CHAPTER TWELVE

He was late for work.

It wasn't the end of the world. After all, his job wasn't the standard nine to five gig and it's not like people expected him to be at their beck and call exactly on time. But still, he tried to arrive at least close to when he was supposed to so as to not alienate the folks who put money in his pockets.

He had a legitimate reason for being behind schedule, although it wasn"t one he could share with the people who paid his bills: he was doing reconnaissance. Some people might call it stalking, and technically, they might have a point.

But to him, stalking was watching someone passively without a clear motive. The stalking could lead to something more or it might just be a way to pass the time. Reconnaissance was something deeper. One didn't do reconnaissance just for the hell of it. It indicated a sense of purpose.

And he had a purpose. Just like with the first two women, this one would be part of what he'd come to consider his personal payback tour. And just like the other two, he intended to get the satisfaction that came from watching the life fade from her eyes, a direct result of his actions, of his power.

He'd had so much power taken from him, especially recently, that it was nice to seize some back. When he'd first begun the personal payback tour, it had almost been by accident. He hadn't intended for things to get violent with Sydney Ashe, but she'd made it difficult for him to avoid it.

The way she spoke to him, her casually dismissive tone, had at one time been something that he could put up with. But now he couldn"t abide it. And when, at his most vulnerable moment, when he was in such emotional pain, she steamrolled him and swatted away his hurt as if he was a bug, he just snapped. He couldn"t let it stand, so he turned the tables and showed her, for once, that she wasn"t the boss.

And now that he knew how good it felt to teach her a lesson, he'd couldn't fight off the urge to recreate that feeling. So he stopped trying and gave in to it. Suddenly a whole new world had opened up to him, one in which he could take back the power he'd lost by snatching it away from these women, who were so used to plowing through men like him.

One thing he knew for certain: he had no intention of stopping anytime soon. Not until either the need for payback subsided or they caught him. And he didn't see either of those happening anytime soon.