Page 66 of Prey

Me: Shaun?

Rourke: Yes. Good men don’t let nice girls walk home in the dark.

Me: True. He was an asshole. Did u hurt him?

Rourke: A little.

I had mixed feelings about this. If I were a good person, I would scold Rourke for being reckless, but maybe I wasn’t a good person. Perhaps I was just as dark and depraved as Rourke.I didn’t care that Shaun got a beating, and one day, when I was in the mood, I might psychoanalyze my absence of feelings, but at that moment, I was pleased, delighted, even.

Apart from Gunner, I’d never had a man fight for me. But he was in the past, and Rourke is in the future.

Rouke was my crushing Winter.

Me: Thank u xx

31

HEy,” I said to Petra Black when she arrived with our meals, and she seemed different. A different vibe. Less frightened. Normally, she’d gaze with those soulful eyes and fiddled nervously, blushing. Such a fucking sweetie. But this evening, she was cold and brusque and refused to look at me.

“Your meal, sir.” She was perfectly professional, but I couldn’t see the selkie I tumbled with in the crystal-clear water.

“Sir? Er…what happened to you just calling me Ronan,” I frowned, eager for her to come into my office, but she backed away in a hurry to leave.

“Mr…er, the big boss, needs his meal delivered or else it will get cold. And we can’t have that, can we?” her nostrils flared as she spoke, and her chin was held proudly, and I wondered if it was an act.

“No, we can’t,” I agreed as she wheeled the trolley away from my office door with that defiant look. “You’ll come to my office when you’re done?”

“No, thank you, sir. We have a full house downstairs,” she stated as she knocked on Mikky’s door. Words were exchanged, and she left the meal on the tray on the floor outside his door. “Very busy.”

It’s obvious that I pissed her off somehow, although I couldn’t quite pinpoint what I did to deserve the cold shoulder. I leaned my arm against the doorframe and watched her organize that trolley before she wheeled it my way again.

“I wasn’t giving you a choice,” I outlined sternly, staring down at her, blocking her way. “You’ll come into my office. Now.”

“I can’t. I have to go,” Petra hissed, as those hands tightly grasped the trolley; knuckles turned white as bullets shot from her eyes. If looks could kill…“They’re expecting me downstairs.”

“They can wait. Two minutes. That’s all I’m asking for,” keeping my tone leveled to show her who’s in charge.

Mikky’s door flew open, and he glanced our way. I retreated and allowed Petra Black to wheel that trolley to the elevator. When I heard Mikky’s door shut, I stepped back into the hallway just as the elevator door was closing, and she shot me a dirty look. I needed to get her alone, so I’d go to the kitchen later and pull her aside to find out why she was so mad at me.

The meal was marinated sirloin steak with baby vegetables, and my stomach rumbled with hunger. One thing I could say about Savile was we had the best chefs in the city, maybe the state. Paid top dollar to serve our high-paying guests.

One of my phones beeped in my top drawer. I had three phones. One for work. One for my personal life. And one for jobs. A message from an important contact was left on my job phone.

Z:It’s done.

Me: Good. Any problems?

Z: No. The cocky ones are easier to pop.

Me: I’ll organize the drop.

Mikky preferred the cash drops, and we pulled that money from a hidden account under a name that had nothing to do with the Kaiser name. I went down the hallway, tapped on Mikky’s door, and poked my head inside. He was sitting at his desk slicing his meat with the steak knife while reading something on his iPad, probably news items.

“It’s done,” I told him.

He cocked his eyebrows while chewing his piece of steak, swallowed, and replied, “Was it clean?”

We rarely contracted hits, but when we did, it had to be clean as a whistle, and there was no possible way to trace it back to us. That included Z keeping his head down, masked and unidentifiable, a shadow moving through the night, blending in with the dark.

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