Page 6 of Heat Lightning

THREE

THE MASKED MAN

It’s not breaking and entering if I have the omega’s best interests in mind, I told myself for the thousandth time as I stepped out of my parked car, pulled the knit balaclava mask over my head, and made the now-familiar trek to his apartment building.

Well. It was breaking and entering, but I wasn’t doing it to watch him sleep or sniff his underwear or anything disturbed like that. My reasons were noble and for his own good. Justified, even.

Yeah, and an alcoholic can stop drinking any time. Sure, Jan.

The weather was still unnaturally warm for Plover Bay, even in the wee hours of the mid-July morning. My footsteps were muted, accompanied only by a distant car alarm. I walked up the sidewalk alongside his building, hands tucked in my pockets and hood pulled low to obscure my face even more.

The apartment complex—located in a frankly unacceptable part of town for a single omega like him to live in alone—didn’t have a security system, but nowadays almost everybody had a doorbell camera. I had to be careful everywhere I went.

I'd done my best work in an effort to scare him away from dangerous men. I’d followed him to his car, showed up outside his apartment, and lurked in the background while he grocery shopped.

I intended to drive the omega away from lingering chats with Weber and into the safe confines of his apartment until my target was dead.

Yeah, that’s why we’ve been following him, my alpha snarked.

Anyway.

It seemed I’d miscalculated because now the omega asked Weber to walk him to his car after work—for safety—and to even follow him home. All of which put him in far more danger than he’d been in before, which was entirely my fault.

So, it was my responsibility to fix it.

It wasn’t breaking my rule to not be a hero if I was just undoing the damage I’d caused. I didn’t blame the omega. Weber was charming and skilled at disarming his victims, in the way so many predators were.

Hell, he’d even talked his way out of a police interview—not that they were the shining example of investigative prowess.

But he couldn't hide from me, and it would be on my shoulders if anything happened, which meant I had to keep a close watch.

Just until Weber was dead, of course.

I would’ve cut his throat by now and washed my hands of the omega, but my target had turned out to be something of a social butterfly, with the same handful of “friends” staying at his apartment at all hours every night that week.

All of them were on my list to look into further.

I walked along the front of the run-down building, skirting around the glow of the porch lights—the ones that worked, anyway—illuminating every other door. A12, A11, A10… I counted down.

Frankly, the idea that a monster like Weber would actually care enough to protect the omega pissed me off. He didn’t even care enough to perform concern. It was clear in his dismissive actions, like checking his phone instead of watching until the boy was safely inside.

I would walk him to his door.

A9…

I would make sure no one waited inside before leaving him alone.

A8…

I would⁠—

I halted. A7.

There was one window that I presumed opened into the bedroom, but metal bars covered every ground-floor window, which left the door as my only point of entry.

Easy peasy.

Fishing my folding lock-picking set from my pocket, I pressed my ear to the door. Silence.