I also knew that feeling well. I gave everything I had and it still wasn’t enough to keep my sister alive. It wasn’t enough to change lives and make the world a better place. I wasn’t enough, but I couldn’t let that happen again. I had to come through for Noe. No one else had showed up for her, and I refused to be another name on that list.
“Maybe it’s not about what we can’t do. Maybe it’s about the fact you tried to do something in the first place. What you do might not be enough, but who you are sure as hell is enough, Detective. There are a lot of people willing to look the other way when something isn’t right. They sweep things they know aren’t right under the rug. We need men like you to face the wrong and to shake the rug out. Everything in life needs a series of checks and balances. Without you, everything is uneven.” I’d tried to be one of the guys who evened things out, but the scales had tipped so drastically in the negative that the entire thing fell over. I didn’t care about right and wrong anymore. I didn’t care about anything . . . until Noe Lee. I cared a whole fuck of a lot about her.
The minute I realized I regretted sending her away and that I wanted—no, needed—her back, it was like someone had turned on a faucet inside of me. All the sentiment that I’d shut off when my sister died rushed through my arid veins. I couldn’t stop caring now, even if it would be better for both of us. I didn’t have anything to offer her, not that she was the type of woman who collected hearts and feelings. She liked to keep her hands free so that she could make a quick getaway, and I was well aware of the fact that once she was free, once she didn’t have to look over her shoulder anymore, she was going to ghost me. She was going to take what she needed and hit the road and I was going back to my cold, predictable life. Well, as predictable as working for a guy like Nassir could be.
Titus grumbled something under his breath and met my gaze with a pointed one of his own. “I could use some weight on my side of the scale, Stark.” I knew he wasn’t talking about my size, but about what I could do to help the people of the Point if I made the effort.
I shut down my laptop and sent Noe a text to tell her we were up and running on all fronts. “Never been the kind of guy who likes to throw my weight around, Detective.”
He lifted a black eyebrow at me and the hard line of his mouth lifted into a smirk that almost made him look friendly. “No, but you aren’t shy about shaking the rug when you think no one is looking.”
I did my best not to flinch. I knew people talked about the hack into the sex offender registry and the sex trafficking cyber market I shut down. I had no idea anyone on the right side of the law was applauding my late-night missions to right the kind of wrongs I couldn’t stomach. I hated when victims were voiceless and I hated it even more when no one listened when they did speak. Basically, everything that Noe had been battling before she showed up on my doorstep.
Wordlessly, I slid back into the GTO and wondered if I would be unable to help myself from righting any wrong I stumbled across now that Noe had turned my soul molten and rattled all the impenetrable things I kept locked around my insides. I’d always been more of a thinker than a doer, but something about her made me want to be both.
Maybe it was about time I put everything I learned from everyone—my altruistic mother, my overzealous father, my sweet sister, the manipulative, unscrupulous men who made me, the ruthless men who trusted me, the independent woman who needed me, and this good man who believed in me—to good use. Maybe it was time to be the man they thought I was and not the one who was so sure he had nothing and no one to live for.
Noe
It became increasingly clear that all Stark’s plans to bring the Mayor down, as precise and intricate as they were, did not include me. He refused to let me go with him when he took the fabricated ID to get the fake insurance policy. He refused to let me tag along when he handed over the list of names that showed all the city officials and beat cops who had been taking payouts to look the other way while Goddard robbed the city blind and committed atrocious crimes against young women. As soon as Stark started poking around Goddard’s computer, it became clear that Nassir couldn’t get a handle on the sex trafficking and the Eastern Europeans because Goddard had a vested interest in keeping them in the Point. As it turned out, he didn’t turn his nose up at doing business with people who didn’t look like him when they were providing something he wanted, and what Goddard wanted was access to girls. Really, really young girls.
It was horrifying, but instead of talking to me about it or working through how he planned to stop it, Stark had disappeared inside himself, just him and his laptop. It was like I didn’t exist. I was pretty sure I could have paraded around the loft naked and he wouldn’t even blink. I was tempted to try, but the idea that he really might not notice, or that he honestly might be able to resist my limited charms, kept me clothed. I was confident when it came to my appeal to men, but Stark was a different breed. The man was complex and unpredictable. He also wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t eating. He was in the same room as I was but so far away that it felt like he was on another planet entirely. When I asked him questions or offered up suggestions, all I got in return was a monosyllabic response. If this was what it was like to watch a genius at work, I hated it. I wanted the broken Brainiac back. The one who watched me with heat and curiosity in his eyes. The one who wanted me just as badly as I wanted him.
On the third day of living in the vacuum where he sucked all the life out of everything, I decided I’d had enough. I appreciated that he was hell bent on destruction, but somewhere along the way he seemed to have forgotten that the reason he was so invested in vengeance was standing right beside him. I didn’t like how easy it was for him to disconnect from me and from how all of this had to make him feel.
He was well on his way to completing the first step of the plan: taking Goddard’s money. The man had offshore accounts in every island nation from here to the Philippines, but Stark had found them all. He’d also sniffed out the secret account Goddard opened under his stepdaughter’s name that he used for most of his illicit dealing. He was also using an account he set up under the guise of a nonprofit after-school program that claimed to be directed toward supporting at-risk youth. There was money going in the account from investors and donations, but according to Stark, that money wasn’t going back into the program, but being taken out in small chunks of cash. He mumbled that it was a different kind of payout than the huge transfers he traced through the fake account in Julia’s name.
He didn’t seem overly interested in that little blip. He was more focused on tracking down the list of the Mayor’s top donors. As soon as he had the names, he was firing off email after email letting them know exactly where their hard-earned money was going. They were backing a criminal, and even if they didn’t care about the kind of man they had put in office, the media would. Anonymously, he was already leaking bits and pieces of the information he uncovered. They were going to have a field day when the whole truth came out. Everyone loved a juicy, political scandal and this one was ready to leak all over the place.
I wanted to know where that money was going. I wanted to know why a man with so much to hide and so little regard for the people of his city had bothered to set up a program that was aimed specifically at the unfortunate youth of the Point. Something about the set up didn’t sit right with me. Not too long ago, I was a teenager sleeping on the streets, trying to make it on my own, worried when it got cold and miserable and I couldn’t scrounge up enough change for something to eat. I knew that desperation brought on the willingness to accept terrible things as the status quo. I would have been tempted to take any shelter that was offered and I may have been willing to look the other way to have a roof over my head and something warm to eat, but now I refused to ignore the fact that someone else might be stuck in that same awful position. If Goddard was exploiting the young and the poor, which I had zero trouble imagining him doing, then it needed to stop. Those without deserved the same justice as those who had everything.
I told Stark I was going out. I was sick of wearing clothes that didn’t fit. Booker’s pieces covered me up and swallowed me whole. Reeve’s were too tight and too revealing, not that he noticed when I switched from one to the other. He barely lifted his head from his work when I started for the door. It wasn’t until I hit the hallway and was waiting in front of the elevator that he must have realized I meant I was leaving the safety of the apartment. Just as the metal doors swished open, I felt a hand on my elbow and was turned around.
His eyes were bloodshot behind his glasses and he had dark, deep shadows in all the hollows of his handsome face. His stubble had moved from scruff to the start of a short beard, making him look rougher and tougher than he already did. I wasn’t scared of him, but the look in his eyes and the tension rolling off his big body was scary.
“It’s not safe out there. Goddard is still looking for you. You can’t go prancing down the street like nothing happened the last couple of weeks. Next time he gets his hands on you, he’s going to kill you to keep you from talking. You’re as much of a liability as the girl is now.” That logic of his was always right on point, but I couldn’t sit by while he dismantled the Mayor’s life anymore. I’d always been the type of person who was hands on, the type of person who made things happen instead of letting them happen to me. The vengeance he was orchestrating was mine, and I refused to let him write the song without me. I was the one who needed to sing it.