Anti-Hero (Wild Heart Ranch Book 4)

Erik and I landed in New Orleans late last night and are staying in a friend’s vacation rental property in the Quarter. It’s nicely updated and has a classic New Orleans courtyard and fountain. Not that I’ve enjoyed any of it.

Erik glances over his morning coffee at me and gets his mind-reader look. “Okay. Out with it.”

I shake my head. No way I’m sharing my nerves with him. He’ll shove me back on the plane and have me back in Central Texas before I can say “crawfish étouffée.”

Gael was right though. Erik’s been decidedly more affectionate these last few days. Even now, he walks over and pulls me to standing before wrapping his long arms around me.

I’ll never tell him this, but he’s got this way of wrapping one arm around my waist and another over my shoulders like he’s draping me in the world’s best hug. The best part is how he rests his chin on my head—not all sharp and heavy, but more like he’s trying to tuck me in closer to him. I kind of need it.

I roll my eyes as he gently sweeps his big hands up and down my back.

“I’m serious, Ant. Tell me what’s going on. You look about as nervous as a guy waiting for his mistress’s pregnancy test.”

“I just miss Moose and Bunny.”

Actually, I kind of do miss them.

“Okay, I believe you,” he snorts, running his nose through my hair.

He’s also been joking with me more, which feels a little too good, frankly. Fine. I’ll give him one detail.

“There’s a reason we started in New Orleans and not New York. New Orleans was my first, um, john. I wanted to get him out of the way.”

Erik tightens his hold on me and takes a deep breath. “Makes sense.”

Even though I know he doesn’t agree with this whole thing, he’s stopped throwing up roadblocks and has been helpful since his offer to take me from place to place.

I wanted to plan everything out to the smallest detail, but Erik said a general idea is better and allows for flexibility in the moment. So while I have a file and a plan of action for every guy in this go-round, it’s a relief to be given permission to stop sweating the small details.

“Okay, we’ve got to get going,” I say, matching Erik’s deep breathing pattern. “He likes an early brunch.”

This op has been one of the trickiest to plan. New Orleans is an oil tycoon living in the heart of the Garden District. After Katrina, he bought two properties side-by-side and greased some city council fuck’s palm so he could tear down historical buildings and put some glass-and-metal monstrosity in their place.

He should die for that alone, but since he’s also a voracious purveyor of preteen virgins, he should die screaming. Unfortunately, he has an equally ostentatious staff of servants who are made to wear old-fashioned uniforms like he’s some English lord of the manor.

What a fuck-stick.

Obviously, we don’t want to harm the staff, though it’s tough to know who’s innocent and who’s not. I also want to go after anyone who’s helped him find his underage victims while leaving alone the person only there to dust chandeliers, unaware they work for a monster.

Turns out, plenty of his staff was willing to sell him out in exchange for cash, help with incarcerated family members, or green cards, which tells me everything I need to know about the guy.

Erik and I make our way in through the staff entrance—because, of course, there’s a staff entrance. I’m wearing slacks, a shirt with puffy, too-long sleeves, and a vest, like some kind of antebellum valet. Meanwhile, Erik’s wearing a chef’s coat and pants that look hand-tailored for his body.

Not fair.

After verifying no one is in the kitchen, he pulls out the prepackaged meal he got from the fancy Creole café down the street, plating it as if he’s been sweating over a hot stove. I grab the carafe from the cabinet and carefully fill it with coffee from the same café and enough colorless, tasteless, traceless poison to kill everyone in the Garden District.

Since the logistics of taking a knife to this man’s throat and leaving his entrails strung out on the lawn would stir up local law enforcement, faking a heart attack with poison in his coffee will have to do. If only I could make my heart rate slow to the speed of something more sedate than, say, a hummingbird, that’d be awesome.

Once everything is assembled on the tray, I pick it up and head toward the hallway entrance. Erik steps in front of me.

“Your hands are shaking so hard the silverware is rattling together. Let me do this.”

I summon a weak glare, and he holds up his hand, backing off. I start walking again, hyperaware that the clinking on the tray matches my pulse. I silently will my nerves to sit the fuck down and at least manage to stop the knives and forks from sounding like maracas. I pause outside the grossly over-modern dining room to take a few steadying breaths.

You can do this.

Taking another deep breath and gathering every ounce of courage I have, I step into the dining room.

New Orleans is trim, and his personal style can be best described as precise. He’s sitting at the end of a stainless-steel table that looks like something you could perform an autopsy on, reading an honest-to-God newspaper with a half-drunk cup of coffee in front of him, completely unaware of my presence.

I put one foot in front of the other until I finally reach his side. Just as I set down his plate of precooked food, the doorbell goes off. My heart rate shoots through the roof, and I thread my hands behind my back to steady my trembling. I’m only moderately successful.

“Easy, Ant,” Erik’s soothing voice says across the comms. “I’m looking into it. He doesn’t have any visitors on his schedule.”

I stand frozen as I await intel from Erik. New Orleans’ new butler—one of ours—appears in the doorway.

“A Miss Ruthann Guillory for you, sir.”

Down goes his newspaper and up goes my fucking heart rate all over again. Oh God. He’s older and more haggard, but I remember his face. He smells of the same sharp, out-of-date aftershave as he did that night, and all I can remember is the fear. I was so small and confused. Until I wasn’t.

I remember when I realized what he intended to do. I hadn’t known people did that to little kids.

Which is why I’m here now.

“Ah yes. She mentioned she might stop in.”

Steady, Ant. Steady.

“Indeed, sir,” the butler says, selecting a teacup and saucer from the sideboard to place on the table. “I’ll have the cook double the brunch then?”

“Yes, that’s perfect. Thank you.”

As the butler leaves, a lovely woman enters the room and sits. New Orleans finally sees my presence.

“Well, what are you waiting for, boy? Pour the coffee. And it had better still be hot.”

The problem is I don’t want to damn this unknown woman to hell with him.

“She’s not affiliated with his extracurricular business,” Erik says, his voice steady through the line.

“Oh, I make sure it hot for you,” I say, weirdly falling back into my old persona as gravity loses its hold on me. I look down, surprised my feet are still planted to the earth.

He tilts his head, looking at me funny. “Who are you? Are you new?”

“Yes. I new,” I say, the sound of his voice shaking me from my reverie. Wordlessly, I make a sudden about-face and practically run back to the kitchen. Dropping the tray on the counter with a clank, I put my head between my knees and do the breathing thing Hedy taught me. Fast-fast, slow. Fast-fast, slow.

Erik’s feet appear in my peripheral vision.

“You okay?”

I shake my head. “I freaked out. He looks the same. Smells the same. He didn’t recognize me, but everything is the same.”

Sharp footsteps make their way down the hall from the dining room to the kitchen. Erik’s hand goes to the knife on his belt, and I hold up my hand.

“I’ve got him.”

“What is the delay? Where is everyone? What the f—” New Orleans stops when he sees me bent double. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Apologies, sir,” Erik says in a smooth Cajun accent. My eyes go to his, and he sends me a wink. “Tiny here has asthma, and it got the better of him. I was just about to make you a fresh pot of coffee. With chicory, correct?”

This man’s presence shakes everything in my core. While Erik pretends to attend to the percolator, New Orleans stands in front of me.

“See here, stand up straight,” he demands.

I comply, despite the world going untethered all over again. He runs the back of his hand down my vest, and I stand there, rooted to the marble floor, shivering.

“Hm. You are indeed tiny. I prefer ’em younger, but for you, I might make an excep—”

He blinks at me, unsure why his ability to speak has been so abruptly arrested.

Could be the cat got his tongue.

Could be the stiletto Erik just jammed into his temple.

The world may never know.

He lists to the side, and Erik catches him, pulling him into a fireman carry. I watch, helpless, as he walks down the service steps to the car. Efficiently, if unceremoniously, Erik dumps him into the trunk. He then walks back into the kitchen, grabs one of the disposable masks hanging from the key rack, and stops in front of me.

“You have every right to be mad at me right now, but let me take care of this and get you out of here in one piece.”

Breath finally returns to my lungs, and I give him a sharp nod.

He dons the mask and makes his way down the hall.

“My apologies, Miss Guillory,” he says in a muffled Cajun accent. “Mr. Lowry had to attend to an emergency and sends his regards. Breakfast is almost ready. I can bring you a plate, or should I package it for you to take with you?”

“Oh, I’ve already eaten. I was just stopping by. Did he say what it was? Is it his momma?”

Erik pauses for half a second. “Again, apologies, you may not realize, but his mother passed last year. I am not aware of the nature of the emergency, only that he had to make haste.”

Hm. I can’t tell if she’s testing him or not. She might not be so innocent after all. I’ll let Wimberley sort her out.

“Well, then, darlin’, send him my regards and tell him I’ll stop by later this week.”

“I’ll do that, ma’am.”

Erik then makes his way back into the kitchen, and I watch, numb, as he puts everything into a garbage bag. His large hand is warm on my elbow as he gingerly walks me down the stairs before pausing to toss the garbage bag in the back with the trash. After closing the trunk, he leads me to the passenger side.

“Change of plans. We’re taking him to his hunting cabin outside of Slidell.”

Shit. We should’ve done that from the beginning.

I nod and sit back as he pulls the seat belt across my lap. We make our way into the city and are halfway over the bridge to Slidell before the words come.

“I know it was a bad situation. I know you were protecting me. I still wish you would have asked first. I mean, thank you, obviously, but I would have liked a choice.”

Erik takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. “He touched you.”

“But—”

“Shut up and listen to me, Ant. The deal we made with Charlie is that you can kill them, but if they pose a danger, I intervene. You can handle an armed combatant. I’ve seen you do it. But you froze when he put his hands on you.”

“I would’ve—”

Erik pulls over on the narrow right of way and turns to face me. “I have no doubt—not one single doubt—that you would’ve pulled yourself together and handled him. Eventually. It would have been messy, though, and you don’t have to be messy. You’ve got me. You’re too important to let some dick-stain get into your head. You put together a beautiful plan, but the situation changed. I know who this guy is. What he did to you. I’ve seen the line item in his account history. Me and our buddies in Wimberley have already decided we’re not taking our share on this one. We’ll split with the rest, but this guy’s accounts? All yours. Congratulations, Ant. You’re a multimillionaire.”

A tear tracks down my cheek. I’m such a failure.

“I was supposed to be cold. Calculating. Like Odd or Anders. I was supposed to kill him and feel nothing.”

“There’s a pretty good chance you can still do that.”

I stitch my brows together. “What?”

“He might not be dead.”

I turn my body to face him. “What do you mean he might not be dead?”

“I wasn’t aiming to kill him. He’s wearing an Apple watch,” he says, pulling an iPhone from his chef’s jacket. “I grabbed his cell before we left. Hacked it.”

He taps the screen a few times and hands me the device. “Check it out for yourself.”

He’s pulled up the health app, and, sure enough, there’s the bastard’s heart rate. A bit slow, but there all the same. I could kiss Erik for this.

“You knew what you were doing with that stiletto, didn’t you?”

His answer is a small self-satisfied smile.

“You…fucker. You just wanted to give me the big speech, didn’t you?”

“It’s a good speech.”

“Asshole.”

“At your service,” he says, saluting me as he pulls back into the lane.

We keep driving until we’re in the middle of a swamp outside of Slidell.

“I read about this place on his report, but isn’t this protected land? Seriously, how does he have a hunting cabin out here?”

Erik sends me a look. “How did he buy two historical homes that miraculously survived Katrina only to be bulldozed for that modern monstrosity in the middle of the Garden District?”

“Motherfucker.”

“Exactly.”

The concrete cubist cabin, painted a stark white and accessible by a waterlogged private road, sits on stilts, miles from anyone else. Wimberley suspects he’s brought a few of his victims out here, never to be seen again. From the looks of the place—more austere modernist construction where it doesn’t belong—I can guarantee that’s exactly what this place is.

Erik called it his hunting cabin, and he’s right. Only New Orleans’ prey are—were—young children.

Erik grabs the piece of shit and a length of rope from the trunk. Hoisting him over his shoulder, Erik strides through the open-design cabin full of high art to the back porch. He grabs an uncomfortable-looking metal chair from the tiny and weirdly futuristic outdoor set and carries his cargo to the end of the short metal pier jutting out from the back of the cabin. Setting New Orleans down, Erik efficiently ties him to the chair.

“Can he understand me?” I ask, cautiously approaching as Erik steps back.

“Pretty sure I destroyed the communication center in his brain, so probably not. He can feel pain though. As such, I present to you my sharpest knife and my most powerful handgun,” he says, offering the weapons to me on open palms. “I’ll be washing up and cleaning out the trunk. According to Odd, buttons wreak havoc on alligators’ digestive systems, so before you push him into the swamp, slice off his clothes and bring those back with you.”

A familiar flush rises over my chest.

“You really did listen to me.”

“Of course I did,” Erik answers, looking like he’d hug me if it weren’t for the weapons in his hands.

His blade, narrowly curved and wickedly sharp, glints in the morning sun. I grin up at him as I take it. Stopping, I reverse course and grab the gun as well.

Might as well have a little fun while we’re here.