by Logan Fox
No one’s been in this barn for years. Two, possibly three. Before that, it was used for the type of activities I’m on a mission to stop. Young people chained up like dogs, treated worse than any living creature should.
I’m not an animal lover. I have a dog, but he stays out by my cabin, deep in Waspwood Forest.
I was surprised to find out that Peter’s lake house was there, but it’s almost on the other side of that vast stretch of densely packed woodland. A few times this past week, I’ve wondered if Charlotte hadn’t found the roadside, hadn’t flagged down help from a passing vehicle, if she’d somehow have made it to my property.
It would have taken her a few days, but it is possible.
I wish she had. I wish she’d come straight to me and not bothered with the fucking cops.
I’d have taken care of Peter Monroe the way nature intended.
Like I’m taking care of him now.
He’s long since stopped begging. I guess he smells his own death in the air like the hay and the stink of rotting wood.
“How many were there?” I ask him again.
His head lolls to the side, and it takes him a second to focus on my face. One eye is swollen shut, the other is crusted with blood. His nose sits at an angle, several deep cuts sliced into his cheeks and chin. Some of those were from my hunting knife, some from my knuckles.
I close my hand into a fist, making the tight leather glove I’m wearing creak as it stretches.
Peter’s eye twitches, and his lips quickly part. “Seven.”
I’m not surprised. The news report said there’d been two other girls beside Charlotte, but Peter’s been doing this shit for fucking decades. The other victims would have been handled more sloppily, but I already know he committed those terrible crimes in other states, perhaps even across the border.
Only when he became this egotistical shit show on its knees in front of me, that’s when he built himself a nest. A trophy case where he could keep his pretty prizes for as long as he wanted.
Or until they gave up and passed on.
His body slumps when my fist slams into his face. I lean back, huffing out a breath and forcing my eyes open wide. I need to rein myself in, but every time I think about how much this creature hurt my Charlotte, how close she was to death…
Thud.
“Okay!” Peter blubbers, a ragged sob bursting out with the word. “Twelve, all right? Twelve of them.”
Christ, I’m seconds away from puking, but I force that bitterness down deep, deep as it can fucking go.
“Where are they?”
“Them? They’re, they’re…everywhere.” Peter ducks his head, but I know he’s not ashamed of what he did. On the contrary—it looks like he’s hiding a smile behind the blood oozing from his freshly injured nose. I nearly hit him again, but another strike could leave him unconscious.
He’s already been in those manacles for three hours. I need another four.
It’s the only way I can prove myself to Charlotte.
I shrug my shoulders, crack my knuckles inside my gloves. Peter peeks up at me, and shifts a little. We both know it can’t go on much longer—he’s looking for a swift end, and I’m trying to drag this out as much as possible.
Not just for Charlotte.
This is for me too.
Catharsis. Bloodletting. Peter’s pain draws the venom from my veins, renders me less harmful, less…toxic. To myself, to others.
To my dear Charlotte.
I walk away to fetch the map I left in my car. Fresh air, brisk wind, a glimpse of the stars overhead. Peter screams back in the barn. It’s futile—there’s no one but me to hear him.
When I come back with the map, he starts laughing. But he stops as soon as I yank off his shoes and wedge one of his toes between the jaws of a pair of pliers. I lay the map on his lap and start tracing my finger through the state we’re in.
“Your first,” I murmur, locking eyes with Peter as I slowly tighten the pliers against his pinkie toe. He squirms, but he’s bound too tightly to pull away. “Three.”
He laughs again.
“Two.”
“Fuck you, you cunt!”
“One.”
The crunch when I crush his toe between those steel jaws rushes through me in a swirl of adrenaline. His hoarse scream is almost as satisfying as the give when his skin bursts.
“Your first victim,” I say calmly, sliding the pliers over to his other foot and gripping his pinkie toe. “Three. Two—”
“Nebraska!” he yelps. “Fuck, Omaha.”
I tilt my head a little and take away the pliers, grabbing a worn notebook out of my trench coat and flipping it to a new page. “Be precise,” I tell him as I note down the place.
Peter tells me everything. I want to stop him—fuck knows I don’t want to know what the hell he did to little Yolly before he tossed her in a shallow grave in Gifford Point, but it makes him feel better, and at least I’ll be able to give her family some closure.
I move away from his chair and make a call, relaying all the information he just gave me—sparing the gory bits, of course—and then head back.
“Good. You’re doing well, Peter.” I let out a soft sigh and stare down at his mangled toe. “Pity you had to lose an appendage over this. I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
He nods, chokes a little. “Please, just let me—”
“Victim number two.”
Clearing his throat, Peter glances up at me for a second as if he’s considering.
I crouch down in front of him, tapping his knee with my cell phone. “Let me be straight with you, Mister Monroe. I’m part of a nationwide task force assigned to find people like you—” tap “—and obtain pertinent details. Want to know who I just called?” I lift my phone.
Peter’s eyes are shadowed. He says nothing, does nothing. Just stares pure hate at me like a blowtorch.
“The FBI, Mister Monroe. They have agents on the ground in every state. They’re on the way to Gifford Point as we speak. Within the hour, they’ll have found Yolly. Or…”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Or I’ll know you lied to me.” I stab out with the pliers, burrowing the blunt point into his shin.
Peter flinches, but his body is already coursing with endorphins—his senses are dulled to the pain.
For now. But in about twenty minutes, he’ll be fresh as a fucking daisy.
He grimaces at me, shakes his head. “What’s the fucking point? You’re gonna kill me anyway. Might as well do it now.” He hacks up a mouthful of spit and aims it for my face, but I’m already standing. It hits my pants, just to the right of my crotch.
Nausea wells in me at the thought of his contaminated spittle being in contact with me, even through my thick jeans. But I ignore the damp spot.
“I wish I could kill you,” I say quietly, boring into his eyes with a frustrated gaze. “But that’s a line I can’t cross. Not if I want to keep doing what I’m doing. And I’m sure you know by now, Mister Monroe, I really enjoy what I do.”
There’s just enough truth in the statement that I come across as genuine. Plus, my frustration is real. If I don’t play this right, those families will never know what happened to their loved ones.
“So are we doing this?” I hold up the bloody pliers.
Peter’s jaw tics, then he looks down.
“She’s not in Omaha,” he mutters.
Something hot and thick floods through me.
It’s relief, and just a little bit of hope.
I take out my phone, make as if I’m typing out a message. “Still in Nebraska?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Peter says through a rueful huff. “You know Geneva?”
“I don’t,” I say, not even looking up. “But I’m sure they do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Fyre
A bitter wind chases me into my house while my chocolate Lab, Arrow, howls and tries to lick me to death. The instant I snap my fingers, though, she falls into a sit, h
er tail sweeping the hardwood floors with subdued enthusiasm.
“Good to see you too, beautiful,” I murmur, as I unwrap my dark scarf from around my throat and hang it up on the coat stand. My trench coat goes over it, and I make a mental note to get it to the dry cleaners tomorrow.
It’s black, so blood doesn’t show, but I’d prefer not to think about how much of Peter Monroe’s blood I’m walking around with.
I pat my thigh through my jeans as I start down the hallway, and Arrow darts after me like her namesake, her toenails click-clacking on the wood.
“Did you eat already?” I enter my kitchen and head straight for the kettle. It’s two in the morning, but I’m too wired to go to bed. I’ll most likely not sleep at all tonight—no point in trying.
But I’m frozen to the bone, grimy, and could use a hot toddy and a shower.
Arrow nuzzles my hand until I take her box of treats off the shelf and feed her a biscuit. She slobbers over my hand—no amount of training can reduce the amount of saliva a dog produces, I’ve found—and stares up at me with her big, beautiful eyes.
“I’m freezing,” I tell her. “We’re not going for a walk. You’ll have to wait until the morning.”
She sits and lifts a paw, panting quietly.
“Christ,” I mutter, shrugging my shoulders inside my sweater. “You’ll be the death of me yet, you mutt.”
Arrow dashes straight to the kitchen door, staring up at where her leash hangs from a hook on the wall.
She’s too intelligent by half, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’ve had her since she was a pup.
I’ll never forget the day I found her. Sometimes I look at her and all I can see is a dirty, bedraggled dog limping toward me out of the dark.
I thump my fist into the wood beside the door, and Arrow shifts her eyes from the leash to me, her tail slowing a little. She barks once, loud, as if to scold me for having bad thoughts.
Ruffling her ears, I slot the leash into her collar and lead her out of the kitchen door and down the cobbled path heading to the front gate.
When we get back from our walk I’m even colder than before. The wind hasn’t let up one bit, and I can taste the promise of snow in the air.
I let Arrow back inside our home and go to turn on the kettle again. Arrow’s nails click on the floor as she heads straight for our bedroom.
She’s getting on in years, so I’m not in the least surprised when she’s already snoring on the bottom of my queen-sized bed.
I shake my head and turn on the shower.
As I’m stepping out, a gust of wind hits the bathroom window. And, with it, a burst of sludgy snow.
I stare at it for a moment, and then my lips curl up in a smile.
“Guess what, Arrow?” I say as I walk back into the room, rubbing a towel through my hair. She stops snoring, but doesn’t look in my direction. She doesn’t know if the news is important enough for me to disturb the comfortable-as-fuck position she found.
“We’re going hunting.”
Arrow’s head whips up, her eyes wide, her jaw parted as she lets out a huff.
“And this time it won’t just be the two of us.”
My lab lets out a soft bark, and then her head flops down again.
“You’ll love her,” I murmur as I take a sip from my steaming cup. “Trust me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Charlotte
The rain dilutes my tears until I barely taste them. I should have my hood up, but the sting of the cold drops is the only thing stopping me from returning to my apartment and ending my life. The first few days, I didn’t miss the peonies. Not one bit. But before the end of the week, their absence became a black void in my mind.
If I’d had friends, I would have turned to them for comfort. Had my parents not died a few years ago, I’d have called them.
But I have no one. Charlotte Ash is alone in this world, and as the days dragged on, that black void consumed the tattered shreds of my soul until there was nothing left but a hollow vessel, waiting to be filled.
I’ve tried everything, but nothing fills it.
I shouldn’t be out this late at night, but I’m hoping the diner is still open. I’m hoping I can take a seat, order something, and it will fill me. Even though I can’t taste anything anymore, hunger still gnaws at me.
I can’t seem to fill that either.
I grimace as tight pain constricts inside my womb. That came back too, a few days ago. I know it’s psychological now, but that’s all I know. I have no idea how to stop it, what caused it, or if I’ll ever be free of it.
It’s my punishment for enjoying what Fyre did to me. For letting him put his hands on me and not fighting him off tooth and nail.
The street is empty. I’m the only one who’s dared to come out on such a shitty night.
At least, that’s what I think until I hear the splash of footsteps behind me.
My heart strangles me as it leaps into my throat. When I speed up, my pursuer effortlessly keeps pace. I don’t dare look back in case the sight of my stalker makes me freeze up. Instead, I scan the street ahead for help.
But there’s no one in sight. No buildings to dart into. Just solid brick walls left and right. One stationary car a few yards up the road—unoccupied. I can’t run. Not yet. I’ll just start a chase. The element of surprise is all I have. If I could slip out of sight and then sprint away...?
When I see an alley mouth gaping black ahead, I take it.
The splash-thud of my footsteps is too loud in my ears. That and my own frantic breathing is all I can hear.
I’ve lost them. I must have. Relief washes over me—even icier than the rain hurtling down into the narrow alley. But it vanishes an instant later when I realize the darkness ahead isn’t an empty void like my soul. There’s substance to it.
I barely get my hands out in time. I crash into a wall, the bricks scraping over my palms, slicing deep. I spin around, already knowing what I’ll see.
A silhouette stands in the mouth of the blind alley. It watches me for long, rain-pounding seconds, and then moves closer. Not hurrying. Just walking.
The closer it gets, the tighter my chest becomes. The more my fingers dig into the bricks behind me, as if testing their solidity.
And then I recognize him.
Professor Fyre.
My relief is nothing but a brief, warm wave. Because the closer he gets, the more real he becomes. Memories of him fill my mind, mocking me for feeling hope. I’m trembling by the time he stops in front of me.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
I wish my voice didn’t quaver.
I also wish I hadn’t left my apartment tonight.
“I have a gift for you,” he says.
I try to scowl at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Fyre reaches into his pocket. My heart climbs up my throat, followed by a rush of warm, acidic bile.
This is it. It’s finally over.
I squeeze my eyes closed so I can’t see the knife or the gun or whatever it is he’s going to kill me with. Light bathes my eyelids. I struggle to keep them closed, but finally, they pop open, ready to confront my attacker.
I’m staring at a cell phone. There’s an image on the screen. For a second, I have no idea what I’m looking at.
And then the bile that was sitting in the back of my throat, kept in place by my pounding heart, gushes into my mouth. I turn my head, puking violently onto the filthy ground beside me.
“He’ll never touch you again, Charlotte. He’ll never touch anyone ever again.”
My stomach contracts, but there’s nothing left. I haven’t eaten in days. All that was in there was that one mouthful of stomach acid. I push myself up using the bricks as support and lean my head back against their rough surface.
“And now it’s my turn?” I whisper.
Fyre cocks his head as a strange smile plays on his lips. “You don’t recognize him,” he muses quietly. “It’s understandable. Death changes everything.�
� He looks at the phone, then juggles it in his hand. When he turns it to face me, I instantly look away, squeezing my eyes shut with a terrified whimper. “Look at him, Charlotte. Who do you see?”
Fyre needs to be humored. Perhaps, if I do what he says, he’ll let me go. So I look. And I do my best to forget that the image I’m looking at is a severed head. Fyre helps—his finger is obscuring the bottom of the photo. I’m left with a view of a man’s face from the chin up.
Slack. Distended. Mouth gaping. Eyes open—empty and sad.
I blink, and suddenly it’s not just a head. Not just a dead person. I recognize his nose. The shape of his eyes. A gasp rattles in my throat. I wrench the phone from Fyre’s hand and stare at it with bug eyes.
Peter Monroe.
“How…”
Gentle fingers take the phone out of my hand. Fyre grabs my chin and tips my head up. Then he strokes the side of my face, his knuckles drawing warm tingles over my skin.
“He suffered for his sins, my girl.” Fyre puts his mouth by my ear. “Not nearly as long as he made you suffer, but my time with him was limited.” He kisses my neck, his voice somehow managing to reach me over the roar of blood in my ears.
“Seven hours for seven days.” Another kiss, this one softer than the last.
How did he know about Peter Monroe? How did he find him? Why would he—
“I did it for you.” Fyre draws back, cups my face in his hands. “All of this, I did for you.”
We stare at each other as the rain drums down around us. I feel weightless and so heavy at the same time. Clear-headed, but foggy. I have no words for what Fyre did for me. It’s criminal. Psychotic. And so fucking heroic, I can’t breathe.
I dart forward, grabbing him up in a fierce hug. “Thank you,” I mumble against his damp jacket. He slides his arms around my shoulders, hugging me back just as hard.
“My pleasure,” he says, stroking my head.
I know I should stop touching him, but it’s impossible to let him go. Where my head is, I can hear his heart beating.
Thud.
Thud.
