Page 110 of Inflict

Cutting, slicing, and carving.

Each line down the dying man’s body felt like heaven to Connor. It was the sweetest relief, because his frustrations fell like the blood pooling on the floor. He barely said a word the whole time, removing strips of flesh a piece at a time, until nothing but raw body was left hanging from the chains.

Killian left without a word, ten minutes in.

It might have been the blood. It might have been Connor’s lack of emotion. It might have been the screams.

It didn’t matter.

It was only after Lachlan had taken his final breath, a painful, shuddering sound, that Connor finally dropped his knives and stood back, deciding he was done.

The man had been right.

He was more like his father than anyone.

In that moment, if Connor saw his end coming for him, he knew exactly where he would go.

Back to the beginning.

To that moment he met Evelyn in the woods when they were children. To the day she didn’t known how horrible life could be, or the monsters that surrounded her. To a time when she had been bright and innocent, and only wanted a friend.

He’d go back to the beginning.

Connor suspected Sean would, too.

Except, his father’s beginning was not the same. It had happened in a different place, in a different time.

Connor sincerely hoped Evelyn was able to stay alive long enough for him to figure out where exactly Sean’s beginning had started.

Connor checked his watch, ignoring the pressure building in his ears. “I don’t like this.”

“Flying?”

“We’re in a tin can, several thousand feet in the air, over a feckin’ ocean.”

“We can trade seats, mate.”

Connor glanced out the porthole window, getting a glimpse of clouds and blue skies. As long as he didn’t look down too much, he didn’t think about how high they currently were in the air. “It’s grand.”

Killian was already moving on to a new topic. “We’ll land in Ireland at Westport around six in the evening. A friend will meet us at the arrivals, and we’ll go from there.”

It sounded easy enough.

Connor didn’t know if it would be.

He was coming to be extremely grateful for his friend, however. Without knowing, or probably even realizing, Killian had done a great deal for Connor in just a span of couple of days. He never questioned Connor, simply did what he was told or asked, and offered help when he could.

Killian had contacts that Connor didn’t, friends that spanned several countries, due to his family ties, not to mention some of the business he participated in. It helped to get them on a flight, albeit last minute, and even a private jet to get them back when it was needed. The man’s contacts also provided them with the promise of information once they landed, plus whatever they needed while they were in Ireland.

Connor had thought he was quite bereft, where friends and allies were concerned in this entire mess. It turned out, he only needed the one friend. A damn good one.

“Give me that file again, would you?” Connor asked.

Killian handed over the file in question.

Like he had already done at least fifty times in the last seventy-two hours, Connor flipped through each piece of paper, each photo, every newspaper clipping, and some other information he had been able to gather. It all related to Sean, or the Strangler’s, victims, and some of the newer stuff was his father’s ties to Ireland.

Or rather, the farm house and plot of land that still belonged to a man named Sean O’Neill, with two L’s, not one. It appeared, through documentation of a will that Sean’s lawyer had provided after Connor broke the guy’s face, that the property had gone from one man, to the first son, a Declan O’Neill, and then to the second son. A bit of looking into some things, and some talking with the lawyer, and Connor was sure this was where his father had grown up. It seemed once Sean’s family had immigrated to the states all those decades ago, they had dropped a single L from the surname, in an effort to smudge some of their past records.