I couldn't see any of the supposed makeshift home security I was warned about, but that wasn't to say it wasn't in place.

I shrugged into my leather jacket, slipping on matching gloves, and made my way up the old rickety fire escape.

Three AM.

The light inside the room had gone out almost two hours ago. It was time.

I crouched down at the landing, pulling a lock pick out of my back pocket and getting to work on the door.

Thirty seconds for a normal lock.

It took me twenty.

So much for security.

But even as I thought that, turning the knob, I realized my mistake. A bottle crashed to the floor. Alex fuckin' Miller put a bottle on the doorknob.

That was one way to know if someone was breaking in.

I took Lex's advice, not wasting any time, and throwing the door open.

I flicked on the light, charging into the small space.

And froze.

Just for the barest of seconds, before reaching for the gun tucked in the small of my back, a big nasty looking Desert Eagle, and aimed it.

At her.

“Where the fuck is Alex Miller?” I demanded, my voice loud enough to boom off the walls.

The girl was half frozen, one foot on the floor, one leg still cocked on an angle on her bed.

And she was fuckin' gorgeous. Like I needed any kind of distraction right then.

Maybe just over five-seven, slim, long legs, dark brown hair cut to brush her shoulders, mussed up from sleep. Her face was feminine, delicate. Soft chin, plump lips, a nose that tipped up ever so slightly at the end, and wide dark brown eyes, skin like porcelain, but rosy in the cheeks.

She had on a pale blue lightweight tee and a pair of black yoga pants.

The girl took a noticeable breath and swallowed hard.

“I'm Alex Miller.”

Fuck.

I should have known there was a catch.

Of course he wanted to screw with me.

“You fuckin' shittin' me?”

At this, her brows drew together.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice shaky.

Fuck.

I was scaring the bitch.

On a sigh, I slipped the gun back into my jeans, pulling out the needle instead, laying it flat against my palm, out of sight.

“You don't need to know who I am. But I need to know for sure that you're Alex Miller.”

“There's... ID in my purse,” she supplied, her eyes moving toward her purse on a desk next to a laptop and pile of notebooks.

That was good enough for me. “Sit,” I told her and her ass all but fell onto the bed.

I walked over to the purse, turning halfway to keep an eye on her as I rummaged through. Finding typical scatterbrained women shit: mints, three different chapsticks, a nail file, hair ties, and, finally, her wallet. I flipped it open, seeing her license with a picture of her with much longer hair staring at the camera at the DMV. And, sure enough, her name was fuckin' Alex Miller.

Jesus Christ.

I sighed, throwing her shit back into her bag, seeing a toothbrush and paste shoved into a pocket of the side, wrinkling my brow, then slinging the long strap of the bag over my shoulder.

“Hey,” she started to object, rising from the bed.

My eyes shifted to her and she fell silent, sitting back down. “What the fuck did you get yourself into?” I asked, shaking my head as I made my way toward her.

I had no choice.

None.

I didn't do the job... he would die. Suffer first. And then die.

I had to break one of my rules.

And this bitch with her scared eyes and honey-sweet voice was going to pay the price for me giving a shit about another living human being.

“I don't know what you're...”

The rest of her sentence was cut out on a yelp when I stabbed the needle into her neck. Her eyes flew to mine. Huge. Pleading. And I felt like the biggest shit in the world. A fuzziness took over her features and she started drifting down toward her mattress.

I glanced around her room.

Lex was right after all.

It wasn't just the bottle trick.

She had her windows nailed shut. There were bats situated everywhere around the room, within arm's reach at all times. Actually, that was likely what she was going for when I charged in, when she was getting off her bed. Going for the bat propped up against the footboard.

I looked down at her sleeping body, wondering aloud again, “What the fuck did you get yourself into?”

Then I picked her up, cradling her to my chest, and made my way back down the fire escape to my truck, shuffling her into the passenger side, then heading back to the warehouse.

Where I locked her up. And then freaked the fuck out.

Two

Alex

I was supposed to be working. I had five jobs in my queue. Hacking was always in high demand. Wives who wanted into their husband's social media accounts to check and see if he is screwing around (he always is), people who want to take down some site that was slandering them, score early concert tickets. Whatever the job, there was always someone who wanted it done.

And I was woefully low on cash.

I was supposed to be working.

But, well, let's just say I have trouble staying focused.

I was technically working. Just not on a job that paid anything. It was the same job that I had been working on since I was sixteen and I learned about him.

Lex Keith.

It was such a tame name for such an evil bastard.

And he was good.

Careful.

No one touched him.

It was my life's mission to bring him down.

Which involved a lot of intel.

Like watching the cameras I had set up. Around his businesses. Around the restaurants he frequented. The whorehouses he spent his free time in, beating and abusing the women there who had nothing else to do in their lives but sell their bodies. Talk about taking advantage. Though, that wasn't even the most shocking thing about Lex Keith.

I had notebooks upon notebooks filled up (in a code I made up, with no key) with all his activities. All the deaths he was responsible for – with his own hands or through contracts. All the rapes he had covered up because he had a few choice detectives in his pockets. All the drugs he smuggled in and from where. What gangs and families he was affiliated with (which was just about all of them). What his vices were (brunettes, scotch, Italian food, cigarettes). What his weaknesses were (hot temper, distrust). His strengths (intelligence, his type-A anal attention to detail).

He was my life's work.

I wasn't getting paid for it though.

So on the third day locked up in my apartment, I quickly worked through my backlog of jobs, watching my online account fill up with money that would enable me to buy me another camera to put outside the gym he spent his early mornings in. And would buy me some groceries and pay my week's worth of rent.

The people who owned the Chinese restaurant were okay with this arrangement. I paid by the week. I kept the noise down during working hours. I didn't wreck the place.

I had been staying there for a few months, knowing that I should have moved at least two times already. I was getting lazy.

Which wasn't safe.

But there weren't a lot of places that didn't insist you sign paperwork and put down a security deposit and agree to spend a year of your life there.

I didn't commit that much time to anything.

Not since I was sixteen.

Not since I found my mother's body in the bathtub, dressed in her prettiest beige linen dress that skimmed her ankles and made her look like a fairy princess. Her hair was done. Her makeup perfect. She looked asleep. But I knew the second I laid eyes on her that she was dead.