Page 67 of To Catch A Rook

Simple. Easy.Uncomplicated.

I was feeling a whole lot of complicatedness tonight, and I wanted my Blondie to peg it out of me again. A good ol’ prostate poke would remind me of the mission and give me some more spank bank material to boot.

Win-win.

I was sprawled on Ma’s couch while she was out working a job, flipping through American porn channels with disinterest. My mind constantly flit back to the naked Queen rubbing herself all over me. A naked lass rubbing her tits on a 2-D screen was right boring by comparison. I flicked off the TV and grabbed my phone instead.

In Dublin, I had buddies to call on when I was bored out of my tree. We’d grab a pint or play football at the pitch. Here, I only had jobs and Ma. Neither would suit my interests tonight.

After a half hour of twiddling my thumbs playingCandy Crush, my restlessness got the better of me. I decided to check on my tasty little treat for shits and giggles more than anything.

Not at all because I was becoming obsessed with her.

I’d slipped a micro tracker on her cellphone when she’d sidled up to me after our dead parents’ confessional. Made me feel a bit shyte to be honest, but seizing opportunities was the name of the con game, and I couldn’t have asked for a better one.

I had designed the chip myself. A sneaky little speck the size of a dirt smudge, which could only do one thing—broadcast a location.

I opened the app on my phone, and cracked my neck and knuckles in the few seconds it took to load. The flashing hot pink dot—did that on purpose—came into view, moving at the speed of a vehicle down a dodgier part of the industrial core.

What was my Blondie doing down in the Crocks at ten-thirty on a Tuesday?

Curiosity made me giddy, and now I had a mystery to solve with my beautiful billionaire at the center. I clapped my hands in glee before leaping to my feet, grabbed the keys off the counter, and jumped in the elevator down the 10 floors to my car park.

I knew everything there was to know about Hillary that had been recorded on paper, but I still knew so little. What would I find out tonight? Was she a secret dancer? A stripper? Did she have a mafia lover?

I mulled over many theories, each more ridiculous and sexier than the last, as I drove toward her pretty pink little dot now stopped in a warehouse parking lot.

Whatever she was doing, I wouldn’t be staying; I was just taking a little peeky-boo at what my mysterious mark spent her time doing on a drab Tuesday.

Unless she was taking part in an underground orgy in one of those done-up abandoned buildings filled with hot, sexually repressed power women. Then I wasdefinitelystaying.

I was always up for an orgy.

I pulled in next to three cars, none of them recognizable, and parked, grabbing my gun and my switchblade from the center console, just in case.

Never bring a knife to a gunfight; but if it’s a knife fight … bring a knifeanda gun. Da had some wisdom, all right.

I hadn’t felt threatened once since settling into Carlisle. The people here were much softer than the powers I was used to in Europe, but Americans were much more subtle about their threats and intents. I didn’t feel the need for weapons, but I went nowhere empty-handed.

Muffled grunts and gasps crept out of the door, and the prospect of an actual sex party delighted me, until I caught an aggressive growl with my Blondie’s name on the air.

“Hillary. I don’t want to kill you!”

Kill her? The fuck was I walking into?

I didn’t think—something Ma would say I do often, but she’d be wrong—and swung the door open with my weapon raised.

I was not prepared to see a scrappy blonde woman sweeping the legs out from under muscular Thor. The two of them landed in a heap on a crackly—was that a tarp?—floor beneath them.

Hillary didn’t slow. Leaping from her position just shy of Kellan’s head, she circled him as he rose to his feet just as deftly. The pair of them faced me with rabid faces, blood streaked across their skin in mismatched patterns.

Kellan looked likeWolverinehimself had clawed him across the cheeks. Aaron, the Rodriguez patsy, sat on the outside of the makeshift fight ringthing, his hawkish gaze watching me like his eyeballs were glued to my forehead. The man was a bit of a robot, not even blinking at me before turning his psycho-stare back on Blondie.

Surprised he could see anything through two swollen black eyes.

“The fuck is this?” I asked, maintaining my composure in case they added me to the ring. “Some sort of fucked up fight club for rich kids?”

Kellan reached for something on the floor, and before I could blink, a black handgun was pointed in my direction, the safety unlocked and ready to skewer some Irish blood.

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