Page 7 of Casual Felonies (Wildlings #1)

TRUETT

I doubt Rami Bash has ever been talked to like that, but it’s effective. Seconds later, he’s out of the chair, fumbling with his clothing.

In under thirty seconds, he’s at the door, fingers reaching for the handle. He stops and dips his chin. “Hey, man. I’m sorry if?—”

I look away, unable to avoid his reflection in the mirrors around the shop. “Nothing to be sorry about. Just find yourself another barber.”

Inhaling sharply, Rami gives me another searching look before turning, dejected, to the great outdoors. He closes the door so softly that the bell gives a muted, sad little ding .

Why the hell am I anthro-fucking-pomorphizing a goddamned bell?

With floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the parking lot, I watch through the mirror as Rami’s shoulders find his ears again.

He hurries to his pretty electric-blue two-seater and quickly lets himself in, barely aware of his surroundings before backing up and shooting out of the parking lot like a jackrabbit.

I feel like a world-class shithead, running him off like that, especially when it occurs to me that this was intense enough that he probably needed some aftercare. And maybe a safeword.

But no way am I risking a black bag on my head, waking up days later—if I woke up at all—in an ice bath with half my organs missing.

Fuck. That. Shit.

A notification goes off on my phone as I lock up the shop for the day. I’m tired and, frankly, still feel like a complete ass for how I treated Rami after we made each other come. I didn’t need to be so dramatic. I could’ve just said no, and we would’ve been cool.

That’s not true though. He’d’ve been cool. I’d never be able to dig him out from under my skin.

“I promise I’ll be so good.”

And he was. He really, really was.

I’m not turned on by age regression, or even the barely legal shit out there.

But that sound he made, like a baby nursing?

As he played with my guiche? That was just the right kind of fucked up.

Like he’d dug around in all of my dirtiest fantasies and come up with exactly what I wanted in the moment.

It’s a little embarrassing, having one of the best orgasms of my life come from a social media prince.

Reductive much? He’s a Harvard graduate, for fuck’s sake.

I wait till I’m in my classic Mustang Cobra, a dark-charcoal beauty with blackout lights, and get the A/C pumping before I check my phone. I need a distraction.

Like my vigilante-slash-WhiteHat friends, I keep an eye on chatter in local gun groups, receiving automatic notifications when members use either direct hate speech or their associated dog whistles .

And…fuck.

I hate it when I’m right.

Most of the gun groups I follow really do focus on safety and community, and if there’s some problematic language, it’s usually unintended: people using a turn of phrase they heard someone in their family use.

But this one account, seedyarmedandready, has had my hackles up for the last several weeks. From what I can tell, he’s a guy in his mid-thirties with a job in sales. I haven’t been able to verify his details or even find a good name to go by, but he’s trouble.

I put a tracer on him yesterday, and wouldn’t you know it? He’s ass deep in what the old timers like to call the dark web. AI has made it a far more insidious place, and the kids these days simply call it Hell .

The most treacherous interactions in Hell occur within the unholy Venn diagram of conspiracy theories, AI logistics, and angry men.

My mark has been following the worst of the worst. Guys who like to convince impressionable young men that America’s progressive strides are the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country.

In that vein, Hell_AI is the world’s most dangerous one-stop shop: a place where you can pick up bad ideas and the firepower to follow through on them.

While federal legislation has successfully gone after many of the mechanisms that lead to mass shooter events, human trafficking, and political jackwaddery, Austin PD’s cybersecurity division is woefully unequipped to track every lone wolf with the Hell_AI app on their phone.

That’s where my friends and I come in.

As for my mark, it looks like he got his hands on a vintage high-capacity AR-15. More notifications pop up. He’s joined his chat group live.

seedyarmedandready: I’m ready to go .

ftp_txstrg: Fuck yeah, brother. You know where to go when all hell breaks loose, right?

seedyarmedandready: You know it. I’m about to make the PSF famous.

seedyarmedandready: Give me about thirty minutes and then turn on the news.

seedyarmedandready: I promise you’ll see something new.

Shit. Thirty minutes? And what’s the PSF?

I pull up my WhiteHat app and join the chat for active situations in Central Texas. I dump screenshots in the feed and ask for help identifying seedyarmedandready and whatever the fuck PSF means.

The app is run by a volunteer gang of nerds who answer to some geezer with the handle spürsfan_2020, and they’re good for this kind of shit. One of my favorite shit stirrers joins the chat and the dots next to his name jump.

gandalfsgoodboy: I’m guessing it doesn’t mean pounds per square foot.

gandalfsgoodboy: Adding location doesn’t help.

Me: Maybe it isn’t a location. Maybe it’s an event. Something happening today?

gandalfsgoodboy: Fuck, putting in today’s date brought up the Pecan Street Festival. Haven’t been since I was a kid. If I remember correctly, it practically takes over downtown. Lots of family-friendly activities.

Me: Shit. What can you get me on seedyarmedandready?

gandalfsgoodboy: Looking into that now.

God, this is a nightmare. Worse, spürsfan_2020 has joined the conversation.

spürsfan_2020: This qualifies as a high-probability threat. Per the bylaws, we need to bring in APD.

Me: I don’t even know what this guy looks like.

spürsfan_2020: Not ideal, but they’ve got officers all over downtown and can send out warnings while we get you the details.

Well shit . I’m on APD’s shitlist for a small misunderstanding with a bar owner last year. I maintain he was selling MDMA to teenagers, but the cops saw it differently.

Spürsfan_2020’s word goes, though, at least if I want to maintain my good standing with the group.

Cursing, I pocket my smartphone and pick up my burner, thumbing out 9-1-1.

“9-1-1, this is Charlotte. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“I have credible evidence that someone is at the Pecan Street Festival with a high-capacity firearm.”

“Do you have a description?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Sir, this is not the time for pranks. We take every single one of these calls seriously.”

“I understand. And I’m telling you I have credible evi?—”

“Sir, I’m going to put you on hold and patch you through to our Event Safety Coordinator.”

Shit. By the time they get their thumbs out of their asses, he’ll have mown down a dozen people. She clicks off the call, and I set the phone to speaker, wedge it in the unused ashtray, then put my car in drive.

I’m not that far off from downtown and am several blocks closer before I remember that— goddammit —the streets are blocked off. I pull to a stop right before the Congress Avenue bridge, get out, and then hop the barricade.

A uniformed officer blocks my path. “Sir, you cannot park there.”

I’d rather handle this myself, but spürsfan_2020 was right. This officer can get a message out to dozens of LEOs already watching over the festival .

“I know.” I hold up my hands, displaying the burner while aiming for cooperative citizen. “I’m on hold with 9-1-1. I monitor several gun and ammo chat groups, and someone is about to open fire with a high-capacity weapon?—”

“Oh, you monitor gun and ammo chat groups?” he asks with a little more snark than is totally necessary. His grunt is dismissive as he points at my car. “Sir, I need you to move your vehicle and?—”

“And I need you to believe me, man. This is a credible?—”

“Officer, what’s going on here?”

I turn to find…huh. The handsome detective who arrested that Brantley asshole last night is flashing his badge. What the fuck is he doing here?

The officer straightens his posture, gesturing to my car. “This man has illegally parked in the middle of the street and is going on about someone with a gun.”

I turn to the detective, who’s wearing a badly fitting suit that stretches across some fairly impressive biceps. His badge, which is hanging crooked on a lanyard around his neck, identifies him as Detective B. Hitchens.

“Sir, I have credible evidence?—”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time. What evidence? Where?”

I hesitate. I have what he’s asking for, but it’s on my smartphone, not the burner in my hand. The noise of the crowd surges and…dammit.

I surreptitiously put away my burner, take out my real phone, pull up the Hell_AI app, and then navigate to the chat before shoving the screen under his nose.

“What am I looking at?”

I scroll up to seedyarmedandready bragging about picking up the gun from a group that I suspect is a dwindling local white pride chapter, then back down to the chat that’s already fourteen minutes old .

“This guy has the means and motivation to hurt a lot of people, and he’s in the middle of carrying it out right now.”

“Do I wanna know how you put all of this together, or why you didn’t contact authorities with your concerns?”

“As I told the officer, I volunteer with a group that monitors several gun and ammo chat groups for this exact reason, and you just interrupted me trying to convince this officer that there’s a problem. Also, I’m on hold with 9-1-1.”

Hitchens wiggles my phone. “You’re not on a call right now.”

I sigh and pull the burner from my pocket.

His eyes narrow. “Got it.” Tightening his jaw, he asks, “What does the target look like?”

“He’s described himself as male, mid-thirties.” I take my phone back from him. “I’ll have the specifics momentarily.”

“Exactly how do you intend to get those details?”

I press my lips together.

Detective Hitchens takes a different tack. “Where do you think he’s going?”

“I dunno, wherever he can cause the most damage.”

Hitchens rubs his forehead, racing thoughts practically visible on his forehead.

Mentally, I go through each element of the Pecan Street Festival, though it’s been a hot minute since I’ve bothered to come to one of these.

There’s shopping. There’s the food court, a distinct possibility since it’s dinnertime. What else is there?

Just as I ask myself that question, someone begins tuning their guitar over a loudspeaker. Hitchens and I stare at each other.

“ Shit ,” we curse, pretty much simultaneously.

The place we need to be is over the bridge and six city blocks up a deceptively steep incline, so we jump over the barricade and start running across the bridge .

“Hey!” shouts the uniformed officer. “Where are y’all going?”

“The concert: Congress and 6th!” Hitchens yells over his shoulder.

Running flat out, Hitchens grabs something from his front pocket and shoves it in his ears. “BOLO. Possible active shooter in the vicinity of the concert. Male, mid-thirties. Description inbound.”

Rising above the surrounding buildings, a few blocks to the east, is the Martinez Building, where Rami lives. Before I can wonder too much about whether or not he’s okay, my WhiteHat app goes off.

Setting aside the tiny flare of guilt, I pull up the chat while still running, grateful I’ve kept up with my cardio.

gandalfsgoodboy: seedyarmedandready is Seaward Dennis, 17-year-old male, senior at Austin High School. Varsity quarterback.

The picture he sends over is of Dennis in his football uniform, looking sunny and youthful.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s, what, a couple of weeks out from graduation? Why would he go and ruin his life like this?

I repeat the info to Hitchens as we race past festival goers and show him the photograph. He curses a blue streak as he grabs my phone, then taps his ear again, barely winded.

“BOLO update and correction. Suspect is Seaward Dennis, seventeen-year-old white male—repeat seventeen, not mid-thirties. Six foot one, very fit, short, medium brown hair, hazel eyes, small dark mole above his left eyebrow, Roman nose. He’s a senior at Austin High School, varsity quarterback, so look for a school T-shirt, jacket, anything. ”

Breathing heavily, I lean over and point out another feature.

“Also, looks like he’s had surgery for a cleft palate. Look for a scar between his lip and nose.”

Hitchens and I put on the afterburners, made difficult by the growing number of people on Congress. With the cheerful crowds gathering around the stage, backlit by the capitol building under a setting sun, it’s a scene out of a postcard.

Or a nightmare.

Several uniformed officers converge on Congress from various side streets.

We are still running, a block and a half out, and then suddenly, I’m on the ground, hit by someone darting out of the alley to the right.

I look up to find the face of a terrified teenager.

Wearing a suspiciously bulky jacket and sporting a scarred lip.

Before I can act, he’s up and running back down the alley he came out of.

“Hitchens!” I haul myself to a sitting position and point. “ Dennis !”

Hitchens turns on a dime and heads toward the alley.

Dennis gets about ten yards before Hitchens takes him down with a wet crunch.

I almost feel for the kid as blood gushes from a badly broken nose down the front of his letterman.

Nearby officers swarm our location, and one pulls a rather nasty-looking rifle from Dennis’s jacket.

Sidling up to Hitchens, who is slapping cuffs on the kid, I slip my phone from his front pocket—nice try, Detective—and turn to leave.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

“The fuck out of here,” I answer, sending him a two-finger salute.

He opens his mouth to say something, but I turn and race back in the direction of my car.

Downhill-ish is faster than uphill-ish, and the officer from before is busy yelling at some underage drinkers on the walking trail under the bridge.

I sneak past him and jump into my Mustang, firing up the engine before turning the car around, careful to avoid people on the road as the concert starts.

Navigating out of the busy area, I try to catch my breath as I keep one eye on the road in front of me and one eye on the scene I’m gunning away from.

Fuck.

I don’t think the good detective got my real name, but here’s hoping he isn’t a fan of social media.