Royce(57)

The rest of the names meant just as little to him. There was one name on the list, the one that kept pounding at him every time he saw it. Kasey M. York, the girl form when he’d been fired.

He’d felt his blood pressure rise whenever she was mentioned or he thought about her. The fucking cunt had told them, his boss, some lies and now he had no job, no way of getting on, and now he was marked as well. He looked down at the bracelet on his ankle and cursed it again.

He couldn’t go twenty-five feet beyond his domicile, the judge, then that brother of Hunter’s, had told him—several times—not with that fucking lock on his leg. What fucking bullshit was that, he wanted to know? He couldn’t go to the bar down the street, couldn’t go to the corner drug store; hell, he couldn’t even go to the fucking mailbox without calling some prick and telling him where he was going. He did it too. He hated the way they’d made him feel when he’d not done it the one other time.

He’d been out there with his bills in his hand—another thing he was fucking pissed about, not having money to pay anything—and talking shit with his good friend that had just moved in next door…Benny something. The police had come around the corner like the place was a bank being robbed. Three cruisers pulled up in front of where he was standing with their guns pointed at him before he could even take a breath.

“Put your hands up and drop to your knees, now,” one of them shouted in his and Benny’s direction. “Now.”

Mike looked over at Benny, wondering what the hell he’d done, when one of the cops shot a bullet at them. Both him and Benny dropped right fucking down after that. When the police started up to the walkway, still all ready to drop someone, he glanced over at his buddy again and was surprised to see one of them cops helping him up off the ground. Before he could think he was going to be helped up too, he was being tackled like a common criminal.

“What the fuck are you doing, you stupid cock sucker?” He knew as soon as the cop on his back growled at him, he’d made a tactical error. Didn’t shut him up, but he knew that it should have. “Get the fuck off me, you son-of-a-bitch, or I’m going to sue your fucking ass.”

“You just try it, you stupid bastard, and let me show you how many bones I can break in your face before someone pulls me off you.” Mike had never been overly bright, he would admit that, but there was no reason for this guy to speak to him that way. Before he could make another, no doubt ignorant comment, there was a voice that he’d recognized from numerous phone conversations.

“I would shut up now if I were you, Mr. White. These guys aren’t your normal run of the mill officers. They work for me. Well, my brother, but they take orders from me.”

Curtis crouched down so that Mike could see him now. He had a thought that he’d never seen the guy in jeans before and thought stupidly that he looked as good in them as he did in a business suit. Mike started to say something, he wasn’t sure what, when Curtis simply said, “quiet.”

Suddenly, he was sitting up and the cops had moved away. Mike didn’t try to stand, somehow knowing that he’d be right back where he was in seconds, but he did lean back, trying to make like it was okay for him to sit in the dirt with his fucking mail lying all over his lap.

“What the hell do you want? I haven’t gone near your precious building,” he said to him. “I’ve been nowhere, if you want to know that truth. I’m sort of tethered here.”

Curtis laughed. “Yes, you are. And you’re damned lucky you can move about at all. If I had my way, you’d be in prison awaiting trial, not living out among humans as if you’re one of them.”

“Hey. That’s not right. You can’t talk to me like—” The hand across his face made his head snap back so hard that he heard his neck pop. He closed his mouth with a snap.

“You will shut the fuck up and listen to me. You’ll have this same treatment every time you so much as walk out the door beyond the twenty-five feet we had to give you. I don’t like you very much, White, and I hope that for your sake when you go to trial, you get a fucking fantastic lawyer because I’m going for the max on this.” Curtis stood up. “If I were you, I’d enjoy what I could of the outside world because when I’m through with you, you’ll never see the light of day again.”

That had been two weeks ago. And now here he was, the night before the trial. The police had been outside his apartment since the jury had been selected and he’d been with his dumb fuck lawyer once since then. He just knew that he was completely fucked.