Page 24 of The Vigilant

“Fuck.Fuck.Fuck,” he repeated, and I gave the piece of shit a moment to collect himself. “I don’t know who he is. All I know is one night, Mara and I were at the club. I was making my rounds,and some guy came up to me, asking about Mara. Gave me a card for a cam site and said she could make good money on it.”

Jesus, Mara.

“So, I set her up on it.”

“And she agreed?” My voice felt brittle—as brittle as the restraint holding the knife back from breaking into another patch of his sweat-drenched skin.

His mouth opened and shut. “I made her comfortable.”

Made her.

“You drugged her.” It wasn’t a question as I let the knife puncture a new wound in his chest.

“What are you doing?” he cried out as I moved the blade in a new curve right over where a normal person had a heart. But Jack Kang wasn’t a person. He was a fucking pig. “I’m telling you the fucking truth!”

“Which is why you’re lucky I’m only cutting skin and not your heart from your chest,” I seethed.

“I got her comfortable, and she didn’t argue!” Blood ran down the blade and onto the decorative handle, making my hands slick where I held it. “She filmed a few things before the guy approached me again. He gave me a stack of cards and said I’d get paid for every girl I referred to the site. And then he said there was a client who wanted to meet Mara.”

“Fuck.” This time, the curse left my lips. “You brought him to her?”

“No—ahh!” He was crying now as I cut him, crying and rambling through the rest of what he knew, but I couldn’t stop. My mind started to spiral—thinking of Mara and some creep. Thinking of Mom and Randy.Remembering what Randy had done to me.

“What. Happened?” The knife curved deeper, the blood pooling at its tip like tears spilling for his evil.

“I brought her here,” he hissed, breaths pumping through his lips like he was in labor. Maybe that was how painful the truth was for him—having to face the fucked-up thing he’d done. “He said to bring her to the club. So I did. I brought her here. They met. And that was it.”

“What do you mean that was it?” I twisted the knife and changed its trajectory.“So you brought her here and she disappeared?”

He let out a sound of pain that tipped between moan and groan.“She went with him!” Spit and blood flew from his lips. “I thought he offered her more money or…something…because he found me later and said that he was taking care of Mara from now on. Like a fuckin’ sugar daddy or ahh?—”

Legal prey.

“You. Left. Her.” I was seeing red. Sparkling, hot red. Fury raged inside me like a thunderstorm booming so loud, I swore I actually heard the grumbling thunder and the way it shook the ground.

I didn’t care what was said in anger. Mara was my family—more family than my absent father. More family than my distant mother. I wasn’t going to give up on the only person I had left to love.

“And you don’t know his name?”

“No—fucking, no,” he whimpered like a pig at the slaughter.And he should be, for what he did.“The way he dressed…acted…he was ordering some of the club security around. I wasn’t going to ask for a name.”

“He was Wah Ching?”And you let Mara go with him?I seethed. Of course he did. This fucker would do anything to get into their proverbial club.

“He ordered them around. That’s all I know.”

Shit.Taking on a wannabe thug like Jack was one thing, but upper-level Chinese organized crime?One step at a time, Sutton.

“Do you have one of the cards?”

Jack blinked at me, his eyes foggy as he processed the question through the pain.

“The business cards for the website. You said the man gave you a stack of them.”

The light bulb went off, and Jack gave me a slight nod.

“Give it to me.”

Muttering a curse, he lowered his blood-soaked hand from his broken nose and reached into his pocket, pulling out a gray business card. I pinned him a little harder with the knife as I switched my hands on the hilt so I could take the card, his guilty fingerprints now stamped over the information.

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