Monster (26 page)

Which somehow made him
more relatable to me.

On the third day, he
got a work call. I didn't ask who it was but he confirmed that it
wasn't Lex, thereby making the rolling in my stomach subside.

On the fourth day, he
walked up to me while I was leaning against the kitchen counter
drinking coffee.

“I gotta run
out,” he said, as usual not bothering to ease me into anything.
It was a habit I found almost oddly comforting. I was never the kind
of girl to be handled with kid gloves. I appreciated that he
respected that about me.

“For work?”

“Yeah. But we
also ran through all the food,” he said, taking my mug out of
my hands and pressing a kiss into my neck. I made a murmuring sound
in my throat as my body came alive. That was all it took with him.
Sometimes I didn't even need a kiss. The night before, his pinkie
finger accidentally brushed against my thigh and I was
ready
.
He chuckled as if knowing what was going on and moved away from me.
“Ain't got time to fuck you again,” he said, moving over
toward his weapon pantry and reaching in. He tucked his gun into his
waistband where I learned it lived if he was leaving the house. Then
he came back holding another gun.

“What's this?”

“A gun. For you,”
he said, pressing it into my hands. “Don't plan on you having
any trouble, but you need to be prepared. This is the safety,”
he said, slipping it off. “You hear something, see something,
you take off the safety and you point. Put your finger on the trigger
and pull. Don't think about it. Don't hesitate. No one belongs here.
Anyone here but me? They mean trouble. You take them out then you
call me,” he said, reaching into his pocket for one of the
burners he kept with his weapons. He flipped it open and punched in
something. “My number is in there. Got it?”

“Got it,” I
agreed, taking the phone and tucking it into my pocket then reaching
for the gun, trying not to think about it too hard. He was right. I
needed to be prepared. So I needed to get over whatever hangups I had
at the idea of using a gun.

“I won't be long.
Two, three hours. Mostly because of the commute. Stay inside. Lock
the door behind me. And keep the phone and gun within reach at all
times.”

I felt my lips curving
up. “I said I got it.”

“Just making
sure,” he said, reaching for the back of my neck and hauling me
toward him to kiss me. Hard. With lots of tongue. Then he pulled
away, grabbed his keys, and walked out the door. “Don't hear
the lock, woman!” he called through the closed door and I
laughed as I ran to the door and pushed the locks into place.

I stood there listening
to his truck pulling away for a while, feeling a strange surge of
disappointment.

Which was ridiculous so
I moved back toward the kitchen, nabbed my mug, and made my way over
to the living room, grabbing my laptop and waking it up.

Then my heart flew into
my chest.

Because there was a
response.

On the post about Lex.

There was a response.

I clicked the post,
scrolling down over all the information I had uploaded to find a
comment by someone with the screen name “Jstorm”.

I can help. We need
to chat.

I slammed my mug
down on the table, not even noticing that the coffee splashed all
over the surface as my hands flew across the keypad.

Where? When?

It
was only a couple minutes before another comment was made. Like
whoever Jstorm was, was sitting and waiting for me to get back to
them.

Now?
Secure webcam?

Of
course.

SN:
Jstorm.

I
didn't respond to that, just brought up my camera and chat software,
quickly brushing my hands through my crazy morning hair, before
entering the screen name and hitting the call button.

My heart was hammering
in my chest, my breathing feeling shallow and labored.

I had given up.

Days ago, I had decided
it was no use. I checked anyway because I was always praying someone
more powerful than me would step up.

That there was someone
who wanted to help.

Someone who could end
this for me.

And for Breaker.

And Shoot.

Shoot who Breaker
hadn't heard from since the last meeting. Shoot who Breaker was
getting more and more worried about by the day. He didn't say
anything about it, but it was there. In the heavy way his shoulders
sat. In the tightness in his jaw. In the faraway look in his eyes.

He was worried.

And that was my fault.

I needed to fix it.

The call got answered
and it took a moment for Jstorm's camera to connect. When it did, it
might as well not have been hooked up. Because the image gave me
nothing. Someone in a hood that hung over their face. The hoodie was
big and black, dwarfing whatever body was underneath it. The room
Jstorm was in was dark. I couldn't even tell you from looking if
Jstorm was a man or woman.

“Alex?” the
inhuman voice asked.

Inhuman because whoever
Jstorm was, they were using voice modification software.

They meant business.

That was good for me.

“Yes,” I
said, nodding slightly, feeling almost nervous.

“I'm sorry to
hear about Glenn,” Jstorm said.

“Thank you,”
I said, meaning it. No one else had offered me sympathy. And I didn't
deserve it, but Glenn's memory did.

“Lex has been
allowed off his leash for way too long.”

That was true. “Yeah,”
I agreed.

“Are you still
with Bryan Breaker?”

That was not
information I shared. Jstorm had been doing his or her own research.
Again, that was good.

“At his house.
But he ran out for a few minutes.”

The hooded head nodded.
“You need to untangle yourself from him.”

The words felt like a
kick to the gut.

Even though they were
ones I had been forcing myself to try believe for days.

“I know.”

“Shooter is still
alive. But if you don't show proof of the hacker when Lex returns, he
won't be alive for long.” There was a pause. “You could
create false leads, make false information to hold yourself over. But
that will only last for so long and Lex would use his usual methods
of... persuasion against you.”

Persuasion.

Rape and torture.

Yeah.

Jstorm was right.

“But not before
he uses your weaknesses against you.”

“My weaknesses,”
I repeated hollowly.

“Shooter and
Breaker.”

Right.
That was
true.

Shit.

It was one thing to
know it. It was another to have someone else tell you the same thing
you were worried about.

“You need to
leave.”

“How will leaving
help? Breaker will get in trouble for losing me.”

“Not as much as
he will be in for helping you.”

That was also true.

“I have no money.
No where to go.”

“You leave and
turn left at the end of the gravel road. You find a stop sign bent in
half and laying on the grass, turn into the woods, under the first
downed tree is a bag. Enough money to get you out of town for a few
weeks. An ID. A burner.”

Holy shit.

Jstorm
really
meant business.

“And then what?”

“Then I take it
from there. I use what you have and what I have gathered and I take
down Lex Keith. Finally.”

“But...”

“You're
out of this, Alex Miller. You've lost enough already. Take the bag.
Leave town. Don't look back.
Don't gather any more information. You can take
your
laptop and keep tabs, but don't stick your finger back into this
mess. You're free. Go build a new life.”

And with that, Jstorm
ended the call.

If my heart was
pounding before, it was threatening an attack then.

I had just been taken
out of the equation.

I had just had my
life's work taken from me.

And, at once, it filled
me with overwhelming terror and soul-crushing relief.

All I needed to do was
leave.

The problem was, there
was no 'all' about it.

Leaving was taking a
leap of faith.

It was potentially
screwing an already screwed situation further.

It was leaving the only
person left in the world I cared about.

Someone who said they
cared about me too.

And, yes, it was soon.

And, yes, it was
nonsensical.

But Breaker meant
something to me.

There was even a small
voice inside that suggested that maybe he meant everything to me.

But that was all the
more reason I needed to go.

To save him.

To save him from trying
to save me.

And losing his life or
Shooter's life in the process.

I couldn't let that
happen.

I needed to go.

I slammed my laptop
shut, moving quickly across Breaker's house. I slipped into jeans and
my boots, threw on an extra layer under my sweatshirt, half emptied
my duffel, and stowed a change of clothes and my laptop inside to
make for light and easy travel.

I looked down at my
notebooks, flipping one to the last page and ripping it out.

I had to leave. But I
also had to leave a note.

If I didn't, he would
think Lex got me. I couldn't have him storming Lex's house looking
for me. So I grabbed a pen, I sat down, and I said my last words to
Breaker.

And I pretended I did
this without crying.

But I cried. A lot.
Making the words I wrote swim before my eyes.

I grabbed the gun
Breaker left with me, slipping it into my waistband like he did, then
tore out of the house.

Seventeen

Breaker

I did a quick job for
an old friend- roughing up some jackass who kept trying to shake down
his store. I was done in half an hour, relatively clean of blood, and
whipped my way through the food store.

I wasn't lying when I
said we had gone through all of the food. I meant all I had left was
a jar of pickles and some stale crackers in the cabinet. She may have
been tiny, but she could sock away almost as much food as I could. It
was one of the many things I found amusing about her.

She had changed.

After losing her ex.
After crying with me. After drinking with me. After opening up a
little... she changed.

She let down the walls
enough for me to climb over. To get a solid view of what was on the
inside. And I wasn't wrong. I knew I wouldn't be. But it was good to
have proof.

Alex Miller wasn't just
the hollow eyed, determined hacker with a vendetta whose soul spoke
in a language of tears.

She was funny and sweet
and had a strong tendency to stick her foot in her mouth and then
blush like hell because of it. And that temper of hers? Yeah, it
wasn't just about shit she found important. The day she was hungover
as fuck, she went balls to the wall about a god damn character from a
movie.