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I fasten my eyes shut, effectively shutting down the memory.
With gathered strength, I turn my back to the river and force my booted feet onto the path. I thought I needed to face that place, to see it again and discover if it evoked the same emotions I felt that night. But I haven’t even glimpsed the waterfall and I’m already shaken.
I loathe this weakness.
Keeping my gaze cast on the worn trail, I avoid looking at the cabin until I reach the gate. I pull in a fortifying breath and flip the latch. The gate pushes open with a shrill squeak.
The sight halts my steps. The charred husk of the house stands in a dilapidated state of ruin where Alex’s little cabin once existed. The roof has fallen in. Blackened wood beams jut upward from the ground, bare and naked, the walls piled in heaps atop the scorched earth.
As I move closer, I notice where the trees nearest the fire were seared, but they must have been far enough from the flames to only sustain minimal damage. This whole forest should have burned. On instinct, I gravitate toward the basement door. It’s still open from where I escaped, the fire having grazed one of the doors.
A panicked beat flips my heart as I stare down into the dark vault where Alex kept me for almost a month. The smell of acrid fire and wet soot wafts up from the belly of the pit. I won’t go down there, not if I can help it. I look away and continue through the wreckage, knowing why I’m here, what I’m searching for, and somehow still terrified to discover it.
Three weeks ago, I felt the telltale prickle on the back of my neck, the signature predator and prey internal alarm that I was being watched.
Paranoia, maybe.
A remnant of the weeks I spent as a captive to a mad scientist, absolutely.
Then the first body was discovered, and I could no longer discount my suspicions.
One of my revenge targets dying doesn’t set off an alarm—but two killed in a suspected “mugging” and stabbed numerous times…
That’s more than suspicious.
That’s a cry from the grave.
I’ll never sleep again if I don’t see the proof with my own eyes. I’ll never believe he’s not just around a corner, watching. Waiting.
And I refuse to live in fear.
If Alex burned alive in this fire, I want to see the bones.
I want them to crumble to ash beneath my boots as I walk over them.
Hate is a new emotion for me. I was accustomed to indifference, and this dark, consuming feeling eating me from the inside needs an outlet. Even as I studied human emotion my whole life in order to mimic it, I never realized that it’s not just one emotion being felt at a time.
Every emotion has a web of underlying sub-feelings that battle for dominance.
It’s complicated and exhausting. No wonder why most people confuse me; they have absolutely no fucking idea what they’re feeling most days.
I shake off tiring thoughts and continue to search the cabin. To get here, I employed the skills I once used to deliver retribution for my clients. I tracked down the tow truck driver. He still had Alex’s little two-door truck on his lot. I rented a car, drove straight there, and dug out the registration from the glovebox. The address was listed in the nearest town—so that gave me a starting point.
Fleeing a house engulfed in flames with an unhinged madman who had just demolished his disturbing room of clocks makes one forget important details, like how the hell I got away. I remember escaping the cabin. Driving the truck through the woods. Making it to a rest stop where I called a tow truck service. But the finer details are a haze blotted out by adrenaline and heightened emotion.
But once I was heading in the right direction, the scenery started to become familiar, and I knew I was on the right path. As if some force was drawing me back to Devil’s Peak.
I trace my fingers along a charred beam. The seared, blackened wood is coarse and abrasive. I used to be like this wood, hardened, damaged but resilient. I used to face every intense situation with a calm and unaffected demeanor, and I would have handled that night differently had it not been for the emotions Alex cursed me with.
My fingers curl around a splinter of the beam. The wood breaks away, and I crumble it in my palm before letting the sooty ash fall to the earth.
I stare at the black smudges, the way the grime lines the grooves of my palm.
I’ve made a mess.
As I wipe my hand on my jean-clad thigh, I walk toward the center of the house, to where I think Alex’s dark room was located. Where I last saw him.
My heart beats faster. I am absolutely terrified to find Alex’s remains—but I’m even more terrifiednotto find him.
