Page 11 of Chad's Chase

THREE

But now am found…

JHAY

“Unnh, please, Blood. We can be quick. Just ten minutes in the back room.”

Dragging my watchful eyes away from the club entrance, I turned them to the blonde stripper straddled across my lap, rubbing her cunt against my thigh.

I couldn’t even remember what this one’s name was. Only that I’d fucked her some time ago when I just started working at the club because I had a special thing for blondes. But she’d been under my ass since then. Annoying didn’t even begin to describe it. Especially at this moment when I was in no damn mood, because my target clearly wasn’t showing up tonight, and I never wanted to come to the club to begin with.

Placing my hands on her hips, I guided her off me and onto her feet. “You need to go hustle.”

“But I want—”

“No, not now,” I said, barely tolerable.

“Later, then?” she begged, pouting. She really was cute. But as fake and plastic as a blow-up doll.

“Yeah, later,” I lied.

“And I can come home with you?” She ran her acrylic fingernails across her pelvis, above the edge of her thong. “Please?”

Not unless Sydney’s up for a dirty threesome. Which would be unlikely. “Sure.”

She leaned down to kiss me, but I turned my head. As if she thought I was just playing hard, she giggled and kissed my neck instead, before heading back to work the floor.

The strippers in Empty Cage were so easily distracted and ungrounded, it was amazing how these shallowheads made cash. There were about two strippers in the club who had sad stories about hungry kids and college fees. Those two had reasoning abilities, were focused, and worked hard. But the others had no valid excuse for doing this job, except to be able to afford the latest material shit the world spat out.

Should they know how much freedom costs, and what it meant for some people, they wouldn’t be so wasteful with theirs.

Leaning back in the booth I’d been planted in all night, my eyes shifted in the direction of the club entrance once more. It was two hours before closing time, and still Chad, the boss, was a no-show.

Since his last visit two Wednesdays ago, he hadn’t showed up again, and it was starting to throw me off. This was the longest it had ever taken me to assassinate a target. Each passing month was a dawning realization that Chadrick Niiveux was a hard man to kill. And, hell, I just might be the one who ends up dead in this chase. Just like the others who’d tried before me.

The man didn’t have footprints or patterns. Like he was a fucking ghost or something.

But I wasn’t afraid of death. If fact, death was a miracle I looked forward to. Death was my anticipated Heaven. Because I wasn’t really alive. I was a walking shadow. An empty black vessel used to do the dirty deeds of the Devil.

As I reached forward to get my drink from the table, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck shoot up. Just as they had that night while I was dancing onstage. Chilling me, alerting me. And by that alone, I’dknown,indubitably,that he’d been watching me.

Now the feeling was the same. That inexplicably chilling feeling.

He was here.

My eyes swung over to the club entrance, then to the stairway up to his office. No sign of him or his burly bodyguards. Everything was just like a normal night when he wasn’t here.

Except hewashere. I could feel him. Moving through the crowd. Watching me.

Inhaling a deep breath, I released it slowly, because I didn’t know what had gotten into me.

I wasn’t the person who got chills, or frightened, or worried—well, at least not since I started carrying out assignments. With each successful mission, I grew stronger, more confident. But there I was, frightened and worried that he might have remembered me. Knew who I was and why I was there.

If it were so, I was screwed.

Taking up my drink, I sat back into the booth and sipped, regaining my composure. Of course, I could just be paranoid. This long ass chase was definitely throwing me off. I’ve been settled in one place for far too long trying to snipeonefucking target. And now I was a victim to paranoia and fucking scare chills.

I mean, there was no way Chad would remember me.