Page 58 of Ricochet

Through a black haze, I hear Lena screaming, but I can’t see her. I don’t know if I’m passed out, blindfolded, or on the verge of death, with a ticket to hell where my suffering will be hearing her pain for eternity.

“God, please no!”

The crackle is followed by the smell of burning flesh.

Wake up, wake up! I can’t move my limbs. Like being buried alive. Lena! Lena!

“Nick! Please!” She screams for me, and it’s in those moments that shards of agony rake across my heart, threatening to pull me into madness.

“He can’t hear you.” A male’s voice taunts. “Scream, little piggy, scream!”

Knuckles to my temples, I paced in front of Jalen, coming to a stop when the screaming finally ended. Flames of fury rocketed through my body, leaving a wake of adrenaline, a need for violence and pain. Jalen’s pain.

“Scream, little piggy. Scream.” I drove my fists into his face, cracking my knuckles against his cheekbone with a spray of blood, sending his head kicking to the side. Another hit snapped teeth from his mouth. Picking one up from the floor, I turned the yellowing tooth in my hand and flicked it at his face.

His muscles twitched with my every step.

“Are you scared?” I asked.

“Fuck … you.”

Cartilage cracked beneath the fist I drove into his nose. “Are you scared?”

“Yes!” He spat blood toward my boot. “You sick fuck!” The nasally words brought a smile to my face.

I yanked his blindfold away from his eyes and tugged my mask up, revealing my face.

His gaze popped. Always amusing, that moment when realization finally kicked in. Sometimes, I wished I could’ve recorded the shit to play over and over for laughs.

“Y-y-you. I shot … we killed … and burned the house.”

Against my better judgment and, likely, the advisement of my therapist, I asked, “Do you remember what you did to her?”

He sank into the chair and frantically shook his head, as if he was on the verge of sobbing. “I’m sorry, man. I’m … sorry.”

“I didn’t ask you what you’re feeling now. Frankly, I couldn’t give a flying fuck how sorry you are. I asked if you remember what you did to her.”

Rolling his head against his shoulders, he whimpered. “It … wasn’t what you … think. I didn’t do … anything. She fuckin’ taunted us, man. She was … a stripper, right? Took her robe … off. Offered to suck—”

Rage erupted in my veins like flaming bullets of fury, and I hammered his face, over and over, until his eye swelled with my punches.

Stop. Stop. I could hear Alec’s words as if he stood there beside me, and I had to coax myself to quit hitting the sorry bastard.

He’s supposed to die slow. Mercilessly. In truth, I already knew what he’d done. I knew that Jalen raped her, not only with his dick, but with the barrel of his gun. I knew they burned her with cigars. Cut her. Beat her. Until, at last, they finally shot her. All while I lay bleeding, half-conscious, right there in the fucking room.

Those images alone had landed me in the hospital for overdosing. Had I not been a coward, I’d have injected my own veins with sulphuric acid to burn the memory right out of me from the inside. Except, that’d leave the asshole in front of me running free.

I still had a job to do.

Rocking my head side to side, I cracked my neck, and took deep breaths.

“I’m … I’m sorry. For what I did.” His words arrived on a snort, as though the blood had backed up into his throat.

“I’m not your fucking priest. Everyone’s sorry just before they die. How many times did she ask you for mercy? How many times did she apologize?”

His lip quivered. “I’m sorry, man.”

Curls of anger tore through my body like a hurricane, and I gripped his face with a snarl and removed my blade. With a wave of adrenaline surging through my veins, I sliced his ear away, my muscles tight as he jerked and fought my grasp. I wished I could’ve said that the kills moved me somehow. That the tortures touched some part of my soul—however dark it may be. They didn’t. I’d disconnected myself, watching the kills through the eyes of an impassive assassin. There was nothing but a hollow inside of me, and the sooner he was dead, the quicker I could fill that hollow with the alcohol I so desperately needed.