I was her match!
I planned to simply take her. And if my bride was afraid? If she protested the match? It would not matter. She was mine and I would not give her up. I would win her over, if it took one week or one year, she would relent.
* * *
Jessica, Earth
I crouched low on the rooftop, staring at the Drug Enforcement Agency’s officers through the long lens of the camera I’d hidden in my go-bag. My target was sitting under an umbrella under one of seven tables at a private courtyard café in the heart of the city. I wore my usual recon outfit, black shirt and pants.
The officers were guests of the cartel, their presence evidence of their shady natures, proof they were on the take. Proof that I had been framed. The place was heavily guarded with goons packing heat on the ground and more men doing rooftop sweeps every hour, on the hour.
Which meant I had fifteen minutes to get the hell out of here or I’d be caught.
A woman knelt on the concrete between one man’s legs, giving him a blowjob beneath the table as he sipped whiskey and joked with his friend. He didn’t even pause his speech as the drugged woman took his cock down her throat and played with his balls. The entire area was filled to overflowing with drug dealers, pimps, and the prostitutes who served them, their slaves.
I wasn’t sure who was worse off, the women who died from the initial drug overdose of C-bomb or the survivors forced into slavery to get their next fix.
I hadn’t eaten a full meal in two days, my body was dehydrated and my stomach filled with nothing but gel protein packs and coffee. I didn’t need to survive. I had no home, no money, and no family left. Even my alien match, the one perfect man for me in all of the universe, had rejected me. All I had left was my honor, and a chance to make sure no more women were kidnapped and forced into drug and prostitution rings. This group’s recruiting method, injecting captive women with a drug cocktail—called C, or C-bomb on the street, short for cunt-bomb—designed to make any woman a mindless slut. The drug worked incredibly well. After one dose, the women were either easily controlled addicts or dead.
The woman who was debasing herself with the man’s cock down her throat was clearly hooked.
I watched as one of the local drug lord’s lieutenants slid a bag full of drugs, money, and God only knew what else across the table to the DEA agent who opened the bag, smiled, and took a single pill—I could see the pale pink color of it through my lens—from the bag. Putting it between his thumb and first finger, he offered it to the woman sucking his cock under the table. She took it under her tongue. Almost immediately she stiffened, then smiled in a mindless haze as she lowered her head and redoubled her efforts to make him come down her throat.
With a grimace, I pressed the button and took picture after picture, careful not to move. Not yet. I needed one more name, one more face. I had already turned in three of the group’s top players. A well-placed note and some photos sent to some honest cops was enough to see them behind bars. Now, I just needed to know who this group owned on the city council and I’d finish my job. I would take down the assholes who were destroying my city, or die trying.
Breathing slow and even, I didn’t even twitch, not a single inch. It was hot beneath the gray tarp I used as camouflage, but I didn’t dare move. The slightest reflection of the sunlight on my camera lens could alert them to my presence. I felt like a sniper, but my weapon was information, not bullets. At least not these days. When I was in the military, my M24 SWS rifle kit was much deadlier.
My patience was rewarded when a man I knew too well finally stepped from the shadows to sit down across from the two drug enforcement agents.
I blinked three times, hard, to rid my eyes of the tears gathering there. I should be surprised.
I wasn’t, and that told me everything I needed to know. Every bit of my sniper training paid off in this moment. I didn’t freak. I remained calm, breathed slow and even, even if my mind was moving so fast. Shit. Fuck! The fucking bastard!
Moving swiftly, I snapped several photographs before I withdrew, packed up my gear, and headed for his home. I knew exactly where it was because I’d been there before. Many times. I would set up an ambush and confront him, recording the whole thing. The city needed to know the asshole who was behind the recent string of murders, but the world would never believe me. I was a convicted criminal, one he’d framed. I needed a confession, and I needed it on camera.
Two hours later, he returned to his four-bedroom colonial home to find me waiting in his formal dining room on the main floor; the twelve-gauge shotgun he’d bought at a gun show years ago was loaded, the barrel resting across the high back of a cherry stained dining chair. I pointed the weapon dead center at his chest. He knew I was a damn good shot. I’d competed in shooting contests all four years in the Army, and he’d trained me himself.