Page 91 of Intrepid

The long pause in between prompted me to lift my gaze toward him.

He shook his head and stroked his hand down my hair again. “No. You saved me.”

“How?”

“Just did. Quit talking and get some rest.”

Smiling, I closed my eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I slept until the sun’s heat beat through the window against my cheek.

When I opened my eyes to morning light, Ty was already gone.

31

Ty

Perched on a dull steel countertop, I stared down at the cage I’d welded together. At four-by-three feet, it’d be a cramped fit for my next victim, who stood five-ten and was probably pushing two-fifty on the scale. With a hole carved in one end of it, the box mirrored the one still haunting my dreams at night.

I pulsed the trigger of the drill, the bit for which I’d designed myself on a lathe machine. It so happened the drill bit was the perfect diameter for the hole in the cage, and the threads at the end of it designed to grab and tear skin.

My grand finale.

An end to the screams. The nightmares. Everything.

So, why the fuck did I suddenly have second thoughts?

I tossed the drill onto the table beside me, where it landed with a clang, and stroked my skull, as I paced back and forth like a caged animal. For years, I’d dreamed of hunting down the man who’d masterminded the kidnapping, the sick pedophile who’d stolen a kid from the streets simply because he could. Because he could get away with that shit and no one would touch him for it.

“Fuck!” My shouts bounced off the empty walls of the abandoned building.

I’d waited too long for the moment. I’d planned and crafted every piece of my revenge with careful detail, so each murder held meaning. The kills told a story that’d been swept under the rug so proficiently that no a spec of doubt lingered. I couldn’t abandon the plan, even if the final name on my list belonged to the father of the woman I’d become obsessed with. The woman who could very well be the end of me, instead.

What poetic justice.

My vengeance and the only thing in the world that could possible redeem me.

But to let Karl Kutscher live would be an act of mercy on my part, and I’d be damned if I’d give him so much as a small fraction of my compassion. I had none. All the things that made me human had been viciously torn right out of me, leaving an empty, lifeless hollow.

Even if she hated her father, Sera would never forgive me for killing him in the brutal manner I’d plotted over the last few months. And therein lay the dilemma.

Because I’d reached the point of wondering what I wouldn’t do, what I’d be willing to sacrifice for her. Yeah, she was strong and feisty, and could take care of herself, but she needed someone to look out for her.

I’d almost killed the little prick who’d taken pictures of her. Still didn’t know what’d kept me from throttling him to death. I’d offered him clemency, but no way I could do the same with Sera’s father.

Letting him live would be an outright perversion of justice.

Killing him would be the end of the one thing that’d come to matter most to me. The single flicker of light within the dark hell I’d been trapped inside for too long.

My phone chimed, interrupting my thoughts, and I tugged it from my pocket, staring down at text from Dax.

DAX: Meet me at book tower.

ME: Time?

DAX: Right now.

Knowing Dax, it’d be important. I had no doubts about that. He’d been hell-bent on finding some missing girl for months, and my moments of speculation and deliberation weren’t going to get in his way.

So I grabbed my shit and headed toward Book Tower.