History is only the register of crimes and misfortune.
—Voltaire
For the past hour and a half since she woke up, Diana has been staring blankly, looking into my eyes to see if I still have a soul. I wonder what she sees in there besides a dark abyss.
“I can’t believe it’s really you,” she whispers hoarsely, though it’s about all she’s said since I explained the morbid reality surrounding us.
“They’re going to come for you,” I tell her, watching the cameras from my phone, flipping between different ones nearest to us.
I expected them to come as soon as it was nightfall. Their specialty is suffocating or strangling. Then they lie and say it was a heart attack when someone is Diana’s age. They call it a seizure or something when they’re younger.
“And you’re going to just kill them?” she asks in disbelief, her voice breaking. “Oh, baby. You shouldn’t be scarring your soul with their blood. You should be living the life you almost didn’t have.”
Coldly, I lift my gaze to meet her teary eyes. “They took everything, Diana. My brother and father still need peace. Do you remember Marcus? Do you remember the kind, bright soul that always sought to bring forth a smile from a stranger just to put more good vibes out into the universe? Do you remember what they did to him? Because I can’t ever forget it.”
She bats away her tears. “I remember.” Her voice is barely a rasp by now, but I feel no emotion clogging my throat. I’ve trained against it. The one moment of unexpected emotion when I saw her has passed, and I’m back in control.
I’m cold.
I’m detached.
I’m the killer right now.
“Confucius said something about digging two graves if you seek revenge. I know your momma always quoted that man.”
“Confucius was never brutally raped, stabbed, and forced to watch his brother suffer even worse. I’m sure his viewpoints might have changed. Besides, he wasn’t a romantic.”
She makes a strangled sound, and I glance back to see her choking back her sobs, as though the image I painted was just too much. She knows the details, but seeing me…hearing me confirm the tale… It’s hurting her.
However, her morals are still intact.
For now.
“They tried to force Marcus to fuck me,” I say with a deadly edge. “And when he refused, they cut off his—”
A beep sounds from my phone, cutting off my words as the silent alert that someone is near our cabins goes off. It could be one of the team members again, but I still check it.
My eyes catch Justin Hollis—a deputy on my list—walking briskly toward the basketball court near the back. It’s close to our cabin.
When he steps into the shadows, I cock my head.
I call Jake, putting him on speaker so I can still work the app, and start rewinding the screen, flipping to the next when he’s out of view, following his path through several cameras.
“What’s up?” Jake asks. “Diana faint?”
Diana’s eyes widen when she hears his voice. “Yeah, but she’s okay. Justin Hollis is squatting near my cabin. What’s up with that?”
He grows quiet for a minute. “I don’t know. I had to silence everything earlier. They came to check the cabins again, but didn’t come in this time. I just hid, and kept the windows covered. They peered through the one window that shows the kitchen but gives no visibility to everything else.”
“I’m trying to track his steps back, but it’s taking too long from my phone.”
“On it,” I hear him saying, and I wait impatiently, my eyes lifting to Diana’s again.
She looks as though her world has been turned upside down, and she clutches the bible in her hand. In her mind, there’s time to save me, to stop me from tarnishing the rest of my soul with the blood on my hands.
“Found it,” he says, then I hear the volume crank up in the background.
The phone is still on speaker, so Diana hears it as well.
“Sheriff said Diana, not them,” Justin is growling.
Chad Briggs has a smirk in his tone. “Killing Diana is like killing an ant. More ants are going to come into your house. But if you kill the queen…”
Justin doesn’t sound thrilled. “Kill the queen, and the ants disappear.”
Who the fuck is the queen?
My eyes flick up to see Diana’s wide, horrified gaze. Hearing they want her dead from my lips seems less impactful than hearing it straight from the jaws of the devils themselves.
“Sheriff ain’t gonna be happy about this,” Justin grumbles.
“Sheriff ain’t the only one at stake here. We all need to worry about these guys figuring out the truth. You think you’re ready for prison.”
“Sheriff can handle this. He’s handled all the other things,” Justin argues.
I wish I could see the video, examine their expressions, but I don’t want Jake to face-time me right now, because he’d have to pause all this.
“He ain’t ever handled someone who isn’t afraid of him. But if we take out their leader, the others will fall in line. They always do. You cut a head off a snake to end it. You don’t just cut off one rat from its food supply.”
My stomach plummets like a rocket as I slowly stand to my feet.
“How do we do this?” Justin asks, his voice more determined now that Chad has convinced him this is the answer to all their problems.
“Simple. Block off the road to the cabins. Wait at the courts. It’ll give you the element of surprise, and it’s just far enough away that the others will never hear or see you if they come back before you finish it.”
My heartbeat slams into my throat, and I grab my hood, jerking it over my head as I head toward the backdoor, taking long, quick strides. “They’re going after Logan,” I tell Jake, panic inching up my spine with paralyzing force.
“Look at camera thirteen,” he says quietly.
I pull up the app, and my feet lock into place as I see Logan being detoured by the roadblocks.
Almost immediately, I break into a sprint, tossing my phone into my back pocket, as I use every burst of speed inside me, my adrenaline making me run even faster.
The whole town will bleed if I’m too late.
The whole fucking town will scream for me.
