Page 115 of What We Become

“To kill.”

“Yeah.”

Eli’s chest expands against me—one slow inhale, like he’s tasting the air for gunpowder.

I wait for him to tell me no, or say not yet, or we’ll get him.

Instead he shifts to look at me, hands bracketing my ribs, and rests his forehead on mine so our breaths braid.

“Then let’s feed the monster,” he whispers.

I pull back enough to see his face. In the under-cabinet light, his eyes are dark amber, the teacher nowhere in sight. This is the other Eli. The one behind the locked room door—except the door isn’t locked anymore, and he’s standing in the frame looking at me like I’m the only person who’s ever spoken his language.

“How?” I ask, even though I think I know exactly what he means.

He reaches past me and unplugs his phone from where it’s charging on the counter. Unlocks it. Opens an app that starts out as a calculator. After he puts in a code, the screen switches to an unnamed folder.

Inside are names. Dates. Locations. Short notes. Some have news article links. Some have court docket numbers. Some just have a legal term beside them—acquitted, or dismissed, or insufficient evidence.

“What is this?” I whisper.

“My list.” He scrolls slowly, letting me read. “We all keep one. Holden’s is every unsolved case inside those banker’s boxes of his. Knox’s is a notebook in his gun safe. Milo’s is a database with an algorithm that ranks them by recidivism probability.”

“Of course it is.”

“And Micah’s is a small address book he carries in his pocket. His list is shorter than the rest of ours, but the names on his are the worst.” He stops scrolling on a name. “Odin gives us assignments. You know that part. Those targets are vetted, confirmed, and funded before they reach us. But sometimes the job isn’t enough. Sometimes you read something in the news or you hear about a case that fell apart or a judge who threw out evidence on a technicality, and you know—you know—that the man who walked out of that courtroom is going to do it again. And again. And nobody with a badge or a gavel is going to stop him.”

“So you stop him.”

“We stop him.” He doesn’t look away. “Because the alternative is lying awake knowing a predator is out there and we did nothing.”

“So, what you’re saying is I should start a list.”

“Sure.” He bounces a shoulder.

“My uncle goes first.”

Eli’s eyes stay on mine. “Put him at the top. We’ll help you find him. In the meantime, you can share my list.”

I look at the phone. At the name his thumb is resting beside.

Tobias Freely. 34. Dismissed.

“Who is he?”

“Scoutmaster. Three accusers—all boys under fourteen. The case went to trial eight months ago. The defense attorney got the testimony excluded because of a procedural error, so the judge dismissed it. Freely walked out of the courthouse, moved two towns over, and signed on with another Scout troop.” Eli’s jaw tightens. “He’s starting this month.”

My chest goes tight.

“We got back just in time.”

Eli nods and doesn’t say anything, but I already know what he’s thinking—we just spent four weeks in seclusion while this man got himself a new troop, a new group of potential victims. It never stops.

“What happened to the boys?” I ask.

“One moved schools. One stopped talking entirely. The third—” Eli locks the phone. “He killed himself in October.”

My lungs seize as my stomach turns cold. I think about a thirteen-year-old boy deciding he was done. I think about how the system that’s supposed to protect us decided, on a technicality, that we weren’t worth the trouble.