Copyright © 2020 by Keta Kendric
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher and author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Note: This work is currently with a professional editor and is subject to changes. This excerpt will leave you hanging, read at your own risk.
Chapter 1
Mecca
The hunter had become the hunted. The notion caused a sneaky smile to slide across my lips and my mind to twitch with devious intentions. The man who had been following me for the past six hours sat inside his black, Dodge Charger with his neck on a constant swivel, searching unsuccessfully for me.
The swirl and hum of vehicles zipping by on the busy stretch of intersection we sat on barely registered because my focus was aimed at him. He had exited his car twice in the past thirty minutes searching for me and my car.
His engine roared to life when he climbed back into the driver’s seat and prepared to pull away from the curbside of the random hotel I had led him to.
The dark blue Suburban I sat in was parked behind him as I peered from my low crouch in the driver’s seat, observing his every move. He slammed his hand against his steering wheel, his curse words as loud as if I had heard them as he was finally accepting the fact that he’d lost me. A noisy growl tore from his car’s revved engine before he drove off and merged into the energetic flow of the Downtown Denver traffic.
He had officially become my prey as I eased into the intersection and prepared to follow him now. A quick call to a few of my men initiated the plan that not only made the hunter lose sight of my car but allowed me to switch vehicles altogether.
I trailed him until the high rise hotels started to turn into motels, and the five-star restaurants turned into corner stores. He made a sharp right turn into a driveway of one of the cheap motels off Highland Boulevard. I followed, turning into the parking lot where I presumed he was staying.
The dump was called The Downtower. It should have been renamed, the downtrodden, with its white chapped wood siding and fake brick accents peeling off the walls. The motel was nestled on a street filled on either side with others just as seedy.
The top level of the building hung slightly over the bottom and sections of the metal upstairs railings were missing.
The buildings structure was formed into a wide open rectangle that encircled the bustling parking lot where people walking by weren’t afraid to bend and peek into the vehicle at me. A tall thick row of hedges provided a privacy wall that blocked the parking lot from the main highway. The stench that was appropriately labeled, fresh hell, had me closing the vehicle’s ventilation to the outside.
The parking lot was the main meeting grounds for hookers and johns and lot-lizards on the hunt for truckers as dusk settled. Guest freely carried out their nefarious acts of sex and drug exchanges without fear.
My target had parked a few spaces away from the room I watched him enter on the bottom floor, three doors down from the out-of-service ice machine. I eased into a parking spot four cars away from his and waited two hours before he turned off the lights in his room.
After another fifteen minute wait for good measure, I eased out of my vehicle and crept closer to his. I needed to find clues as to who he was before I went for his room.
The weapons and kill-kit I’d found in the trunk of his car was all the proof I needed to know that he had taken lives. As far as I was concerned, he was planning to take mine. Why the hell else would he devote so much time to watching me?
The first four determined steps I took in the direction of my target’s room came to a halt when a pot-bellied, dirty white T-shirt wearing man stood in my path. The pale bumpy skin of his chin was littered with crumbs and bore smears of whatever he had eaten. He was probably twenty-five, but life, the one he had chosen, had him looking fifty, and he smelled like the inside of someone’s asshole.
“How much?” he asked, pulling out a wad of crumpled bills from his worn jeans pocket.
I didn’t have time for this shit, so I pulled the only man I wanted keeping me company, HB, my Glock-17.
When the tip of HB’s barrel sat aimed at his protruding nose hairs, the man’s hands flew into the air, causing the money to fall to the ground.
“My stomach turned from the sight and smell of you. You along with your entire family lineage don’t have enough money. Now step, the fuck, out of my way.”
He scurried out of my way so fast that his dirty, white tennis shoes with the flapping tongues, scraped against the cracked sidewalk. His heavy breathing sounded behind me as he scrambled to pick up his money. His rapid steps faded before he ducked into his room and slammed the door shut.
Picking my target’s door lock was easy. The hard part was taking apart the housing of the chain lock without waking up the loud snoring asshole who had been following me.
Grateful for the three uninterrupted minutes it had taken to complete the task, I eased into the dark room and locked the door behind me. The creak of the door’s closure along with my movements caused the man’s snores to hitch before he flipped over, making the cheap mattress springs squeak.
The sparse illumination from the bedside digital clock provided the lighting I needed to stroll quickly across the dark room, but my movement heightened more of his awareness. He hopped up with a start, and I froze in front of the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed. Was he glaring into the dark to determine if I was real or because he knew I was?
I made quick work of tossing the lamp shade aside, picking up the thick wooden base, and yanking the plug out of the wall.
“Who the fuck—”
I swung the lamp like a bat, unwilling to wait to find out his intentions. The hard lick connected with the side of his head as the force from the impact vibrated up my arm. The hit stunned him, but he managed to roll out of bed, causing me to lose sight of him.
Like a seasoned stunt woman, I jump, tucked, and rolled across the springy mattress to reach him before he got to his gun. I swung like I was at a golf tournament, sending three solid licks upside his head that lured him to la-la-land.
Moments later, a low thud from my heels sounded against the dirty puke-green carpet as I inched closer to the bloody asshole lying at my feet. A glass of cold water to the face had sprung the lock on the stupor he had been in.
“Why the fuck were you spying on me? Who do you work for?”
I couldn’t even eat a decent meal in peace without someone casting spying eyes on me, but thankfully I had discovered this one, lurking. He had no idea at the time that he was loitering his ass up on a bullet, because I made it my business to know who was keeping tabs on me.
The base of the motel’s cheap lamp became the whipping stick I continued to use to beat…his…ass. I pounded into his flesh, not caring where the licks landed as long as they connected. His pale skin was now marred with a rainbow of bruises and cuts. The lamp’s cord, torn pieces of the white stained bed sheets, and the man’s belt were used to secure him in place.
“If I talk, I’m dead,” he managed to push out the words through his cries as his wide anxious eyes followed my every move. Despite his situation, I had caught him looking up my skirt twice. Men... This one was on his death bed but he couldn’t resist the urge to sneak a peek while I, the personification of death in Versace, stood over him.
“If you don’t talk, I’ll make your death a long, painful one versus the quick relieving bullet to the head you’ll receive from your people for being a rat. And please, whatever you do, don’t make me raise my voice.”
My gaze fell to my nails as my foot tapped out the seconds near his bloody quivering lips. “I was thinking of soaking you overnight in a tub of gasoline, high octane, and lighting you on fire just to see how crispy you can get.”
I lifted my cold, dead I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-your-life eyes and set them on his wide searching gaze. “Your choice. Talk and die in seconds or die in pain keeping a secret for a group of people who probably don’t give a flying fuck about you.”
His hard breaths released his rancid stench against my toes, as he lay there, shaking, bleeding, and thinking.
“What the fuck is there to think about? You’re dying either way. Stop wasting my time and tell me what I need to know. Who’s keeping tabs on me?”
Silence.
The sound of laughing hookers and their john’s slamming doors and running in and out of rooms made its way into our unscheduled party. Thankfully, I had a way of tuning out the noise as I poured my concentration into pulling an answer from the worthless sack of shit at my feet.
There was no doubt in my mind, even though I had managed to sneak into his room, overtake him, and tie him up by each limb, the man still underestimated me because I was a woman.
The act of getting him into the compromising position had taken a lot of effort and determination on my part, but I was not one to shy away when faced with a hard task. I wasn’t arrogant enough to fight him hand-to-hand either, so clubbing him upside the head with the wooden base of the lamp was an easy choice. If not for the information I wanted from him, he would have already been dead.
He peered at me with both curiosity and an anxious glint in his eyes, hinting that my actions surprised him more than they scared him. A relaxing breath did nothing to calm my heightened urge to put an end to the useless bastard. I stepped closer to him, wincing as one of my heels mushed into another wet spot on the stained carpet.
His arms were spread wide, each tied to the metal legs of the bed. He was laid out on the floor, butt ass naked, his pudgy body not offering much of a view.
I glanced down at his spread legs, each tied to the old-fashioned thick wood entertainment center that was bolted to the wall. The scent of mildew and pine oil permeated the room, mixing with his body odor.
The sexy, black peep-toe stilettos on my feet left my toes vulnerable to the funk his body was constantly producing. When I finally decided to send a foot over one of his open legs, the sight of my foot being so close to his taint, caused my gag reflex to twitch. His shriveled-up dick sat jiggling atop his balls as he begged me to untie him.
I placed the ball of my foot against the soft layer of fat on one of his stomachs, the lower one, as the point of my heel hovered above his dick.
“Unless you want to know how it feels to have your dick pierced by a four-inch heel, you’d better start talking.”
My tone rang low and calm, but with each passing moment, more of my patience was eaten away.
Silence.
The grip I had on my forehead tightened before my eyes fell close. In my line of work, you needed to have eyes, not only behind your head but pointed at every angle. When someone was keeping tabs on me, I needed to know who and why before the shit came back to kill my ass.
I stood on that motherfucker, allowing my weight to press down as my heel rammed into his dick. The extreme pressure I applied didn’t produce a sound, but the damage vibrated up my leg as he yelled like a pig stuck in shit and bucked like a wild stallion.
At least a nut was crushed as his flesh did a mushy slide under the weight of my heel. There was no doubt that I was giving him a gift as his dick would likely swell to twice its size. He continued to thrash hard to get the pressure off his dick. His frantic movements caused the entertainment center he was tied to, to rock as I hopped on one leg to keep my balance.
His high-pitched screams vibrated through the dirty room, likely shaking dust from the dingy drapes. In the kind of dive he was renting, his screams and yells would translate into a hooker giving her john the time of his life.
Curious to see the damage I had done, I lifted my foot. There wasn’t much blood, but one more of those would render his ding and berries out of commission for good.
“Who…the…fuck…do…you…work…for?” I asked. “Why were you watching me?”
“The Cardenas Cartel,” he forced out. “I was ordered to keep an eye on you, Mecca Evans, with specific instructions not to engage unless they ordered it.”
The fuck?
The Cardenas Cartel supplied our coke. Why would they be watching me? I had never given them a reason to suspect me of any wrongdoing unless my uncle, Raymond Evans, with his double-crossing ass, had done some shady shit that caused them to cast watchful eyes on me.
“I know their crest. You’re not marked.”
I lifted my foot, aiming it back at his dick to get him going again.
“I’m a part of a crew of independent contractors for hire.”
The teasing huff I released was followed by me shaking my head at him.
“In other words, you’re disposable. They don’t give a shit if you die.”
I paced, thinking about how to approach what I believed was another sticky situation left by my uncle. I cast a long lingering glare at the man, before I turned, preparing to walk away.
“Wait, don’t leave me like this!” he yelled.
A devious smirk appeared at his assumption but was swept away when a glance down at the heel I used to crush his dick made me want to puke.
“You’ve cost me a pair of $2000 heels, you dirty dick fucker.”
After only a few steps away, I paused, closed my eyes, and let my mind go into what I called, the quiet. Sound eased away and the chaos that swirled inside like a tornado rose to the surface. In the quiet, evil waited. It flooded my mind with its biting grip and squeezed my sense of remorse into dust.
When I spun, I pulled HB from the waistband of my skirt and aimed at the man’s head. His loud screams bounced off my body. His mouth was gaped wide open, his body tensed, and his straining vocal cords were making an attempt to push their way out of his neck.
I tilted my head, glaring at him losing his shit over me aiming a gun at him. Why was he so upset? Hadn’t he just asked me not to leave him that way?
As fast as my finger flexed on the trigger, his head contents splattered onto the dirty carpet, the rest was seeping out in bloody bubbles. It wasn’t the sight of death, his fear-frozen eyes, or his gaping mouth that excited me.
It was the metallic scent of fresh gun-smoke that I inhaled, closing my eyes to savor the fragrance. Only when the rusted scent of blood disrupted the relaxing scent of oil, fire, and gun metal, did I open my eyes and step away.
Now, I was faced with one pressing question. Why was the Cardenas Cartel watching me?
***End of Excerpt***
Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed.
Keta💕
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