Page 53 of Ballistic

A faint buzzing noise peeled my attention toward the nightstand, and I crawled across to it. Opening the drawer revealed a box of Trojans, tucked alongside what I recognized as a burner phone. Dax must’ve had about four of them from what I’d seen. My eyes settled on the condoms first, wondering if they’d been there the whole time, or if Dax had purchased them. I lifted the burner from the drawer, staring down at a notification on the screen. The username was DaddyT-Rex.

“Don’t be one of Dax’s profiles,” I muttered, opening the messages, but it appeared to belong to a man about forty-five years old.

I scrolled up through the conversations that dated back three months, passing pictures the man had sent of his cock. At least, I assumed it was the stranger’s cock, all shriveled and purplish in color. No one would actually seek out a cock that ugly to send to someone, surely.

Dax’s responses, broken into abbreviated words, sounded like a child had written them. Demure and flirtatious, but not overtly so. Almost innocent. The other man spoke as if he were talking to a young child, too.

I want to stick my dick in your butt. You’d enjoy it, I promise.

Frowning, I scrolled higher. Seemed the conversation had begun months back. Dax had told the man he was twelve years old, from a broken home. The man had started out consoling him, as if he understood. According to the date stamped for each message, it’d only taken a couple weeks for the conversation to turn sexual.

Jesus Christ, what the hell kind of fetish was that?

The most recent message asked where he’d been. The man had begun to miss their conversations, as it seemed the last time Dax had corresponded was two weeks before he’d pulled me out of that storage unit.

I clicked out of that message to a screen full of messages from different users. All men, it seemed. All of a sexual nature. All with accompanying photos, or short videos. In each case, Dax had claimed to be under fourteen years old.

Had I gotten him wrong? He didn’t seem the type to role-play like that, nor did I get the impression he was gay. Which was cool with me—whatever floats your boat, but something about the exchanges just felt dirty and wrong. Very pedophilia, even if Dax wasn’t the young boy he’d pretended to be.

It felt opposite to everything he’d made me believe about him.

Unless he’d been playing me the whole time. In that case, he’d come to understand the true meaning of getting screwed over.

20

Dax

There was a fucking joke amongst my friends, that I couldn’t go anywhere in the city without running into someone I knew. And wasn’t that the goddamn truth. Sat inside my car, staking out the decrepit, pay-by-the-hour motel that was somehow even shittier than the one I’d stayed in with Nicoleta, I blew out an exasperated breath and sank down in the front seat, as Weasel strode up with a grin.

“Dax? ‘The fuck you doing here, man?” He glanced around inside my car, as if looking for someone. “You got a bitch with you?”

When he came to a stop right in my line of view, I leaned to the side to realign my sights with the junker parked in front of one of the rooms Jasper had disappeared into seconds before Weasel walked up.

With a shake of my head, I leaned farther to the side, looking for any sign of movement behind the curtain covering the motel room window. “Here on business, brother. What brings you out this way?”

“Pawning my mama’s ring.”

That made me pause, and I glanced up at him. I’d known the kid’s mom for years. One of those rare and beautiful souls in the world, who’d made me feel welcome, when every other house I’d bounced around to couldn’t wait to get rid of me.

“Yeah. Need the money. Just found out my girl’s pregnant. Gonna take her down to the clinic and get it taken care of.” He cringed as he said the words, and it was no mystery as to why. His mama was a devout Catholic. No way she’d have wanted an heirloom pawned to pay for an abortion.

“Ain’t no way I’m letting you pawn your mama’s ring. How much you looking to make off it?” I didn’t have my wallet with me. Not that I’d have given him cash to pay for his irresponsibility, I just didn’t want him hocking off the ring his mother had worn for years.

“Couple hundred.”

“As in two?”

“Three should cover it. Mikey said his bitch got the abortion pill for three hundred.”

Shaking my head, I fished beneath the driver’s seat, nabbing the extra Glock I’d stored there, and glanced up at the motel room again. “Y’all need to keep your dick tied to a leash. I’m all for freedom of choice, but it ain’t right when you’re out there breeding the whole goddamn city.” Asshole had a different girl every week, somehow. Baffled me, considering he looked like a wet rat, with his buckteeth and crack addict build, which had earned him his nickname. I popped the mag out, handed him the gun, and swiped the ring out of his palm, stuffing it into my pocket. “Take it to a gun shop. You’ll get a couple hundred for it. I’ll hang onto this until you get your shit together. And quit calling females bitches. It’s disrespectful.”

“Thanks, man. I owe you.”

“Get the fuck outta here. And buy a pack of fuckin Trojans while you’re at it.”

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have handed over a gun like that, but I had to get rid of the nosy bastard, since shit was about to go down with Jasper. I’d learned a long time ago, after having been blackmailed, to avoid witnesses. As soon as Weasel’s beat-up Taurus rattled off down the road, I exited my car, glancing around the empty streets as I made my way toward the motel room.

A faint scream coming from inside the room tightened my muscles, and on instinct, I hammered my boot into the door. Once. Twice. Three times cracked it open, splintering the wooden frame, and I pulled my gun, aiming it square at Jasper’s head.