Kissing the Killer(23)

I blinked. “You have to hunt them down?”

“And bring them back dead or alive.”

“Brooks, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t kill them,” I said, shocked at my own anger. “You can’t just murder those girls.”

“I don’t murder girls,” he said, nodding at me. “As you’re aware of.”

“But you work for men who do, and who keep girls as fucking sex slaves.”

“Yeah, I fucking do.”

“You’re okay with that?”

“Fuck, no, I’m not,” he growled at me. “I’m not fucking okay with it. But then again, the mafia gave me my life. They took me in. I can’t just turn my back because I don’t agree with everything they do.”

“It’s wrong, Brooks.”

He grinned at me. “I fucking kill people for a living, sweetheart, and you think some dumb bitches are going to make me turn my back on my people?”

I stood up, shocked. “I thought you were better than that.”

He grunted. “Guess not.”

“What happened to you not hurting girls?”

“I fucking don’t,” he said, not looking at me, “but I also can’t control everyone else around me.”

I shook my head, surprised by my own disgust. I walked away without another word, angry at him and angry at myself.

As I shut the bedroom door behind me, I didn’t know what I had expected. I knew what kind of man he was. Brooks was a killer. Maybe he had saved my life and didn’t hurt women, but he was still a killer. That was the type of man I was dealing with, the type of man I couldn’t stop thinking about.

I was angry with myself, and afraid.

I knew the mafia sold drugs, guns, robbed banks, stuff like that. I understood that sort of thing and could be okay with it. But human trafficking was a whole different thing, something dark and horrible. I couldn’t picture Brooks being a part of it, but obviously he wasn’t turning his back on them completely.

Was that even reasonable to want? He’d already gone so far for me, risked so much. As I sat on the bed, uncertainty rushing through me, I had the urge to look at my mother’s old photo album.

I rooted through the duffel, searching for it. The album was the last thing I had that connected me to her, and when things got too dark, I always looked through it. Whenever I felt alone and scared, that album calmed me down, at least a little bit.

But as I rooted through the bag, I couldn’t find it.

Panic struck me. The album had been the first thing on the list, the one thing I absolutely needed. I remembered him saying that he couldn’t find a few things, but I didn’t think the album was one of them.

I wanted to storm out there and yell at him, but I stopped myself. He didn’t owe me anything. He had done his best to get me what I needed. He had no way of knowing how important that album was to me.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Besides, I had to admit that I was a little scared of him at that moment. He was a man who got shot because of a human trafficking attack. I could overlook the murder of my father, because he was a bad man, but they were innocent girls.

And yet he had let some of them go. That was probably another big risk to take.

I was so frustrated. I couldn’t decide how I felt. This wasn’t so simple; it wasn’t just an easy decision to make. Brooks was a killer, but he had saved my life. He was involved with human traffickers, but he had let girls escape when he didn’t have to. Brooks was a contradiction, and I didn’t know what to think about him.

But I did know one thing. I needed my album.

I pushed open the door and poked my head back out into the living room. Brooks was sitting on the couch, his head tipped back, snoring lightly.

I blinked. He was asleep.

There was no time to think about it. This was my chance. I crept across the room, moving silently. As quietly as I could, I opened the apartment door. I slipped out and shut it silently behind me.

Down the steps I went, my heart beating hard. I stopped down in front of the main door, staring at it. Beyond that door was freedom and danger. It was an unfamiliar, scary world, one without Brooks. If I did this, he couldn’t protect me.

But that album was my last connection to my past.

I took a step forward and then another. I felt more and more confident.

I put my hand on the knob, turned it, and pushed the door open.

It was a beautiful day as I left the apartment building. It took me a second to figure out where I was, but once I did, I knew which way to go.

I began walking.

I’d walked alone in the city hundreds of times before, but this was the first time I was truly alone. Nobody was coming for me; nobody was waiting for me. My father was gone and my house was empty. All I needed to do was walk to the house, grab the album, and head back.