Vigilante 01 - Who Knows the Storm by Tere Michaels Read Free Book Online Page A

danger—not of death, anyway—but Brownigan didn’t know that. And he was frightened enough of the looming man in the black hoodie to offer his other services.
    City identification. Worker passes. Stuff that looked so real no one even blinked. Wireless that didn’t get routed through the city’s computers like everyone else’s—he could do that too. Passes that got him wherever he needed to be. Access to bank accounts filled with money siphoned from tourists.
    A boot to his thick neck and some whispered threats were all it took to realign Brownigan’s priorities in life. He swore off selling Dead Bolt and devoted his crafty brain and nimble fingers to making it easier for people to rip off the casinos and steal from the hotels. That was something Nox could get behind.
    When Nox needed favors from him, he tripped over himself to fulfill the order. He made Patrick Mullens come alive via plastic and fake accounts—he allowed Nox to move about The District.
     
     
    N OX POCKETED the all-access white square as he assessed himself in the mirror. From the deep recesses of his father’s closet, he’d pulled out a vintage double-breasted Valentino tux, a remnant of his parents’ old life, when they spent his mother’s inheritance on globe-trotting adventures.
    Then he was born and his mother’s precarious mental state became impossible to ignore.
    It felt strange to look at his reflection when he dressed up to be “Patrick Mullens”—trimmed beard, styled hair, the cut of the black tuxedo almost a perfect match to his body. He looked like his father, a humbling and confusing visual, because nothing about his life said “successful investment banker.”
    He might accept “workaholic” and “loner,” though.
    Or even “stand-offish.”
    He had a moment of guilt—his father was dead and couldn’t defend himself or give his reasons for being away so much. He couldn’t take back the missed holidays or birthdays. Everything had been swept away in the storms and the violence no one had expected, and Nox wouldn’t hold it against the memory of a man whose life had been cut short.
    “I think you’d be proud,” he murmured, and then he slipped from the room, leaving the ghosts behind.
    He used Patrick’s name when he went to the casinos for information gathering or earning money. He used it when he chatted up the models, paid money for a blowjob here or there to make it look legit. It was ironic, in a way, pretending to be the kid who had been well on his way to being Nox’s “first”—something he never did get around to having, not in any sort of meaningful way.
    The real Patrick died during the storms in a small plane accident with his family—they made it to Teterboro, made it on the private plane. Made it to somewhere over a mountain in Pennsylvania before they crashed. Nox didn’t hear the news until almost a year after it happened; he was a father by then, surviving as best he could, living in fear. Later, when Brownigan asked for a name for the fake ID, Patrick immediately came to mind. A recollection of a better time, an innocent mindset—when he could have grown up to be dashing and debonair and a high roller.
    With Sam asleep and the security system engaged, Nox left at a quarter to midnight. He wore his black jacket and hood as he left the neighborhood—his shadow known enough to keep him from being stopped—and reached the edge of The District. What used to be Columbus Circle had been transformed into a gateway into another world: The District—welcome to Las Vegas’s sluttier cousin.
    Nox rolled his overclothes into a tight ball and zipped them into his backpack. He tucked everything into a slight opening created when several trees and stone walls collapsed near the edge of Central Park. It was a common hiding place of his, someplace to leave supplies and extra ammo on those busier nights.
    Warm weather, the summer holidays. Higher body counts.
    Central Park West—now just called West