Page 21 of Nomad
Many men had crumbled under the weight of the presidency, and he either stepped down, did something stupid and ended up serving time, or were dead—too much shit to handle for one man, but that was how it was done.
“I usually do recon for about three days, give or take,” I responded to J.D.’s question. “But it can take up to at least a week before I have enough information to get the job done. It all depends on the target.”
J.D. nodded. “That should give us enough time to get Hannibal off the cops’ radar.”
“I’ll let you know when I kill the target.” I stood and shook hands with J. D. “What happens after is up to you.”
How they got Hannibal out of this shit wasn’t my concern. Killing Samuel Allen was. If connected to these kidnappings and murders, I didn’t want him anywhere near Jade and Junior.
“I’ll contact you with the place, time, and when the job is complete,” I called out over my shoulder as I made my way to the door. “After that, I’m off the grid. You won’t be able to get in contact with me for a while.”
“We’ll be ready when it’s done,” J.D. said.
I grabbed my backpack from the floor by the door and walked out of the room. I was ready to start this assignment, make sure Jade and Junior were safe and out of harm’s way, then get back on the road to Arizona. This one hit too close to home.
Chapter Six
SANDMAN
Three days later…
Like most jobs I’d done for the club, I gave myself a week to find out what I needed to know about the target, then killed them quickly without leaving a trace. Any longer than that, and people started recognizing things about you such as height, hair color, and other details. Despite Samuel Allen’s connection to Jade, that was all the time I’d need before getting out of town.
He wasn’t hard to find because he stuck to the same routine, something I advised no one do. It made it easy to find out everything I needed to know before I killed. The more variation in a routine, the harder it made it to find a time and place to do the hit.
After three days of tracking, I closed in on him, ready to get this shit over with. Day after day of focusing on the job became harder because Jade filled my thoughts during the day and night. It was only a matter of time before I went to see her unless I handled this shit today.
Allen enjoyed street hookers and strip clubs. The dirtier the better. Not the high-class establishments likeLeather and Lace, but the seedier people and places. Samuel Allen liked his hookers doped up on Special K and Molly who answered to pimps while they walked the streets and alleyways like zombies. That shit made them do whatever their johns paid for, including him. From what I gathered from his movements, he liked his women compliant. So, drug addicted hookers and strippers benefited him, not someone like Jade. At least not in the sex department.
The alleyways weren’t the only place he found his women. He frequented the sleazy strip clubs where women should have retired from the adult entertainment industry years ago. Getting lap dances and blow jobs for however much money he stuffed down their G-strings was also a weakness of Samuel Allen.
He partied hard, snorting lines of coke off the sweat drenched bodies of strippers and drinking enough alcohol to start his own distillery. He threw away money like it was nothing. The amount of money he wasted each night on blow, alcohol, and women was nothing to a man like him. From my research, he’d been born with a silver spoon and spoon-fed every opportunity he ever had, including his Ivy League education, his million-dollar home, and the company he’d started.
He was an entitled prick.
I followed Samuel Allen from his home in one of the wealthier suburbs outside of Charlotte to his workplace to a motel, back to work, and then toThe Dollhouse, a strip club on the sordid side of Charlotte. During that time, his routine remained the same: he went to work in a downtown high rise in Charlotte at around nine in the morning. Then he took a lunch break around noon and met with a stripper fromThe Dollhouseat a less than stellar motel twenty minutes from his office before returning to work around two. Finally, he left the office by six and went toThe Dollhousewhere he stayed late into the evening before stumbling out, drunk and high off his ass. A car service took him back home.
He never ventured from that routine until today. Today, he’d done none of those things. He’d come to Jade’s where I’d been watching them argue for the last hour through her window, waiting and praying for him to leave.
Despite the places he frequented and the women he fucked, nothing happened in the three days I’d tailed him to link him to the missing and murdered women. He steered clear ofLeather and Laceand any other place where he may have hidden women, like warehouses. Maybe he started keeping a low profile because the cops had found those missing women—not that it was my business to prove or disprove his connection to the missing and murdered women. I was here to kill him.
Of course, after many hours of surveillance and research, the last place I wanted to find him was here. As I watched Jade pace in front of the large bay window of her dining room attached to the kitchen, the prick sat at the small round oak table, leaned back in the chair with his hands propped behind his head like he belonged there, completely oblivious to the anguish on her face.
Or unbothered by it.
I’d bet more than anything he was unbothered by it. Samuel Allen bullied women. He used his good looks and money to get close to them, then once in his grasp, he used them until he had no more use for them, then spat them out.
My heart constricted inside my chest, making it hard to breathe, watching the woman I loved with another man. It was pure torture watching her with someone like Samuel Allen, and it pissed me the hell off. How in the hell did she end up with someone as shady as him? How could her brother let it happen? I’d met Miles a few times over the years, and he seemed like an upstanding guy. The opposite of his best friend. He was a doctor and well respected in the community. Miles had been wary of me being around his sister and nephew, but I’d never speculated about his character. Until now.
Does Miles know about his friend’s double life? If he did, what part does he play in it?
“Fucking, leave already!”
I posted up next to a tree across the street from her home. From this vantage point, no one inside could see me as I watched Jade and Allen’s volatile interaction.
There was no way in hell I’d sit here and let him touch her. If I intervened, it might blow my chance to kill him, which I planned on doing today until his routine shifted. But he’d ended up here.
It was early Tuesday morning, and Jade’s suburban neighborhood was eerily quiet. Fall had descended on North Carolina. Although the trees were a beautiful shade of red, yellow, and orange, the cooler temperature usually associated with the change in the season hadn’t shown up in yet.
