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The air was crisper than I’d been anticipating, leaving me to wonder where we were that it was so much cooler.
It didn’t matter.
Wherever it was, I was getting the fuck away, damnit.
While I could.
I watched as the guards all lined up, as Cain toyed with his gun, petting it reverently.
My fingertips were bloody and aching from building it. And, perhaps, I would have been proud of how good a job I’d done in so short a period of time. If the weapon wasn’t in the possession of such a monster.
“Here goes,” he said.
I expected for there to be a target out there in the dark that he could see, a car or tree or something.
But then he turned suddenly.
And I watched in shock as the head of my attacker just… exploded.
It hadn’t been planned.
The other men erupted in uproar, shock, surprise, objections.
I had to run.
I had to take advantage of the chaos.
There were trees not too far away.
I wasn’t a runner.
But when you were running for your life, you could become a lot of things you never would have thought of yourself as.
A runner.
A climber.
Featherlight, silent, in the night, as the men realized my absence and started to run after me.
Through it, I heard his cry.
“Murphy!”
But I was never, ever going to be at the mercy of Cain Roth again.
I ran endlessly, my lungs burning.
And as I finally stopped, trying to draw in a few breaths, I heard the approach.
Someone had caught up.
I became another thing right then, too.
A murderer.
The rock was heavy in my hand as I waited, holding my breath, not daring to make a single sound as he turned his back on me, searching for me in the dark.
But I was behind him.
I was stronger than I could have known then, too. Slamming the rock into his skull again and again, feeling the bones crunching, even after he was still.
The rage had overtaken me, making me bloodthirsty as the skull gave way to brain matter, sticky and spongy.
Only when I felt some of it fly at me did I snap back out of it.
I didn’t run right away.
I searched his body.
A gun, a knife, money.
Survival supplies.
I pulled off his jean jacket, sliding it on, wanting to look as close to normal as possible when I emerged from the woods.
I knew I couldn’t go to the police.
I only had myself.
So I needed people to see me and feel badly enough for me to give me a ride.
That was exactly how I got out of there.
A long, lonely road in the night.
A trucker with a wife and kids at home, taking pity on the scared girl who clearly needed help.
A drop in the next town where I used my stolen money to get myself shoes and pants. Then a bus ride. Then another. And another.
Until I could get back to a bank, take out my money, and run.
I didn’t look back.
But I did send an anonymous tip to a certain federal agency about the approximate location of the notorious Roth dungeon.
It was raided a few weeks later.
Women saved.
Guards imprisoned.
But Cain Roth himself… he wasn’t there.
Like he was smart enough to know I would send someone after him.
I had no delusions.
He would rebuild.
He would continue his torture.
And, as time would tell, he would come for me.
Again and again.
I didn’t tell the bikers this, though. Not all of it. Just about building the gun, about getting away, about the tip to the Feds, about him coming for me over and over.
But not about the torture, about the scars on my back that I’d tried to cover with tattoos, about the man who had violated me with his hands, would have done worse, about the way Cain had tortured me, but also taken care of me in a sick way.
They didn’t need to know all of that.
“He’s obsessed with you,” Slash concluded, brows pinched.
“He wants to make me pay,” I clarified.
“I dunno, sweetheart,” Sway said, shaking his head. “He does seem a little obsessed. How long ago was this?” he asked.
“Six years,” I said.
“And how many times has he found you?”
“Three.”
Each time, I ran.
I hid away.
I planned my next move, how to rebuild, I worked to secure myself more and more.
“It sounds like the only way to stop him,” Slash said, “is to stop him.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.
I’d come to that same conclusion in the woods.
A part of me had thought, eventually, he would give it up, move on.
But if that gun had malfunctioned while he’d been using it, the damage to his hand… it would have been significant.
And a man like Cain Roth was never going to give up on making me pay for it.
They were right.
He had to die.
And after I finished their damn guns, I was going to work on something to end the bastard with once and for all.
