The Karma Project

Chapter 20 - Castle Romeo

Zoe

The warehouse remained quiet, nobody daring to move so much as to breathe. Whether it's out of fear of me or the men, I'm not sure. What I do know, is that about eighty people just watched me murder a man with no questions asked.

The guilt and exhaustion never come, and the numb stays in place.

"Someone take care of the body." Max snaps his finger before grabbing my elbow gently. A group of five men move to grab the dead body and begin wrapping it in a black plastic tarp.

"You did good, Harpy. You may need to explain to the others why you saw that we didn't need to question him."

I nod and turn to see the others with confused or stressed looks on their faces. Teddy seems turned on, but I expect nothing less from him. "I'll explain it to them later. As long as you know it wasn't just impulsive." I look Max in his eyes so he knows that I'm serious.

"You stopped calling me Maxi pad."

I snort, "You stopped acting like one."

"That doesn't make any sense." That makes us both chuckle quietly to ourselves.

We take a second to compose ourselves before Max goes back to the serious nature I know him to be.

Our brief distraction lasted long enough that the body is already gone, and all that remains is a puddle of dark red blood. I take the chance to actually look around the building. I step away from Max and walk around the tables to inspect their operation. There is an assembly line throughout each table. A table for cutting the drugs, a table to weigh, a table to package, and a table for boxing. Every time I approach someone from behind they stiffen, which I'll admit is satisfying.

After inspecting each table and watching over each person, I've decided that I don't suspect any issues in this particular warehouse.

I find Mark in the spot we left him, watching over each of the personnel as well. "It's Mark, right?" I ask stretching my hand out to shake his. He's hesitant and looks towards Max before shaking my hand.

"Yes, and you must be Zoe." He says with a polite smile. I nod in response before turning back to the workers.

I've assumed Mark works as an overseer for this warehouse, I haven't figured out why yet, because I can tell that anyone in this building could take him in physical combat. "Who else have you seen working closely with Jax?"

"Well all the men that were questioned, except one guy that usually works the same deliveries as him, isn't here today." He says

This peaks my interest and I look back at him, "What's his name?"

"Deangelo Rossi. He's been in this warehouse for about nine months now, slow worker, but I haven't had issues with him."

I nod and thank him before making my way back to my men. "Was there anything else we needed to do here?" I ask Brandon.

"Nope, we can head to our second warehouse now, it's about two hours away."

I turn on my heel and head towards the exit, sending Teddy a wink as I pass him. As expected he is behind me immediately.

A few moments later we are all piled in the car together, but we haven't driven off yet.

Brandon lets out a huff of a laugh and starts, "So is anyone else going to say it?"

"What? That she should've spoken to us before killing off one of our first leads?" Dean grumbles as he stares at me from the rear view mirror.

"No," Brandon drags out, "That what she just did was the hottest thing I've ever seen."