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I haven’t slept a full night since I escaped. Sleep deprivation can play havoc on the mind, can make you question your reality. There’s a terrible fear creeping within me that, somehow, I’m responsible for what’s happened to my targets. Or worse…
Alex fucked with my brain—I’ve done things, horrific things—and I’m not the same person. What am I capable of? Serial murder? Could I kill a person and block it from my mind like it’s just another one of my nightmares?
No—I’m not going there. Not yet.
The nightmares will stop once I literally bury the past. Despite all I’ve suffered, despite my darkest fears, Alex needs to be lain to rest.
The deeper I head into the ruin, the more my unease grows. My head pulses, and I touch my temple, noting the rough feel of scar tissue. The blistered flesh from the electrodes of Alex’s crude electroshock machine. It’s as if the closer I get to finding him, the more alive the pain becomes.
Only, after searching for over an hour, I don’t find him. No charred flesh. No bones.
No body.
There are no remains other than this dead house.
A sense of dread coils around my spine, my muscles tight and skin hot.
I could rummage below the wreckage. I could dig beneath this dilapidated heap and search the forest beyond. But in the end, I’d just be even more soot-covered and filthy, because my nightmares are real. The dread of being watched isn’t some lingering victim bullshit.
The deranged scientist isn’t here.
I follow the skeletal remains of the house like a blueprint, trekking through a narrow space that leads to the backside where I stop and stare out into the forest.
Where the brush along the tree line has been cleared from the fire, a small wooden shack appears. Trepidation claws at my nerves as I encroach on the structure. I can make out tread marks in the rain-sodden earth.
The shack doors are open, revealing an empty inside, but the evidence on the ground exposes what was once stored here. Alex kept a second vehicle on site. And by the look of the tire marks, it was a motorcycle.
“Son-of-a-bitch.”
A bird twitters in the tree above and I startle, hand pressed to my chest. I whirl around, my gaze darting from the cabin to the woods. Anger chews through the anxiety. I lower my hand and ball my fingers into a tight fist.
There’s one thing I’ve learned in my short time with these infuriating emotions, and that’s the only way to control them is to focus all my uncertainty and fear—drill it down into a sharp point—and channel it into fury.
Then I direct all the fury toward Alex.
I pull my phone out and check the time, making sure I have enough to get to the airport. Just the quick action of looking at the time has my pulse spiking. I’ll never view clocks the same again.
Alex ruined a lot of things for me. Most notably, the career I loved.
I haven’t taken a new revenge job since Lenora Daverns. She was my last client. She severed all ties to me, and I deleted all connection to her after the way that job ended.Endedis a poor descriptor for the way I murdered her husband.
To make absolutely sure our arrangement remained a secret, I dug out my black notebook full of clients and their secrets—a contingency I always made sure to have in place should a job go badly—and hinted (okay, full on blackmailed) to Lenora that, should the authorities discover our arrangement, her private adoption would be made public. However, Lenora had no plans to reveal our connection; she was glad Ericson was gone.
“He was a monster,” she had said.
In the end, Lenora learned who her husband truly was. And in that regard, Ericson might have had it coming. Hell, the shady criminals he was tied to were probably planning to take him out at some point, and I undoubtedly did them and every female escort in the city a favor. But, brutally stabbing a man to death in an alleyway is an act not even I can live with.
If Lenora suspects me of Ericson’s death, she hasn’t breathed a word. I discovered the insurance policy paid out to her was quite considerable. Maybe that’s why she’s staying silent, or maybe it was my not-so-veiled threat. I should stop obsessing over it, but the constant fear and paranoia has churned itself into neurosis. There’s still evidence, little pieces of metadata, that links us together. If anyone digs hard enough, it’s not impossible to uncover.
I’ve never been on the wrong side of the law before, and I’m running out of time.
The only person I’ve confided in is Jeffery Lomax, a family law attorney who refers his irreconcilable clients to my business. Well, he used to, back when I was revenge for hire. After I retained Lomax as my counsel with a dollar so our conversation remains bound by privilege, I told him my story, to which he recommended a cutthroat criminal defense lawyer.
In all honesty, I’m surprised he didn’t refer me to a shrink.
I have the card for one Josh Vanson in my billfold. I haven’t placed any calls to Vanson. Not yet. As far as the official report and the information I’ve gleaned from the news, the police aren’t looking at anyone in connection to Ericson.
But a man is dead.
