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“I hate how fast you’re cruising through the names,” Jake grumbles as I mark off the latest victim’s name.
“Two in a week isn’t too fast. I wanted to drag it out, but I’m sick of this. I’m ready for it to be over.”
“Because of Logan?” he asks, studying me from his seat.
“Yes and no. I’m tired of being tied to the past and unable to let it go. Aren’t you?”
He leans up, perching his elbows on the rails of the chair. “Tell me something, Lana, what do you think happens when this is all over—if we even survive it. Do you think he doesn’t find out? Do you ride off into the sunset—the agent and the killer? I want to know what you think for real. I’m good with ending this where we are, and moving on the best we can. I think that’s the only way you’re going to be able to keep him, if that’s your true endgame.”
My lip trembles, and I clear my throat. “Stopping now would be wrong. Marcus and Dad…they’re still dead and haunted by the way they died.”
He leans back, his eyes on me. “Sometimes I think I feel Marcus. I think he’s right here beside us, keeping us from being discovered. Other times I realize it’s ridiculous, and that our luck will eventually run out.”
“Do you want to stop?” I ask quietly, sitting down on the edge of his desk.
“Honestly? No. I want to kill them all for what they did. I want them to suffer. But it’s not fair for me to expect that from you when you seem to finally be healing. And it’s because of Logan you’re healing. He gave you back something you lost.”
“What?” I ask as he moves to the other side of the room, grabbing a drink from the mini-fridge.
“Your heart,” he tells me, looking at me with sadness in his eyes.
“You could move on,” I tell him, shrugging. “Marcus would want that.”
“I’ll stick to my torrid affairs with no emotional connection for now,” he answers with a brittle grin.
“Every time I think I can walk away…that’s the only time I close my eyes and see it happening all over again,” I say to him, sighing long and hard. “Sometimes I think I really did die, and that I’m truly the avenging angel my brother said we’d be together.”
I feel as though I only have one purpose in life.
“Maybe you are,” he agrees. “But maybe you’re allowed to give up vengeance for hope.”
“Then why do I see the nightmares when I consider stopping?”
His lips tense.
“Exactly,” I tell him, motioning around the room. “If my life was spared to right the wrongs of that time, then I won’t be at peace until they’re all dead. Others in that town are suffering. You know it. People just like Lindy who speak out against the ‘justice’ they dole. Women like Diana who has spent the last ten years worried one day her son would turn up dead or missing. People like my father who was killed for crimes he didn’t commit.”
He nods dully, knowing I’m right.
“It’s your choice, Lana. I’m just saying I’m with you regardless of what you choose.”
Tears. I hate tears. But they keep reappearing in my eyes at random.
I go to plop down in his lap, and he wraps his arms around me, pulling to me to him as I hug him. “You know you’re my second favorite brother, right?” I ask him, a joke I’ve said since we were kids.
He laughs against the side of my face. “Yeah. I know. Just like you’re my favorite sister, but only because you’re the only one I have.”
As we both laugh at the small bit of the past we’ve held onto, my mind turns over the past events of the last few days. The newest additions to my string of kills.
“Scream for me,” I tell Anthony, smiling while he bleeds, his cries of agony like sweet music to my ears. But the melody is off key, not hitting the same notes as it usually does.
This normally feels so much better.
“You fucking cunt! I knew you were evil. Just like your father.”
“No. I was sweet,” I tell him, meaning it, as I slowly slide the blade across his chest, leaving a shallow cut there. He gives me nothing more than a wince. “I was naïve. I wasn’t a virgin, but I wasn’t the whore you labeled me. My body was my temple and all that, until you all held me down, took your turns, and left me for dead. You killed Marcus. And he gave his life so that I could come back and pick you off one at a time.”
He screams when the knife slides down, and I taunt him again with the words he once used against me.
