker found out I snitched.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I only had one viable option: stay the course and hope an opportunity presented itself to free the girls. Determined to do exactly that, I got out of my car and went into my apartment to shower. After everything I’d done—everything I now knew—I felt so damn dirty it was like I couldn’t get clean.
Standing under the stream of water, I allowed myself to relive last night, evaluating my performance, trying to figure out how I was going to keep up the act tonight, and refusing to admit how out of control this situation had become.
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