Early Sins (Dangerous Games Book 0) (7 page)

It took a minute more to unlock the cuff at each of their wrists, and then she pulled away from them. Not wanting to touch them, not wanting to feel their fear, afraid her own might return.

“Run.”

They didn’t speak as they stumbled past her, grabbing clothes left in the closet. The closet they all knew too well, and then they were gone. No questions. No words.

What words were there for this level of fucked up?

Then she was standing at the front door, looking at a crime scene, or what
would
be a crime scene in a day or so. They’d come back. They always came back. Joe. Clinton. Barry. Roger. They would find them, and then they’d know. They would know
she
had done it – the other two never fought back.

Joe would be first.

Joe was the worst.

Joe Wilson.

His face flashed in front of her, flickering like a poltergeist, charging from the shadows in the corners, and she stumbled back as the floor gave way like quicksand. Inches from the front door and she couldn’t reach it. She was going to escape, she could see the moonlight on the dirty walkway, the ragged, weed-covered lawn. Camille tried to scream but her voice was gone, and she clawed at the doorframe, trying to drag herself out. Out onto the cold concrete. Outside this hell.

“No, no, no, no. I’m out. I made it. NO!”

“
Yes
…” a low voice hissed just behind her ear. She felt that rough palm over her mouth, and then she screamed as it pulled her down.

* * *

Camille sat up with a jerk, dim early morning light cascading through the gap in the curtains. In the hotel room. She was in Smith’s hotel room. In Smith’s bed.

She was out.

She’d made it out.

Her heart was racing in her chest, and her stomach heaved. She barely made it to the trash can next to the dresser, the carpet burning her knees as she threw up again and again. Sweat coated her skin, clammy with it, and she crawled across the floor until she found her gun on the nightstand. Hugging it to her chest as she took deep breaths.
Breathe. Center.
The memory of Smith’s voice was soothing as she moved air in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Slow and steady.

That had been the worst nightmare in months. Fucking hell.

Camille smacked the center of her forehead with her free hand, leaning back against the side of the bed as if the hard press of it could ground her in the reality where that particular nightmare was over, had been over for almost a year.

This was all because she’d stalked him down.

All because she’d done the
right
thing.

Watched him. Monitored his habits. Identified four separate places she could take him out without raising an eyebrow.

Now he was in her head again, back to the crippling nightmares that had always sent her clamoring for fresh air. Confirmation that she wasn’t still trapped, still the plaything of a bunch of monsters. She clenched her free hand tight, digging her sharp nails into her palm until she threatened to break the skin.

“Steve is already dead, you fucking
know
he’s dead, and today is the day Joe Wilson dies.” Camille swallowed and nodded to herself, flipping the safety of the gun on and off with practiced ease. “Today is the day Joe Wilson dies. Then there will be three. Three bastards until the nightmares stop. Three more until you’re fine.”

Chapter Five

Her stomach was still a knotted, empty mess as she followed him from half a block back, her gun tucked against her palm in the pocket of her hoodie. Finger off the trigger, just like Smith had taught her.

It will be today
.

Camille breathed slow clouds in front of her, feeling the cold wind chap her cheeks into a reddened blush as she watched the baseball cap bob through the scattered people in front of her.  Joe Wilson was walking with the kind of casual, head down stroll of a man with no enemies. If it were possible for her to hate him more, she did then. While she had been starving on the streets, doing all the fucked up things they had viciously taught her just so she could stay alive, he had been indoors. Eating enough to keep his body soft. Sleeping in safety while she had crowded into an abandoned building with a bunch of addicts just so she’d have a bit of warning if someone approached.

This goddamn motherfucker.

He seemed almost cheerful this morning, tilting his body to let others pass instead of checking them with his shoulder. Had he found another girl? Did they have a new little place that he visited on random nights? Was that what made him so fucking polite in the morning light?

A sharp turn to his right had her slowing her gait, and then she saw him step into a corner store. Camille stopped on the other side of a stoop a few doors down, keeping her eyes casually moving over the pedestrians, the crowded street in front of her where the cars inched by in the morning rush. Her white blonde hair was tucked into a soft hat, hiding it from sight under the hood, and she tried to keep her head down as he exited and she renewed her hunt.

Stop for a cigarette, asshole. You know you want one.

Joe had always reeked of cigarettes on top of her. His breath heavy with it against her cheek. A shudder rushed through her as she followed him, her grip on the gun tightening almost painfully. It took a conscious effort to ease back, to swallow the bile in her throat at the memories, and focus on her target.

He’s a target. Just a target.

Half a block shy of the rundown mechanic he worked for, he stepped into an alley to light up – right on time for his routine. Coiling her finger around the trigger she let the steady flow of people carry her forward, head down, her steps moving her one by one closer to the man from her nightmares. When he was within sight she flipped the safety off, easing towards the right of the sidewalk so she could aim without hitting someone else.

‘
If you have to fire in a public place, do it discreetly, and then react with the group. Don’t respond until someone else does, then mimic them. Move with the crowd. Fade into it, and leave.’
Smith’s words were as much a part of her as the memory of Joe’s voice against her ear.

Clenching her teeth she raised her gaze and saw him, eyes angled down towards the ground where he was dragging his shoe through muddied snow, and then he raised them. Brown ones, like the color of the filthy runoff in the middle of the alley, brushed across her skin. Her knees almost buckled and her grip on the gun in her pocket went slack, with a shift she managed to move herself to the other side of a woman carrying a sack of groceries in her arms. Pulse racing, lungs tightening, Camille walked past the alley. Past Joe Wilson. Past the mechanic shop, and on and on and on.

Her hands were shaking too much to touch the gun and so she let it hang, heavy as her shame, in the pocket at the front of her hoodie.

Eventually she stumbled towards a small park, dropping onto a bench where the damp wood soaked up into the seat of her jeans. The tears came then, like a storm held back by spun sugar, wracking her with sobs that she silenced by biting down on her knuckles.

Weak. So fucking weak.

Useless, weak, piece of shit!

There was no end to the names she called herself as she rocked on that bench, screaming inside her head over the wasted moment. The wasted opportunity to end him.

She’d had the chance, and she’d failed.

Failed.

When she finally forced herself to stand, wiping her nose, she could feel the cold biting through the wet jeans, and it all felt like the right level of miserable for someone as pathetic as her. The walk back to the hotel was freezing, and long enough that it gave her ass a new appreciation for warm, dry clothes, but it also let her think over what had happened. Slowly. Picking it apart like someone from a distance.

She’d been too close to him. It had been too crowded. That was it.

She just needed more space so she could pull the trigger, more room to breathe. Then she could kill him. He would never touch her again, she’d make sure of that, and then she would be able to banish him from her dreams too.

Just a change of clothes, a moment to regroup, and she’d go back. She knew just where he’d be this afternoon, and it would give her all the space she needed.

As soon as the door opened to the hotel room she knew Smith was back.
Shit
. The air was heavy with humidity from the shower, there was a fresh newspaper on the table, and she could smell his aftershave floating in front of her. Instead of the usual frisson of excitement she felt that he was back, this time she only felt fury.

She wasn’t
done
.

She hadn’t finished.

“C?” His voice was brighter than usual as he stepped out of the bedroom, naked from the waist up, putting all that carved muscle on display. There were bruises shadowing his skin in places, and she couldn’t tell which ones she’d put there, and which ones might be the result of his job.

“You’re back,” she said flatly.

“I am. I thought we could head to lunch, and I could -”

“I just came back to change. Slipped on some fucking ice.” Tugging at her jeans she moved towards him, shifting sideways to make her way into the bedroom. “I’ll be back later.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“I ate earlier.”
Liar.

“Alright, well, I’ll come with you then. I have -”

“No.” Camille turned on her heel and held her hand out as if she could stop him. “I won’t be long, I just need to take care of some stuff.”

“C…” his voice held a hint of a question that he left unspoken, and she rolled her eyes and turned away.

“I’m changing.” Without another word she unbuttoned her jeans and ripped them down, toeing her shoes off as she grabbed for the comfortable yoga pants that were a lot less protection from the frigid temps, but easier to fight in if it came to that. A glance over her shoulder confirmed that he’d stepped into the living room while she took her clothes off, and for once it didn’t bother her that he avoided her. She needed him to, so she could leave to handle Joe before she lost the chance.

Dropping onto the bed she pulled her shoes back on, and Smith appeared in the doorway. Still half-dressed, still impossibly gorgeous, and still completely uninterested in her. “You slept in my bed last night.”

The words froze her hands in place, mid-tie with the laces. Camille swallowed and kept her eyes towards the floor. “Uh, yeah. Won’t happen again.”

“I don’t care that you slept in my bed, I care that you apparently slept in my bed and then threw up in the trash can.” He blew out a breath and ran a hand across his face. “Did you get drunk last night?”

“Yep. I got fucking plastered, so sue me.” She stood up and faced him. “Mind getting out of my way?”

“Was it a nightmare?” There was a softness around his jade colored eyes as she met them, and that momentarily hurt worse than the accuracy of his question.

“Fuck off, Smith,” Camille growled under her breath as she brushed past him, but he caught her by the arm.

“Where are you going?” he asked, the softness bleeding into his voice. He was too close to her. Those quiet eyes boring holes through her, into her soul, and if she let him look too long he’d see everything. Every gory detail of her past – and then he wouldn’t want her around him.

Damaged goods
.

“I’m going out.” Jerking her arm away from him she walked backwards towards the door. “You know, just because you show up early doesn’t mean I cancel all my fucking plans. I’ll be back later.”

“Your plans?” He lifted his eyebrows, a doubting expression.

“Yeah. My fucking plans.”

“Cancel them. I want you to stay here. Go get a late lunch with me.” Was that a pleading tone underneath the cold command in his voice? Where the hell had that come from? He stared at her from across the hotel room, a matter of feet that he could cover in a breath if he actually meant to stop her.

Does he want you?
A flicker of hope burned hot for a moment until the memory of her nightmare destroyed it.

Fuck this. No. You don’t have time for this.

Joe.

Joe Wilson was waiting. Waiting for a bullet in the head, or a lung, and maybe a few to his dick, and that was more important than a half-dressed Smith asking her to stay for lunch.

“We don’t always get what we want,” she muttered and ripped open the door to the room, practically running into the hallway to get away from him. To get some space so she could think. Plan. Prepare.

This time she wouldn’t panic. She wouldn’t freeze. She would kill him.

It took her longer than she wanted to get back to the area of the city where the auto shop squatted between run down tenement buildings and the bleary New York winter sky. Fortunately, that wasn’t the building she was headed for. It was the abandoned warehouse, half a block down, through the alley on the right.

She could hear the radio blaring music from outside the door, and it only made her more angry to think of him lounging as he ate his lunch, taking his late afternoon break like any other asshole working a job.

Taking a deep breath she checked around her for anyone that might have seen her enter the alley, but there was no one. Random people walking by on the street, their collars pulled up against the chilling wind that was biting through the thin cloth of her pants, and none of them were glancing down the alley. None of them
wanted
to know what was going on. Before she could second-guess herself she tugged at the door and flinched as it screeched, metal on metal.

Too loud. Move fast.

Camille ducked inside, out of the cold, and found that the radio seemed to echo off the concrete and the exposed metal beams. What had once been a storage place for some product to be delivered around the city was now long forgotten, and only used as a pit stop for bastards like
him
during the day and a crash pad for bums and addicts at night.

Moving silently along the wall, keeping to the dark shadows cast by the high windows, she finally tucked herself behind a metal pillar and saw him. Facing away from her, baseball cap on the floor beside him, sitting in a fold-out chair with his legs crossed. Some kind of sandwich came up to his lips, his head bobbing to the music, and then back down.

He hadn’t heard the door.

It was luck, and she knew it, but she wasn’t going to waste it. It was now or never. Her hands were sweating and she wiped them on her pants before she drew out the gun, heavy in her palm. Safety off.

Shifting around the pillar she pointed it at the back of his head, watching as he casually took another bite of sandwich. Completely unaware of her, unaware of the death just a squeeze of a trigger away.

“JOE!” She shouted, surprised by the volume of her own voice as he jerked out of the chair and spun on her, surprise etched onto his face.
This
was what she had needed, she needed him to see her. He needed to know. He hadn’t earned a quick death, a death without knowing. Rage pulsed through her as she stared into his face. “Remember me?”

“What the fu -” he wobbled on his feet, backpedaling a few steps as he focused on her, and then he laughed. Low and sinister. “Well, well…”

Camille growled in her throat and ripped the hat off, letting her white blonde hair spill over her shoulders as she tightened her grip on the gun. “You motherfucker, you spineless sack of shit. I’m going to watch you die.”

“You’re not going to shoot me, little girl.” He grinned, and shook his head slowly. “That’s not why you’re here, you missed me didn’t you?” He took a step forward and then stopped short when Camille adjusted her aim, bracing her stance so she could steady her shaking hands.