Aurora
The room they came into was the storage room.
I followed the path and came to another door, which was even more interesting. This one wasn’t pried open. This one appeared to have been opened with a single flick of the wrist, which I did, and stepped out.
The scent of cigarette smoke assailed my senses. I never smoked, and as I looked at the shaking woman who immediately stood, my nerves went to an all-time high.
“You shouldn’t be out here. The cops are going to want to interview you.”
“Have they talked to you?”
“No. I didn’t see anything. I was dealing with inventory, you know.”
I stepped a little closer, and this time, the woman whose name badge labeled her as Casey, tried to run. She dropped her cigarette as I wrapped my fingers around her throat and pressed her up against the wall.
“Please, don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. Please. Please.”
Her sobbing filled the air, irritating me. She wasn’t sorry for what she’d done.
“Why don’t you tell me what is going on right now?” I asked. I was calm.
“I don’t know anything. I swear, I don’t.”
I shoved her up against the wall, squeezing her throat tightly. She tried to claw at my wrists, but her nails had been so chewed down, she couldn’t even leave a scratch. It would be so easy to watch her die. I didn’t need her. She was the cause of three deaths.
But I needed information.
Releasing her neck long enough to let her breathe, I continued to stare at her as she whimpered and moaned.
“Please. Please,” she said. “I don’t want to die.”
“Then why don’t you start talking? Give me enough information, you’ll live. You don’t, well, we know what is going to happen to you.”
She whimpered. “I … they didn’t say what they were going to do. All I was supposed to do was open the door, that was all. I opened the door and I got my daughter back. I’m trying to be clean, but it was so easy.”
“What’s so easy?” I asked.
“All I have to do is fuck who they say and I get the money and the coke, and I … I did really well, I promise. I said no. I wanted my daughter back but, but, they found me, and they fed me and I remembered how good it was.” She covered her face with her hands.
This woman was an addict and someone had gotten her hooked back on the dope.
“Is it mine?” I asked.
“The kid?”
I frowned. I’d never sleep with a woman like this. So helpless, mainly useless. “No, the dope.”
“I don’t know. I just know it’s so good and after I’ve done what I’ve done, it makes everything so easy.” She smiled as if she was in some fairytale land. “My kid is better off without me. She doesn’t need me. I’m a failure. I want my own life. I never wanted to get pregnant. You can hurt me all you want, but I only have a couple of text messages that told me what to do. I didn’t break any law.” Her sobbing turned into aggression.
“Give me your cell phone,” I said.
She scrambled on her person, handing me the phone. With my hand over her mouth and nose, I didn’t hesitate or stop. I cut off her air and watched this woman slowly die, feeling nothing.
She crumpled to the ground, and I pulled out my cell phone, making a call. With the cops so close, I should have waited, but I wasn’t a patient man when it came to getting rid of a problem, and this woman was a problem.
With her cell phone in my pocket, I checked the time and saw it was now a little after midnight.
My thoughts drifted to Aurora. When I got the call to come down to Shiver, we hadn’t spoken since I told her I wouldn’t be a submissive man. There was no way I was going to trust her so easily.
“You expect me to trust you? You haven’t earned it.”
How have I not earned her trust? She wasn’t dead, and it pissed me off for her to even think to doubt me. I’d been good to her, more than good.
Anger flooded me.
This was why I didn’t want to get close to the woman. She got under my skin and pissed me off. This wasn’t the time and place to be analyzing the shit we’d said to each other, and yet, here I was, thinking about it.
By the time my guy arrived, he was on his own, in the smallest van we owned. I helped him to pick up the body, throwing it into the back.
“Run dental records, or whatever shit you need. She mentioned something about a kid. I want to know everything about this woman as soon as you can.”
The man nodded and left the scene.
With that, rather than go through the storage room, I made my way out of the back alley, onto the street. My car was parked around the other side. Standing on the pavement near my bar, I looked around.
There were so many avenues the men could have come from. I knew for certain they hadn’t come through the front.
Who would take this much time to find the right opportunity to attack this club? The woman I’d just killed had been purposefully chosen because of her working here, preyed upon, and hooked back on the drugs.
It never took long to get an addict back on what they considered a lifeline.
The question was why?
Why go to so much effort?
I understood it, but if you wanted to attack a nightclub, why not go from the front? This was personal, and I just didn’t see the connection.