Page 210 of What We Burn

My fingers shake once as they close around the handle, then steady.

“Both wrists,” he says quietly. “Lengthways, not across. Follow the tendon line. You want it to look like he knew what he was doing.”

I step to the bed. Dave is still under, his breathing slow, face slack, completely unaware that three people in skull masks are standing over him. He looks young. He looks like someone’s son, someone’s neighbor, someone’s friend. He looks like the kind of guy who’d hold a door open for you.

Then I remember the photograph of his ex-wife’s face in the hospital. One eye swollen shut. Finger-shaped bruises around both wrists. Dave and Andrew smiling outside court.

I take his right arm. His skin is warm and his pulse throbs faintly under my gloved fingers. I position the blade at the soft inside of the wrist, where the veins run blue beneath the surface.

My hand doesn’t shake.

I press down. The skin resists, then gives, and the blood that follows is dark and immediate. Not arterial spray. Slower, thicker, welling up around the blade and spilling down his forearm in a steady pour.

I draw the knife along the vein. Slow. Controlled. The skin opens beneath the blade with that same terrible, precise give.

Dave jerks.

His left hand snaps across his body and locks around my wrist.

His eyes crack open. There’s nothing focused in them, only drugged confusion, but his mouth moves around a wet, slurred sound.

The thing inside me surges awake.

My grip turns. The blade is already there. One hard drive and I could bury it in his throat⁠—

“Stop, wildcat.”

Holden’s voice cuts through me.

I stop.

Knox moves. One hand pins Dave’s shoulder while the other peels his fingers from my wrist and controls his arm against the mattress. He uses his weight carefully, applying only enough pressure to hold him without leaving marks.

Dave fights it for less than a second. Then the drugs drag him back under.

Holden puts his arm across my chest and watches Dave breathe. When he goes slack, the arm lowers and Holden meets my eyes through the mask. “Finish it.”

Knox lets go. I move to the left wrist. My pulse is hammering now, but my hand is steady.

Same line. Same control.

The blood runs and I hold his arm steady, aware of Knox close behind me and Holden beside me, watching with the focused attention of a man who needs to know I can do this—not just the violence, but the discipline. The patience. The willingness to be methodical when everything inside me says faster, harder, more.

When I’m done, I step back. Both wrists are open. Blood darkens the sheet beneath his forearms, runs down his fingers, and drips onto the carpet. His breathing has settled back into the same shallow rhythm. He won’t surface again before the blood loss takes him. He’ll just stop. Quietly, in his own bed, with a confession on his nightstand and the blood leaving his body in a way that looks chosen.

Holden checks the staging. Adjusts the note. He takes my knife, seals it in a clear evidence bag, and passes it to Knox. “We’ll clean it and get it back to you.”

Then he pulls Dave’s own kitchen knife from the kit—another thing Milo lifted during the open house. He wraps Dave’s right hand around the handle to transfer his fingerprints, draws the blade through the blood beneath his wrist, and lets it fall beside his open palm.

After that, he checks the floor and the room, making sure we’re leaving nothing behind.

A soft double-tap on the wall. Eli’s signal. Done.

We file out into the hallway. Six skulls reconverging in the dark of a dead house, two fewer heartbeats than when we entered. Eli gives a single nod. Micah’s eyes find mine through the mask. I can’t see his face but I feel the question.

You okay?

I nod.