Prey Drive by Jen Stevens
Chapter 15
the wolf
has made a career of hearing cases about brutal murders and persecuting true criminals, Judge Matthew Greene is a disgustingly easy target. He moves through the city like he owns it, filled with an arrogance no man with a bald spot the size of the Empire State Building should possess. Interesting he’s so confident, considering he left the bullshit Jesus convention with a woman who I happen to know for a fact isn’t his wife.
Usually, the scummy assholes are the ones looking over their shoulder every few minutes, ready for an attack that no one gives a shit about executing. The only people who aren’t paranoid about being taken down are those like me—the ones who do the taking.
The devils in the night. The demons lurking in the shadows.
Which confirms my suspicions that Judge Greene and I are one of the same: predators at the top of the food chain.
The woman is a roadblock in my plan. I have no intention of killing an innocent and soaking my hands in any more blood than necessary, so I have to wait for their little rendezvous to end before I can break into his room. Luckily for me, the judge puts next to zero effort in making sure his mistress is satisfied, and she leaves his room within the hour.
I know I need answers from him. Each kill before him has proven that the situation surrounding Sienna’s death went above The Order prospect's heads, and the judge is the first rung up that ladder. But I can't use my usual tactics to pry the answers out. Not in a hotel where anyone can hear his screams and come rushing in to save him.
Instead of my usual bloody affair, I've got the judge tied up with his sock shoved so far down his throat, he's fighting for each breath as I fill the jacuzzi tub with ice cold water. I've hogtied him with a set of handcuffs that I bought with cash in a sex toy shop a few streets from here while he and his mistress played. My original plan was to simply drown him and stage it as a suicide, but this plays out much better. I guess it worked out that he's a piece of shit husband.
He doesn't recognize me, which should come as a relief. I hardly made an impression on him in those two weeks of Sienna’s trial, and likely won't be tied to his death in any way by the detectives who will inevitably take his case. Especially since I hacked the hotel's security cameras to play on a loop and entered through an employee entrance in the back. I'm a ghost in this place, moving freely without consequence.
Still, it would have been nice to see the fear in his eyes when he realized I had come back to haunt him.
Oh well. I'll just have to make him remember.
He squirms on the floor when I turn the faucet off, panicked moaning noises reverberating from his chest as I lift his flabby body and throw him over the edge of the tub with a loud splash. In his restraints, he can't turn around quick enough to keep his nose out of the water. I patiently stand over him as he thrashes around the small tub in an attempt to flip himself upright. After a few moments of struggle, his movements go sluggish as he takes on too much water, and I have to step in before he fully drowns.
With a gloved hand, I grab him by the arm to flip him over in one swift move. Widened, terrified eyes roll up to meet my face, and he tries to speak through the soaked sock, which sends him into a coughing fit.
Reaching forward to rip the sock out, I warn in an even tone, “If you try to scream, I'll cram it right back down your throat.”
When he nods his agreement, I tug it out and throw it off to the side as he coughs to work out all the fluid that's hopefully building in his lungs.
“This will go much easier for you if you cooperate,” I promise, leaving out the small fact that he won't live past the hour either way.
When he doesn't acknowledge me, I shove my hand in the water beneath him and tug on the handcuffs so the metal bites into his skin. It's possible he can't hear me through all his hacking, but I don't give a fuck.
“Okay,” he angrily shouts, then quickly cowers back down from his outburst when he sees the look on my face.
“You presided over Sienna Lancaster's case,” I begin, but the shake of his head stops me from going on.
My brows raise in question, offering one chance for him to explain before I just shove him under and call it a loss.
“I take on tons of cases. It's impossible to remember them all,” he says in a rough voice.
“I'd recommend wracking that tiny brain of yours for the details of this one…” I grit out through clenched teeth.
What a fucking bastard.
The day he threw out her case changed the entire course of my life. I've hunted and killed because of that decision, and here he is, pretending it was just another day on the job for him.
“I'll try to refresh your memory. Sienna Lancaster was brutally murdered by six men. We had everything to prove it was them—security footage, fingerprints, their fucking cum was still inside of her when she was found. You ruled they were not guilty and allowed all of them to walk free.”
I can tell the exact moment he remembers. I can also see the instant recognition hits and he realizes who I am. His eyes widen again, ping-ponging across my features as it all comes back to him.
“Good, you remember.”
“I-I didn't—” he blubbers, but I quickly cut him off.
“Save your excuses. Someone bought your verdict that day. I want to know who it was.”
“Don't do this, son. Don't get involved,” he tries to rush out the warning through trembling lips, as if he truly cares. “You have no chance against those guys. They'll have your head hanging from your ceiling within hours.”
I move away to pace a few steps across the floor, running my fingers over my jaw as I consider how much I can mark his body and still make his death look like an accident.
“Oh, you haven't heard? I've already taken care of them. All six, actually. If I had to guess, I'd say their bodies are probably mutilated by some wild animal in the Atlantic by now. The ones who weren't destroyed are probably rotting away in a field not too far from here.”
Leaning my hands against the edge of the tub, I lower myself until we're nose-to-nose.
“You see, I was already involved when those assholes murdered my sister. I know everything there is to know about them. But I'm a much less forgiving man. In fact, you'll be meeting the same fate in a few short minutes. Your cooperation will determine how brutal your death is.”
“I don't know anything…” he tries to say, but I release a frustrated growl that stops him from going on.
“I don't think you understand, Judge. You're going to die tonight because you chose to protect those entitled wastes of skin over my innocent fucking sister. You think those pieces of shit were dangerous? I fucking gutted them while they were still alive. They were crying, begging for death when I was through with them. The level of torture in which I use to bring you to Death's doorstep will be determined by how much information you give me about the people I know paid you off...”
He begins to sob as I'm speaking, and I have to stop to regain my composure. It's always the men who think they own the world who fall to their knees first. If the roles were reversed here, he'd be lucky to get a single fucking reaction from me, let alone a sloppy mess of tears and snot.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I roll my eyes and try again.
“Just tell me who the fuck paid you,” I say on a sigh.
“I don't know…” When I start toward him with the knife that I pull from my pocket, he begins to stutter again, finally offering something of value.
“Someone dropped a wad of cash in my office with a picture of my wife and kids taken from inside our home and a note that said I had to let them off. I wasn't going to do it. I was prepared to bring it all to the police to sort out and pull from the case. I'm a man of God... But the next day, I got word that the girl's lawyer was about to drop the case anyway. Something about all the evidence being lost or compromised. I couldn’t risk my family getting hurt.”
“A man of God?” I mock his panicked, rushed tone. “Is that why you brought another woman back to your room tonight? Because you're a man of God who loves his family so much?”
With brows raised, he releases another sob and throws his head into his chest in a pathetic show of weakness. I tuck the tip of my knife beneath his double chin and force him to face me again, careful not to penetrate his skin. This has to look like an accident.
“How do you think your precious wife and kids would feel knowing you're hooking up with some other Jesus-loving whore the second you're away from them? How would they react to knowing you allowed six known rapists and murderers to roam free after directly threatening their lives? Is that your twisted version of a man of God, Judge?”
“N-no. I've made mistakes, but I can learn from them. I can repent. Please, let me go and I'll find out everything I can about your sister. I'll help you bring justice.”
I release a sardonic laugh, so loud it bounces off the walls and echoes back into my ears. “Don't you remember? I've already brought her justice. And you've already given me everything you can.”
Pulling out the rolled-up fabric I've been keeping in my back pocket, I shift my weight to rest against the floor as I carefully uncover the syringe and vial I picked up earlier this week. I could have gotten much higher quality drugs from anyone in my father's social circle, but that would give too much away about my identity. A man like this could never afford that kind of quality drug, so I stooped to his level and found a dealer on the street. It was quite humbling.
My hands fumble with the small glass, filling the syringe with more than enough to sedate a man of his size. My victim's dilated eyes track my every move so carefully, I think he forgets to blink.
Once I'm finished tapping the air out of my syringe, I set the vial down beside me and reach into the freezing bath to grab his restrained arm. The move tilts his whole body over to the opposite side, and spit gathers all around his mouth as he quickly mumbles a worthless prayer for his God to save him.
That earns another laugh from me, which only grows louder as I inspect his inner arms and find a pre-existing line of track marks. This truly couldn't have gone any better for me. His disgusting, unsavory lifestyle will make getting away with his murder that much easier.
I shake my head, tsking at him in mock disappointment. “Hasn't anyone told you that drugs are bad for you, Judge?”
“Pl-please,” he weakly begs.
“You've already sealed your fate.”
Tapping his skin until I feel the elasticity of his veins, I pick my spot and don't waste any more time slipping the needle into it, sending the drugs straight into his bloodstream.
He struggles against my hands for a brief moment before the depressants take their effect and calm his system, slowly shutting it down. I sit back and watch as his eyes drift closed, limbs going slack against the tub and restraints. His large body slips farther into the water, mouth agape.
I put my hands against his chest until his mouth and nose sink fully beneath the water, then I hold him down, waiting for the precious moment that his heart stops beating and his soul passes over.
It finally comes just as his body stills and the water settles around him.
The rest of my night is spent soaking up any of the mess that escaped the tub, releasing him from his handcuffs—a task that's much more difficult under water and beneath his dead weight—and erasing every trace of myself from his room. I find a housekeeping closet on the next floor up to dump the towels in, and then I leave before the sun rises.
Sienna doesn't bother appearing at any point during my clean up to go over what was revealed, so I don't allow myself to consider what he said until I'm walking back to my apartment. It sounds like The Order was trying to pay him off, just as I suspected. But then why did our lawyer try to pull the case early? That part doesn't add up. I remember the day the case was dropped.
Our lawyer, Arthur Lewis, hunted down information against The Order and that night no one should have ever had access to. He was a shark with the scent of blood in his nostrils, ready to obliterate anyone in his path. I thought it was odd when he accepted that the case was dropped so easily, but my father stopped me from confronting him that day. I suppose that was a mistake on my part.
It looks like I've found my next victim.