Page 9 of Clean Hack
Though something in the back of my mind was screaming that she knew more about me than I did her.
But that was ridiculous.
Because I was a ghost.
I existed when and where I wanted to.
So there was no way that she knew shit about me.
I snapped myself out of whatever weird thing I was feeling. I didn’t need friends, not really. And if I did, this person that wouldn’t even so much as let me hear their real voice was definitely not it.
She didn’t need to say more than Moon Hill for me to understand where I was going and who I was dealing with. I was as close as one could be to the Steel Paragons MC for being an outsider. I’d been their go-to guy for clean up for more years than I wanted to admit.
“Got it,” I said, my tone was bordering on irritated, though I couldn’t point out why.
I went to hang up before she could, but my hand stayed frozen with my phone still plastered to my ear. Her breaths were faint and came out in small bursts. They seemed to magnify in my ear the longer the seconds ticked on. These calls were usually nothing. A word from me. A few from her. And then a couple more from me. That was it. But lately, I’d wanted to dig into this person. I’d wanted to maybe, know more…? I had no idea why. Just did. Sometimes it wasn’t about always having a reason for things.
“You alright?” I asked before I even realized that I was speaking.
“Uh,” her tone and false strong front faltered. Much like it had the last time we spoke. I was almost waiting for that weird squeak and the sound of dead air. But she surprised me by not hanging up right away. “The Dogs of Wrath have been taken out.”
And then the line went dead.
Well, fuck a duck.
I definitely did not expect something like that to come out of her. And I wondered not only how the hell she knew about the Dogs when I didn’t, but also why she seemed so rattled by it. Then again, I wasn’t exactly in the know. I wouldn’t have figured that out or even wondered about them until I hadn’t heard anything from them for a while. Who knew how long that could have been because it wasn’t like I really kept track of who called me last and when. I was a done and move on kind of guy. Then sit around and wait for the next one. I couldn’t even tell you which ones were my top clients. Maybe that was something I should have kept track of. But then again, I knew none of them would bring me into something that I wouldn’t want to be a part of. So in a sense, that was good enough for me.
That one little slip told me a few things.
One, she had eyes or ears in places she probably shouldn’t. Hell, maybe she had both. Maybe she was like some little super spy that kept tabs on crazy outlaws. I practically laughed at the thought. Not because that couldn’t have been real, but these people were pretty good at detecting such things. And she would’ve had to have had her hands in a lot of different cookie jars with the kind of information she came at me with. She knew most of the groups I worked with. And not to mention that she’d been at this for a couple of years now. I had an idea that she’d been doing…whatever the hell she was doing, longer than she’d been calling me.
Two, she let her guard down for me for just a second. I honestly didn’t know what to do with that. Then I figured that there wasn’t really anythingtodo. It wasn’t like I could call her back and tell her that I was there for her to talk to. Icouldn’tcall her. I’d tried a good few times. The number she called me from always led me to different places. A movie theater. A Chinese restaurant. And even a porn shop one time. That one I did have a good laugh about. How she did it, I had no fucking clue. I tried to find some common thread between the businesses, but there wasn’t one. They were spread out all over the US. I didn’t have skills beyond a semi-decent Google search, so that was pretty much a dead end. She was smart. And clearly very good at…something.
Which brought me to my third point, she had ways of doing things that normal people didn’t.
But I didn’t have time to dive into any of those things at the moment. I had a place to get to and a body to take care of.
It was going to be a long night. I probably wouldn’t see any kind of sleep for another two days. But I wasn’t complaining.
When I got to Moon Hill, I was greeted by an exhausted and pissed off looking Loch, the Vice President for the club. And when I say pissed, I mean slightly more agitated than normal looking. The guy wasn’t really one to show emotions. But I could see it.
In the basement, I found the reason why I’d been called in. As I looked the guy over, I wondered for only a second what he’d done to get himself chained up down here. I could tell that they’d drawn his death out a little while, both his shoulders were dislocated, the flesh from his wrists had started to tear away due to the fact that he was hanging from the ceiling by them. His face was…honestly, something that no longer resembled a face.
I’d seen worse.
Much worse.
But being in this as long as I had, I could tell that this wasn’t just a club kill. This one was more personal. This guy fucked with the wrong person and he paid the price. Knowing these guys, he must have fucking deserved it.
I got to work, tipping one of my five-gallon buckets of baking soda over and covering the floor before shaking out a fresh plastic tarp. Another layer of baking soda and it was time to really get to work.
I didn’t think about much while I worked. I wasn’t exactly there but I wasn’t off in some blank place in my mind. I’d been doing this long enough that I didn’t really need to think about what I was doing. It was, in a way, easy work.
Maybe it was time to find something more challenging.
Perhaps even a little less dark and disturbing.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
