Page 126 of Cruel Games

Curious, and eager to wash the aftertaste of the last bit from my mouth, I hit play.

The voice was raspy, dry, and weak, but there was an urgency to it that screamed desperation and importance. It was a girl, a teenager, maybe younger, from the sound of it. And it was very, very scared, though there didn’t seem to be much life left in her for that emotion.

“Gotta find Juniper. Have to find junipers. If they kill me, please . . . find Juniper.”

The clip played over and over as I stared out over the river’s calm surface, the raw emotion making me sick to my stomach.

Was this someone’s daughter? Someone’s wife? Someone’s sister? Did she ever make it out of this hell my father put her in? Was she out there somewhere, still looking for this Juniper?

Or had they done to her what they did to so many others?

Furious, I pulled the flash drive from my phone and threw it into the river, needing to erase the things I’d heard, the things I’d seen. I needed to know that no other pair of eyes would ever see what I’d seen on that tape. That no other soul on this earth would know my own father had intended to sell me at auction.

I gagged, and then retched into the sand at my feet when I realized three other people knew, and always would.

Jackal, Dingo, and Coyote.

Even before they knew me, they’d been helping in some way to protect me.

That video was taken two nights before he was killed. And had they not come when they did, that night might’ve been my last as a free woman.

I shuddered to think how close I came to being just another trafficking victim.

If not for the Neon Dogs, their futures would have been mine. My mother’s life would have been mine. Or worse.

But something in my brain was inherently broken still. I wanted to go to them, wanted to get up off the cold ground and go home, where I knew they’d be waiting, perhaps not even awake yet. But another part of me, a stronger part, perhaps, tugged sharply in a different direction—pain.

I wanted to feel it. Wanted to cause it. Wanted toinflictit on any man who looked at me.

And the Neon Dogs were men, too.

They might not escape my wild desires.

The sane part of me took a backseat as something animalistic rose from the depths of my soul, taking over, turning me into a beast as I stood on my feet, hurled the rest of the backpack into the Dread River, my phone included, and disappeared into the night.

What goes around comes around. And tonight, I was karma. And I was a bitch.

FORTY-SIX

JACKAL

When we wokeup the next day, Ivy was gone.

As was my bat, Coyote’s jacket, and Dingo’s bike.

When we went to her and admitted what we'd done, St. Clair was already dispatching a crew to run the streets in search of the missing dirtbike. She then sat us down and admitted she’d known who Ivy was to us all along.

So she’d let a snake into the den, fully aware that it might lash out and bite someone.

We moved on past that faster than I’d have liked, but with Ivy unstable and on the run, who knew where we’d find her? And in what condition?

Time was of the essence.

We split up into groups, scouring every fucking inch of this town for the girl who’d turned our whole world upside down, the girl we’d taken a job to save. A girl who didn’t know us as well as we knew her. A girl who’d turned into a vengeful woman, all because nobody in her life trusted her with the truth.

What she’d become was mostly our fault, good intentions or not.

I cracked my neck, wishing there was a sign that led us to her, wishing for some sort of hint. I walked in front of the old apartments where we’d first picked her up, accompanying her to pack up most of her life and move it into the asylum. To join the Guild.

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