Page 1 of His to Possess

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The buzzing of my phone wakes me and I swipe it up with a grumble, glaring at the early hour lit up on the screen. It’s barely six o’clock in the morning. The job that just came through had better be good or I’m going back to bed.

Pulling up the untraceable app, I open it and see the offer: $100k to bring in some asshole named John Grady.Eh, can’t say I’m ready to do it.

Lying back, in no hurry to accept the offer, I yawn and consider it. I’ve been offered more money for higher-value targets, but what I choose is no longer motivated by the dollar amount. I have so much money stashed away, I could live comfortably for the next ten lifetimes. No, this is more about me and how lately I’ve been questioning how I got here, who I’ve become and how much longer do I want to do this.

Call it an early midlife crisis because I’m only twenty-seven years old, but I’m not comfortable anymore. No, I’m confused and wondering about my life choices up to this point so far. I’m not sure where all this doubt stems from, but if I had to guess, it’s because I’m closing in on thirty. Of course, that’s not super oldor anything, but it is an age where one usually steps back and looks over what they’ve accomplished and what they still want to do. A sort of evaluation of their life.

Because, let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger and chasing after bad guys is getting old.

I’ve never had a normal job, except for those five minutes I worked at a grocery store when I was sixteen. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the very little amount of money I was making and the excessive hours I was working wasn’t going to make me rich any time soon. So, I quit and got involved with shadier jobs and people. Without a family to pay attention to me, it was far too easy to slide into the criminal side of life. I’ve never killed anyone or done anything too bad—just ran packages with questionable items inside, passed along messages and acted as a chauffeur to important people who needed transportation from one meeting to another.

I never asked questions, just did as I was told, and then counted the dollars being deposited into my account. As I got older, I made a connection on the street, one that led me to my current handler, Fox. What I do now as a vigilante bounty hunter earns me top dollar and allows me to put my knowledge of shady situations and people to good use. I track down criminals and people on the run from the law. And I don’t mind working in the morally-gray areas, especially if the pay is high enough.

I’m damn good at what I do and will bring in whoever a client wants. I’ve found cheating husbands, lying politicians, thieves and an assortment of criminals. My track record is perfect and I always have a lot of jobs to choose from because Fox knows my skills are epic and how competent I am. Even though we’ve never met in person, we’ve worked together for the past six years, since I was twenty-one, and a certain level of trust has developed. It’sinteresting to say that, to believe it, but I don’t even know his real name and we’ve certainly never met in person. Our only communication is through my phone by texts and the occasional call.

I suppose I could track Fox down if I was really that curious, but I’m not. He’s my employer and I respect the level of privacy and secrecy involved in our relationship. I have, however, run into other bounty hunters out on the street. There are three in particular that I always seem to cross paths with and we always seem to vie for the same jobs. They go by Fury, Beast and Vixen and you better believe their codenames fit them to a “T.”

We’re all good at what we do, but I’d like to say I’m the best at catching the bad guys because it’s an innate talent I possess. But, I know the real reason. It’s because of the way I grew up, the knowledge I’d gained of the streets while I was still so young. And, a big part of it is because people underestimate me time and again because of the way I look. They don’t expect a good-looking woman like me to be a bounty hunter, much less be able to kick their ass, if necessary. They assume I’m weak and stupid; and, I can assure you, I am neither of those things.

I am, however, lonely. With a sigh, I study the crack in the ceiling above me. Lately, I’ve been feeling more and more isolated than ever before. My job doesn’t exactly allow me to make many—okay,any—friends or have an active social life. And dating? What the hell is that? Don’t ask me because I’ve never been asked on a date by a man. Never received any flowers or sent flirty texts or, most embarrassing of all, I’ve never been intimate with a man.

Nope, not even close. Because all my contact with men usually involves me tracking them down, roughing them up and cuffing them to the built-in steel bar secured to the dashboard in myJeep. Hardly conducive to an appropriate meet-cute. Not that I’d want to date any of the slime balls I catch and bring to justice. No way. They’re all pieces of shit. Definitely not relationship material.

Kicking the thin sheet off, I stretch, my body hot and coated with a light sheen of sweat. The bedroom is stuffy and the ceiling fan above me barely spins. Two of the settings don’t work anymore so it’s either barely a trickle of air or full blast which dries my eyes out and makes me feel like I’m in a wind tunnel. The apartment where I live isn’t the greatest, but it provides me with the cover I need. Plus, it allows me to move around easily and stay under the radar. No one in this building knows their neighbors, much less stops to chat. It’s perfect for me, for what I do, but the loneliness is starting to eat me up inside.

I’ve always been a loner, too, so it’s hard to pinpoint why these strange feelings of suddenly wanting company, yearning for someone else in my life, have surfaced. To be honest, it’s so not me. Something, however, has changed these past few months and I can’t quite put my finger on what or why. Actually, it’s been over this past year that I’ve been feeling these odd yearnings. I don’t know if it’s because I want something more stable when it comes to my life or if maybe I feel left out. What that means exactly is still to be determined. I could easily quit my job today and ride off into the sunset with multiple padded bank accounts, but then what would I do? Where would I go? Stay in New York City? Move somewhere else and buy a big, fancy house that would feel even emptier than this little apartment?

Nothing appeals to me enough to take action.

I reach for my phone and open the app back up, reading the few, very sparse details I’ve been given on John Grady. Not a lot to go on, really, which could present a challenge. A desperatelyneeded one to get my mind off the path it’s headed and get my head back in the game.

Hmm.Should I take the job? Or take the day off?

Of course, if I don’t accept soon, someone else may snatch it up. Potential jobs come through this app on my phone and then the pool of bounty hunters swarming New York City can accept or decline the jobs, depending on the pay and degree of difficulty. I tend to take the harder jobs because I can’t resist a good challenge. That also applies to Vixen, Beast and Fury, too.

My finger hovers over the button to accept. But, I hesitate. Over the past six years, I’ve caught and delivered loads of wanted people and they’ve all been scum. Deadbeats, ex-prison inmates, drug dealers, human traffickers, you name it. The list is endless. It feels good, though, bringing those scum buckets to justice. Sometimes, I deliver them straight to jail, other times to a private individual. Just depends on what Fox tells me.

I sort of fancy myself a female John Wick. Minus the assassin part. Oh, and the dog. The main similarity is I’m a tenacious, fearless badass woman who isn’t afraid to go after anyone. I know how to use a gun, but I try not to unless it’s absolutely necessary. A last resort. My stun gun comes in very handy, though, and I don’t hesitate to hit that button.

The ironic part is my codename—Butterfly. I’d never consider myself delicate or soft or even pretty. But, we all have to have an alias and I chose my name because of Muhammad Ali. Like him, I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Or, I try to, anyway.

The other bounty hunter names I’ve seen show up on my app probably all belong to men and boast names like Steel, T-Rex, Wolverine and, my favorite—insert eye roll here—The Punisher.

All very testosterone-fueled names, in my humble opinion.

They probably don’t know what to make of my codename and that’s fine by me. I want people to underestimate me and never feel threatened. It’s all a part of my cover and success.

It’s also how I survived.

After my mom died, I had no one. My dad jet the minute my mom told him she was pregnant, or so the story goes, and her parents had kicked her out when she was only sixteen. I wound up in foster care and bounced around from one home to the next. Needless to say, my childhood was rough, unstable and consisted of one struggle after another.

I never felt secure in the homes I lived in and it was always temporary. Kids were constantly coming and going. Like a revolving door. I’m not sure if it was bad luck that always caused me to end up in a shitty home or the fact that I was just unlovable. It didn’t really matter, though. Things weren’t always safe and sometimes I left a home before they could get worse. In other words, I ran away because the adults in charge didn’t want to listen to me complain about not having enough food to eat or the funny way my foster father was looking at me.

Learning to be tough and put up walls at such a young age taught me not to trust anyone. Being vulnerable never helped a situation and, in order to survive, I had to be brave, smart and ready to move at all times.

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