Chapter 85
Brooke
John freezes in the doorway, wine bottle hanging in his hand.
The glasses tilt and clink softly, a stupid sound that doesn’t belong in a room full of bodies.
Seth stands in the middle of it, blood on his knuckles, gun lowered at his side. Four masked men are on the floor, limbs bent wrong, knives scattered near their hands.
I step in behind John and keep my gun trained at the back of his head.
“Put it down,” I demand.
John exhales and sets the bottle and glasses on a side table, slow and careful. He turns just enough to speak without looking at me.
“I let you guys be, I left you alone. What’s the point of finding me?”
My voice comes out flat and clear. “As long as you’re alive, you’re a threat.”
Seth’s gaze stays on John’s hands.
John’s voice cuts in. “So, you finally learned, haven’t you?”
His right arm shifts beneath the cloak.
I catch the movement immediately. His fingers flex near his wrist, slowly dragging something down from inside the sleeve.
Metal glints beneath the fabric.
Seth sees it too.
I fire.
The suppressed shot cracks through the room, and the bullet punches through John’s hand just as his fingers close around the knife. Skin splits.Knuckles burst open. Blood sprays across the front of his cloak in hot, messy streaks. The blade slips from his ruined grip, clatters across the tile, and spins away.
John jerks violently, clutching his mangled hand beneath the cloak while blood runs through his fingers and patters onto the marble.
I fire again.
The bullet tears through his left kneecap.
The joint blows apart beneath the fabric. Bone cracks. Blood bursts through the torn material and splashes across the floor as his leg folds wrong.
He screams behind the goat mask, but somehow he stays standing for half a second, swaying on the one leg still holding him up.
So I shoot the other one too.
The next round punches through his other knee and destroys whatever kept him upright. His legs buckle beneath him, useless and shaking, and he slams onto the marble hard enough to make the room echo.
His injured hand hangs at his side, shredded and dripping. Blood runs down his wrist, over his fingers, and onto the tile in thick drops.
Then his other hand reaches up and tears the goat mask off before throwing it aside.
The mask hits the tile beside him with a dull clack.
Now his face is exposed. The same face I grew up seeing across dinner tables and in quiet living rooms. The same calculating eyes that watched everything when I was a kid.
Without the mask, the performance disappears.
