Page 20 of The Vigilant

Her short black dress and chunky black boots weren’t what you wore to relax on the small deck. Her bold eyeliner and dark lipstick even less so.

Anger hummed in my veins as she slid the door closed behind her and looked around like she was hiding from someone.From me.And then she fucking climbed over the railing and slinked along the shadows at the edge of the property and out of view.

“Fuck.” I picked up Dante’s call again and went into the garage, heading straight for my bike. “Thanks for the heads-up,” I grunted, shoving my arms into my leather jacket.

“There was a car that picked her up out front. I’ll text you the license plate.”

I didn’t have the time to tell him I didn’t need the information. Instead, I thanked him quickly and hung up. My motorcycle snarled alive underneath me as I opened the tracking app on my phone.

What the hell are you doing, little wasp?Later, I’d wonder where the nickname came from. Right now, my heart thudded too loudly in my ears. A war drum beating violently for answers.

The signal started to narrow before it locked on the bus station in Carmel. I grabbed my jacket and pulled up the bus schedules. At this time of night, there was only one departure that was leaving now, and it was headed for San Francisco.

The leather jacket pulled tighter over my shoulders like my body was swollen with the emotions I felt. I’d been so…secluded for so long. I hadn’t had to worry about anyone except the guys for so long, it was like my system didn’t know how to fucking handle it.

Or maybe I just didn’t know how to handle her.

Well, now I did.

Sutton Brant wasn’t going to come to me by choice. She wasn’t going to open up to me—trust me—just because I’d been a friend of her father’s. Whatever she was dealing with, she thought she was going to handle it on her own. And that was why, when I reached the end of the drive, I turned right toward the city rather than left toward Carmel.

I was going to let her get where she was going and see what was so important that she snuck out of the house at night to do it after I explicitly told her she wasn’t allowed to leave. Once I knew enough where she couldn’t look me in the eyes and tell me a bold-faced lie, I’d sit her down and finally get the truth from her beautiful lips.

Maybe then I’d be able to stop thinking about them in all the ways I shouldn’t.

Chapter Five

Sutton

The stench of alcohol and sweat soaked my nostrils. From the bus to the city streets and finally, into the club, the smell of barely concealed desperation grew stronger. But nothing reeked quite like the lie that Jack Kang was trying to feed me right now.

“Mara left, Sutton. Wanted to do her own thing,” he said with a half smirk, his crooked white smile slicing across his otherwise flat face.

Jack Kang, with his trimmed hair and smart though slightly wrinkled black suit, was a wannabe criminal. He was a low-level drug dealer who wanted to be recruited by the Wah Ching, the local San Francisco chapter of the Chinese Triad. The problem with Kang was that he treated criminality like CrossFit: he told everyone about it.

He boasted about his product. His sales. His goals. It was easy to see why he’d never made it past the position of Blue Lantern, an uninitiated member of the Wah Ching, but I’d never understand why they let him flit around their territory without reproach. Nor why the police hadn’t arrested him.

Maybe they both saw how pathetic he was.Or maybe the police hoped if he was recruited, that big mouth of his would lead detectives right to the high-ranking members.

How did I know so much about the Wah Ching? Randy—Mom’s boyfriend, the disgusting pig who fed her drug addiction and then killed her—was one of them.

At seventeen, I didn’t know the specifics of the gang or how they worked, but that all changed when I went to juvie. Three and a half years spent with their army of underaged dealers was a long time to get a sense of the ins and outs.

Wah Ching literally means “Chinese Youth,” and underserved teenagers made an easy target for the gang leaders like White Paper Fan and Straw Sandal to exploit. Teenagers didn’t need to know much. They didn’t need a lot of money. And if they were caught, not only was it much harder for law enforcement to beat information out of them because they were under eighteen, but they didn’t spend too much time locked up.

Kids younger than me had tried to recruit me while we’d been locked up. They stopped once I told them why I was there. No one bothered me once they learned why I was there.

“Bullshit,” I told him, my jaw tightening.

I had no idea what the hell had drawn Mara to Jack in the first place, but I blamed myself. I hadn’t been there for her. We’d both gone through our rebellious phase together, both suffering shitty and abusive home lives, and we’d kept each other in line. We’d been each other’s tether to morality when one of us got too close to the edge.

But then I’d gone to juvie.

By the time I got out, she was mixed up with Jack. He’d gotten her off track. Into drugs. Into selling.Hewas the reason we argued and she kicked me out of her apartment and told me she never wanted to see me again.

“You should just forget about Mara like she forgot about us and let me buy you a drink.” Jack eyed me with that same fucking grin he’d worn the day Mara and I fought as he watched from the background.

My fist balled at my side, my nails piercing the skin of my palm. I inhaled deep and searched for my mental armor.

---