“Shoot?”

At this, a dry laugh. “Who the fuck else would be calling?”

“Where are you?”

When he spoke, his nonchalance was so strong you could practically hear a shrug in his voice, “Same place I've been for the past week. Some shit basement with no wifi, man.”

I fought the urge to snort. “How are you calling me then?”

“Lex wants a meeting,” he said, his tone a little more clipped. He paused as if weighing the next words. “With you and the girl.”

Fuck. Great.

“Why?”

“Think I'm privy to that information, man?” he asked, making it sound like he had been trying to get more. Good old Shoot. Always with his head in the game even when he was being used as a bargaining chip.

“He there?” I asked, wondering how far I could push questioning him.

“No. Just one of his lackeys. Limp Dick Rick or somethin',” he said and I could practically see him smirking at the man in question. “You know how much these fuckers like their nicknames,” he went on and I heard the distinct sound of fist hitting skin followed by the whooshing of air out of Shoot's mouth. No groan. No sign of pain. Then a chuckle. He was a crazy fuck.

“Stop trying to piss them off and give me the details, man.”

“Hey gotta get my entertainment somehow,” he said, sounding no worse for the wear. “Two hours. In the train car. He said to be prepared to negotiate.”

That didn't sound good.

“Negotiate what?”

“Didn't say. You know the deal with him.”

Fuck yeah I did. And that didn't speak well for our upcoming little meeting.

“You gonna be there?”

“With bells on. You know... or cuffs. Whatever,” Shoot went on.

I snorted, feeling my eyes roll. It was like Shoot was biologically incapable of taking serious shit seriously.

“Alright. Two hours. See you then.”

There was a pause, the silence full of something before he spoke again.

“Hey Breaker?”

“Yeah?” I asked, not liking his tone.

Another pause. “She's an innocent,” he reminded me.

My eyes went to Alex's, finding her watching me intently.

I knew what Shoot was saying. It was the same thing Paine had said. It was the same thing I had been thinking. Me and Shoot, we chose this life. We danced with death every time we took a job. We aligned ourselves with people who could very well order our hit some day. We knew the risks. We took them willingly. We were guilty in every way possible. Whatever happened to us, we deserved it. We earned every kind of possible punishment. To the grave and beyond.

But that wasn't Alex.

Yeah, she got herself into some deep shit. Shit she wasn't prepared to handle, least of all on her own. But she did it because she felt like she had to. She did it for all those women in all those pictures she had on file. The pictures that made her look green. She wasn't jaded to the shit that was going down. She was enraged by it. Horrified by it. But she used that as the drive to try to end it. It was sweet and naive and hopeful of her.

And incredibly fuckin' stupid.

But also... innocent.

“I know,” I said, hanging up the phone.

Alex walked to the bathroom to get changed while I stared at the forum on my laptop. I didn't know what kind of people she knew on the dark net. All the people I knew who routinely used it were scum of the earth. But if Alex said there were good guys out there- truth seekers, vigilante justice fighters, whatever the fuck she thought they were, then I had to trust her on that. I just wished they were paying attention. That they were going to offer some kind of solution.

Because I had shit.

I was going to take her to that train car because I had no choice. And then fuck-knew what was going to happen there. I needed to save her. And I needed to save Shoot. And I had no idea how I was going to pull that off. Or even if I would be given the opportunity. For all I knew, he was going to have me there to shoot me. It was his style. Kill Shooter. Torture Alex. Then kill me. He had a thing for flamboyant displays of violence. And he liked knowing he got under your skin.

So I needed to make it clear Alex meant nothing to me.

Wasn't sure how well I'd pull that off, but I had to try.

Shoot, well, that was another story.

If he knew Shooter was a good person to pick up and hold, then he already knew the bond we had. There was no pretending he didn't mean something.

He would expect me to want to protect him.

I heard Alex come back from the bathroom in her dirty clothes, holding her boots in her hands.

“I know I'm supposed to be wearing what I wore when you took me, but I have nowhere else to store the heroin,” she said casually, shrugging a shoulder.

“Not a detail I think he will notice,” I said back, watching as she sat down beside me and slipped her shoes on, keeping the laces loose enough for her hand to slip down inside them if she needed to.

Still no reaction. Still as cool as could be about the whole situation.

If, by some miracle, we both lived through the night, I intended to figure out what was wrong with her. What kind of life she had led to make her so collected in the face of her own death?

What kind of person doesn't feel some sort of grief about it?

Hell, if I knew for damn sure I was looking down the barrel holding a bullet with my name on it, even I'd feel something. Think about all the bitches I didn't get to fuck. All the whiskey I didn't get to drink. All the vacations I never took. All the retirement plans Shoot and I had bullshitted about that never happened. Maybe think about not getting the chance to find some bitch I liked enough to strap myself to and let her give me a rugrat to drive me nuts for the next twenty years.

Something.

Everyone should want to live for something.

As the old saying went... Alex was going to die for nothing.

“Are you bringing any weapons?” Alex asked and I noticed she had been staring at me. For how long, I had no idea.

I nodded, getting off the couch and moving toward the closet in the kitchen that was supposed to be a small pantry. I pulled open the door, feeling Alex's presence behind me, looking in on the four shelves of guns, ammo, knives, stun guns, handcuffs, chains, brass knuckles- the works. I still had my Desert Eagle in my truck and that was gonna go right back in my waistband, but I grabbed a knife and slipped it into my pocket, grabbed a second gun and a strap to put around my ankle.

If I hadn't turned and stooped to attach the strap to said ankle, I might have seen Alex grab a pocketknife and slip it into the boot that wasn't holding the heroin.

“Do I look too clean?” she asked as I stood back up.

I felt my brows drawing together, looking at her dust stained clothes. “What?”

“Like my face and arms and hair. Am I too clean? Should I try to muss myself up a little?”

At that, I felt a smile tugging at my lips. “Muss yourself up a little?”

“Yeah. So it's convincing.”

“So what is convincing, doll?”

“That you've been keeping me prisoner like instructed.”

“The job was to grab you and hold onto you. No one said I couldn't let you shower and eat.”

“Oh,” she said, looking out the window.

“You alright?” I asked, taking in her drawn-together brows.

She turned back to me with an odd little smirk. “I guess it's as good a day as any to die, right?” As if sensing that was the wrong thing to say, she rushed on, changing the subject. “Did Shooter sound like he was okay?”

“He was poking fun at the guard assigned to him, getting his face bashed into while we were talking. So, yeah, he's good.”

Her brow went up. “Getting beat is... good?”

I felt my shoulder shrug. “Shoot is a smartass with a runaway tongue. If he's still sticking his foot in his own mouth, they haven't broken him yet.”