Shit.
Sighing, I reached for my cell and quickly found the number I needed. The conversation was short and to the point. Their guy was gone, his body found in a back alley in New Mexico where it had been dumped after the people who took him were done with him. They could find him in a morgue in Santa Fe. I’d done my job. I’d found him. The rest was up to the Senator’s security team. Although, I did have information on who had taken him, which I shared. Ending the call, I slowly closed the file containing everything I had on James Kale. For some reason, seeing the pictures of his death was affecting me more than normal. I was tired. Utterly exhausted. I’d seen so much darkness and destruction in my life, and I honestly didn’t know how much more I could handle. Unfortunately, I was so deep into the life I’d created for myself, I didn’t know how to get out.
Rising, I walked over to stare out the window of the small apartment I was currently renting. I moved at least once a year, if not twice. It was probably overkill on my end, but with some of the jobs I accepted, I was afraid I would be the one being hunted down soon.
I grimaced, resting a hand on my hip and bowing my head. I’d done some things in my past that I wasn’t proud of, skated a thin line where the law was concerned. Sometimes, even dipping below that line. There were a couple of times I was afraid I might be on my way to sporting an orange jump suit and seeing the inside of a jail cell myself, but I always seemed to escape just by the seat of my pants. However, it wasn’t the law I was afraid of. It was the people on the other side of it who I’d wronged. The head of the mafia in New York City was at the top of the list. Not that he knew who I was or what I’d done, but if he ever found out, there was no doubt in my mind that he would send everyone at his disposal after me. Not that his slimy son hadn’t deserved the bullet I put between his eyes, but Reece Rivera wouldn’t see it that way.
My cat growled softly in my mind, letting me know she didn’t like where my thoughts were heading. She wasn’t alone. I hated that they were pulling me down, somewhere dark that I was going to have to fight to crawl out of if I wasn’t careful. I’d been there before and had no desire to revisit it.
Raising my head, I turned from the window, looking around the place I called home. An efficiency apartment, it was small and bare, void of furniture except for a pullout couch and a small television that set on a dresser which held my clothes. There was a tiny kitchen and a bathroom that was just big enough for a toilet and a shower. Nothing hung on the walls, no pictures of family, no sign that anyone even lived there. Not that I was in it much. I was good at what I did and was on a job more often than not. I didn’t advertise. I didn’t have to. I met all of my new clients from past ones I’d helped.
Maybe I just needed a vacation. Some time at a beach, hundreds of miles away from reality, soaking up some rays. My cat purred in my mind at the thought, and I felt a small grin tug at the corners of my mouth. “You like that idea, huh?”
I’d just wrapped up a case, and I had some downtime. There was nothing that said I had to accept whatever call came through next. My go-bag was packed. I could jump in my car and drive wherever I wanted. Just me, the cat who shared my soul, and the always present Glocks in their holsters on my body. I snorted at the thought of me, in a bikini at the beach, a gun strapped to my thigh and one at my hip. That was my life.
My cell vibrated in my hand, and I glanced down at it, my eyes narrowing on the number that appeared on the screen. One I didn’t recognize. Or, I could just take the mission that I knew was coming my way and get back in the game. Get my head on straight. Stop wallowing in self-pity.
A low growl filled my head, but I knew my cat wasn’t against taking the call. No, she was all for it. While she may like the thought of lazing around in the sun, she preferred a good hunt. She was part of the reason I continued to do what I did. I wasn’t sure she would survive if I didn’t. The need to serve justice any way we had to was engrained too deep inside her.
Shaking my head, I squeezed my eyes shut tightly for a moment before answering the phone. “Thomas.”
“Shyla?”
The voice was soft, timid. One from my past that I hadn’t heard in over sixteen years. Not since my father disowned me, throwing me out of the house as if it meant nothing to him that his fourteen-year-old daughter was going to be out in the world on her own. And, maybe it didn’t. I wasn’t really his child. My biological father was someone my mother met before she found her true mate. A drifter, who wanted nothing more than a couple of weeks of fun. Although, Leo Thomas gave me his last name when he mated my mother, always treating me as his child, things changed the older I got.
“Mom?” I couldn’t keep the breathlessness from my voice. I had missed her so much. She had been the most important person in my life when I was growing up. We spent the
