Page 36 of Slaying for Santa
“You a hacker?” she asks, and he nods.
“One of the best.”
“Huh. You might come in handy,” she says vaguely, before glancing back at me. “So these are your old special forces buddies?”
“We met in the special forces,” I nod, “but we still work together.”
“Oh, yeah. In your security business.” She air quotes the word security, rolling her eyes.
“Fine, since things have changed,” I gesture between us, and she stiffens at the implication. “The Red Belly Team are mercenaries for hire.”
“Well, stop fucking around and let’s find Libi.” She throws up her hands. “We have a black Christmas tree to buy.”
I can’t help but smirk at Bell, and as I close the two-foot gap between us and fist her dark hair, those dark chocolate eyes go wide in surprise.
“I meant what I said earlier, Bellicent,” I mutter quietly so only she can hear. “When we get Libi back, we will be continuing this morning’s conversation.”
She doesn’t say anything, simply staring at me as I release her hair and turn around to find Wes right behind me.
“Kit has been a bad boy.”
“Fuck off, Wes,” I mutter, shoving my best mate out of the way, and moving to the table.
We spend the next twenty minutes discussing strategy. Since we have no location of Carlos, we know we’ll have to muscle information out of some of the lower gang members.
The only problem with that is how long it will take.
There’s no evidence that they will hurt Libi. In fact, probably, once Rhonda gets out of lockup later today, I assume she’ll use Libi as leverage to extort more fucking money out of me. After all, it’s not the first time she’s taken Libi. It’sonlythe first time she got someone else to do it.
Doc assures me that if it was a sedative that was used, that Libi will probably still be sleeping, and not know what’s happened.
He’s only trying to make me feel better, but I know the guy well enough to know he doesn’t even fucking believe his own words.
My little girl is only five years old, and some fuckers entered my house, with a fucking key, turned off the alarm like they had the pin memorised, and took her while I was busy living out my fucking sexual fantasies with Bell.
Doesn’t matter the way you spin it. The real fucking crime here is how I’ve just failed fucking big time as a dad.
My phone pings with an incoming message, and I tug it out and open the message from an unknown number.
She’s a pretty little girl. All those dark curls, and those big fucking doe eyes. I took her as a favour to Carlos, but that fucker pissed me off, so now, she’s all mine.
My fucking heart falls to the pit of my stomach as a photo comes through, and there, tied to a chair, wide awake with tears in her eyes is my beautiful baby girl, and on the floor byher feet, is Rhonda’s cousin, Carlos, with his brain matter sprayed in chunks across the tiles.
CHAPTER 11
BELL
A roar lurchesfrom Kit as he throws his phone across the room, and I don’t even get a chance to hear it hit anything or clatter to the ground before he has his laptop in hand, throwing it too.
Scurrying from my chair, a flashback slams into me of my father throwing his dinner plate across the room, sending food everywhere when he didn’t like the taste of what my mother and I had prepared for him.
Air gets trapped in my lungs as he charges for me, and I brace myself knowing how badly his fists hurt, but the blow never lands. Not on me, because my mum leaps in front of me, taking each hit so I don’t have to.
“Grab him!”
The bellow of a male voice shatters my memory, bringing me back to the present, and I find myself flush up against the wall, just like when I was little.
“Stop, Kit!” Wes yells, trying to leap on Kit’s back, but the next thing to go is the dining table, the whole thing flipping to its side as he completely trashes the place.
