‘Julian and Connor swept the house after you left,’ Indy’s voice echoes around the cabin of my car. ‘There were two other women there being held against their will. They’re… not in good shape.’
‘Are they going to make it?’
‘Don’t know, but they’re en route to the hospital now. They did all they could for them. I just thought you’d want to know.’
There’s a pause while I absorb the information. I sure as fuck hope those two women survive, because the thought of any more families having to go through what mine did makes me want to unleash a world of horrors on Simon. With how many things he’s already got to pay for, I’m not sure he has enough life left in him to compensate for them all.
‘Any luck with Caroline?’ Indy asks, breaking the silence.
My gaze hasn’t moved from where it’s locked onto the split-level house with a literal white picket fence outside of it. That’s the thing about places that look perfect on the outside, though. They’re usually tainted and rotting just underneath the surface. If Caroline really did have something to do with Montana’s kidnapping and almost murder, I have no doubt this place is no different.
If I look hard enough, I can almost see the rot seeping through the facade. I never noticed it before, but as Caroline steps out of her car and moves gracefully toward the front door, there’s an almost deranged look in her eye. I’m close enough to see the unhinged glee reflected on her face, no doubt the product of her assumption that last night Simon took Montana.
The morning light is soft and casts long shadows across her form as she approaches the front door, but the second she steps inside, she’s mine. Caroline is about to have a very fucking bad day—her last one breathing free air.
‘Standby,’ I tell him, not bothering to hang up and instead jumping out of the car while he waits. I know this won’t take long.
See, something that Montana said makes me think getting Caroline to come along with me now will be easy. I jog up the three front steps and knock on the door she only just disappeared behind.
It swings open only a second later to reveal Caroline with a curious expression on her overly made-up face. Her eyebrows lift in surprise. ‘Ronin? What are you doing here?’
The surprise quickly morphs into lust that she can’t hide. Her pupils dilate, and she shifts so her tits push out in what I’m guessing is supposed to be an enticing way, but it only pisses me off more. I swallow down the bitter taste at the back of my throat and plaster on the fakest fucking smile I’ve ever worn.
‘Hey, I was in the neighborhood and wondered if you wanted to get breakfast?’ I turn and gesture toward my car and then look back at her expectantly.
Her whole demeanor changes, and she lights up. ‘Let me grab my purse. If you want, you can come inside while you wait.’
I ignore her and lean against the wall by the front door, scanning the neighborhood for witnesses. She’s going to come with me willingly, which shouldn’t raise any suspicion, but there’s always that one nosey neighbor with a pair of binoculars who can’t help but get into everyone’s business.
Luckily I don’t see any of those assholes for the moment—no shifting blinds or flapping curtains. I’m honestly surprised Caroline isn’t more suspicious of me, considering it’s close to eight a.m., and it’s been months since I took her to the Shadow Phoenix release party. It was the last time I saw her, and I wasn’t exactly trying to give in to her advances then.
If I were her, I’d be suspicious as fuck, but then again, maybe since she’s in league with a motherfucking psychotic murderer, she thinks she knows what scary looks like.
Well, she’s never seen what I really look like under my carefully constructed mask—the one I wear to pass for a normal, civilized human being. She’s never seen the side of me that comes out on the battlefield or when some uptight, entitled bitch thinks she deserves my attention and throws a fit by hurting the woman I love when she doesn’t get it.
No, she has no idea what she’s about to unleash when she steps inside my car, but she’s going to do it just the same because she’s not capable of seeing anything other than what she wants to see. She’s disturbed. Delusional. Demented. About to be fucking dead.
Even as I think it, a better idea comes to mind, and I can’t stop the cruel tilt of my lips as they lift in a semblance of a smile.
Caroline steps out of the foyer, and I move back to give her room to swing the door shut and lock it. It doesn’t matter—she’s not going to be coming back here no matter what plan I decide should play out.
‘So, where do you want to eat?’ Caroline asks and looks over at me.
I shrug, adopting an interested expression, though I doubt it looks convincing with the fiery acid of revenge running through my veins. She sways closer as we walk to my car like she thinks she’s going to grab my hand or lean against me, but I sidestep her. Until I get her in my car, I need to make this shit believable.
Once we’re inside and moving too fast for her to jump out, all bets are off.
‘I know a great little place a couple of miles away,’ she prattles on, completely unaware of my barely-contained fury. ‘They make the best…’
As Caroline chatters away, trying to fill the quiet with her continuous droning and chatter, I open the door and hold it for her to get in.
I’m a motherfucking gentleman, after all.
She doesn’t think twice as she tosses me a flirty look and then slips into the passenger seat of my car. I slam the door harder than necessary, but she’s so oblivious, and in her own world, I doubt she’ll even notice.
When I get back in, the motor is still running, and Indy’s still on the line. ‘Ronin?’
‘I’m here. Caroline’s with me.’
For a second, her smile gets bigger like she thinks she’s important enough for me to have been telling people about. She’s got one thing right—I have been talking about her, but it’s more in the planning her demise way than anything else.
‘Good. What’s your ETA?’ Indy asks, all business. I can appreciate how intuitively he reads a situation. He’s always been good at knowing when humor is needed and when he needs to pull on a pair of black latex gloves and start stabbing.
The accelerator sinks toward the floor under my boot, and I stare straight ahead as we pick up speed, and the automatic locking mechanism kicks in. Caroline still has no idea what I’m up to, and I wonder how long it’ll take her to realize that she never even told me the name of the restaurant, let alone which direction to head.
‘Twenty minutes max.’ My voice sounds cold, detached as I end the call. The voice of a stone-cold killer, and right now that’s what I need to be. Caroline must pick up on the change in my tone because she shifts uncomfortably in her seat and flips her hair over her shoulder before I feel her eyes examining my face.
‘So, like I was saying, that cafe over on Stewart-‘
I cut her off by turning up the stereo. Here Comes Revenge by Metallica pumps through the speakers. The bass rattles the seats, and Caroline reaches up and covers her ears, trying to yell over the music. I only turn it up louder, wondering if she’ll get the message.
Spoiler alert—she doesn’t.
By the time we pull up to Connor’s gate, Caroline is fuming. Her mouth is pursed, and her forehead wrinkled. She doesn’t look nearly as afraid as she should, and if she knew what awaits her behind these gates, she’d be begging for me to let her out.
I only turn down the music once the gate is slowly swinging open, and as soon as it’s quiet enough for me to hear her, I wish I hadn’t.
‘Where the hell are we? I thought you said you wanted breakfast. If you needed to run errands, you should’ve done it before you picked me up.’ Her haughty, nasally voice makes me want to punch her in the throat. I don’t usually get violent with women, yet here we are. In that basement, things far worse than a punch are about to happen to her, but outside of it, that feels like a line and one I’m still not willing to cross.
‘I’m sorry. I just need to pick something up from my friend. Why don’t you come in and check out the view while I get what I need?’
Caroline huffs but pushes the door open after I unlock it. ‘Fine, but this better not become a habit. My time is precious, you know. I had things to do this morning, and I put them off to spend time with you, not come visit your little friend.’
God fucking damn this bitch.
My hands are clenched by my side, trembling with pent-up rage so fierce, I worry I won’t be able to contain it much longer. There’s a hurricane brewing inside of me. While Connor’s house is secluded behind greenery and a tall fence on three sides, I have no doubt Caroline’s shrill scream would carry down the block.
‘Right, c’mon.’ There’s nothing else for me to say. My only objective at this point is to herd her toward the front door. She hesitates when I swing the door open without knocking, a crease forming between her eyebrows.
‘This isn’t your house, is it?’ she asks with way too much wistfulness in her voice. I have no doubt the prospect of my being wealthy enough to afford this place only makes me more attractive to her, and a wave of revulsion breaks over me.
‘Nope.’
She rolls her eyes at my one-word answer and steps inside. I pull the door shut behind her, flipping the lock, which she doesn’t notice because she’s too busy rushing toward the wall of windows that overlook the Pacific Ocean.
Instead of following her, I hang back and send a group text to Indy and Asher, letting them know we’re here. I can handle getting Caroline downstairs on my own, but I’ll need someone to let me in the door since I’m sure she’ll be fighting and clawing to get free.
A door creaks open in the distance, and heavy footsteps pound up the stairs before Asher comes into view. He’s got both dried and fresh flecks of blood dotting his face and arms, and his fingers look like they’ve been dipped in crimson paint up to his knuckles. He looks like a nightmare come to life, and the unhinged grin on his face means he’s enjoying his time in the basement.
‘Want me to grab her?’ he murmurs, stepping up to my side and leaning close.
‘I’ve got it, but get the door.’
He nods and turns back the way he came, but I step forward. Caroline doesn’t even flinch when my body comes up behind hers. In fact, she leans back against me like she thinks I’m hers. The thought sickens me, and if I didn’t have a plan, I’d shove her away from me and set the record straight.
As it is, I let her come to me. This will be so much easier if she doesn’t fight until it’s too late. She’s not like Montana, though, so I doubt she’s a fighter. Caroline will probably fall into a heap with plenty of tears, begging and pleading.
Too bad for her the demon inside of me is immune to that shit, and it’s the one fully in control right now.
I grab her arms and spin her so we’re chest to chest before swooping down and shoving my shoulder into her stomach, flipping her over my shoulder. She giggles, and all I can imagine is lighting her on fire and watching the flames turn her to dust.
Maybe the demon isn’t fully in control because I don’t act on my impulse. I hold back, knowing I’ve got something better planned, something longer-lasting and more lingering than death.
‘If you wanted to take me to bed, you could’ve just asked,’ Caroline purrs.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ I snap, unable to keep up the pretense now that I’ve got her exactly where I want her.
‘Oooh, are you one of those guys who like it rough? Are you going to spank me?’ She sounds excited at the prospect, but I highly doubt she’s going to like the things that Asher will do to her downstairs.
I start my descent, and despite what I thought earlier, she’s not fighting me at all. In fact, her hands are roaming across the tense muscles of my back and drift dangerously close to my ass. ‘Keep your hands to your goddamn self,’ I bite out, picking up the pace.
I pass by Asher, where he holds the door open, and once Caroline sees him, she tenses, but it’s too late. We’ve already got her right where we want her, and she made capturing her so easy, an amateur could’ve done it. ‘Who’s that, Ronin? Is he your friend?’
I don’t bother answering, instead stepping into the room at the far end of the space, the one that’s walled off and always smells faintly like copper and bleach. When I set her on her feet, her eyes are wide, but when I spin her to see the other person currently inhabiting this space, the color drops off her face. She goes a sickly shade of white and rushes forward.
‘Simon?’
I’m surprised she can recognize him. He’s basically a bloody husk at this point, and while I know he’s still alive because neither Indy nor Asher would take his death away from me, he’s sure as fuck not conscious.
‘Who is he to you?’ I ask her.
Indy and Asher have moved into position, so we’ve caged her in, and I don’t think she even realizes it yet. There’s no escape for her here.
‘My b-brother.’ I look over at Indy, and he raises his eyebrow at me as if to say that’s one fucked up set of genetics. Caroline turns back to us, and I was right—the tears have started. ‘What the hell have you done to him?’
After all my tracking and studying Levi after he took my sister, how the fuck did I miss he had a sister? This motherfucker is way more cunning than I give him credit for.
‘You don’t get to ask the questions, sweetheart,’ Asher says, and his basement voice is even darker and colder than mine, like graveyard shadows during a freezing winter night. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’
Ash gestures to an identical chair beside Simon before grabbing a rag and wiping the blood off his hands, and that’s when it hits Caroline that she’s fucked. Her wide eyes turn panicked and start darting around the room, looking for a way out, but there isn’t one. ‘N-no.’
‘I wasn’t really asking.’ Asher strides across the room and wraps his fingers around her throat, lifting her by the neck and slamming her into the chair. He backs off without securing her to the chair, and I nod my approval.
If Caroline has marks on her skin from what happens down here, my plan won’t work, and when I texted the guys that we were here, I also filled them in on what I had in mind. We were all on the same page.
‘I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to tell me the truth,’ I say, stepping forward, so I’m standing in front of Caroline.
‘Will you let me out if I do?’ Her big, wide eyes blink up at me stupidly, and I start to rethink my plan. Indy must pick up on my hesitation because he steps forward next, answering for me.
‘Depends on if you play along or not.’
‘Fine, what do you want to know?’
‘Did you know your brother was a serial killer when you sent him after Montana?’ The words feel like knives slicing my tongue on the way out. I wish they’d stab into Caroline’s heart and hack away at her skin, too, but they don’t.
She rolls her eyes. ‘I knew he had certain proclivities, and he was looking for a new plaything. That redheaded bitch got what was coming to her.’
Indy’s hand falls onto my shoulder and squeezes, silently holding me back from losing my shit. ‘What do you think she did to deserve death at the hands of your psychotic brother?’
‘She was in the way,’ Caroline whines, bits of her annoying personality starting to creep back in now that she thinks she has a way out. She must think we’re idiots, or the other men in her life are easy to play to get what she wants, but the three of us?
She has no idea the monsters that lurk down here with her.
‘That’s what I thought,’ I say. Asher moves behind Simon and goes to his workbench. His back is to us while he works, and when he spins around, he has gloves on and a syringe in his hand.
Caroline tears her eyes off of me, and she tracks his movements. ‘What are you going to do with that?’
Asher doesn’t answer and instead plunges the needle into Simon’s neck and injects him with adrenaline. I’ve seen him do this a hundred times, so I know what to expect. Simon gasps as he jolts awake.
‘Simon?’ Caroline asks as her brother’s confused and hazy gaze swings her way. He doesn’t look particularly concerned to find her locked down here with him, but when it comes to someone like him, any ounce of caring he shows is nothing but an illusion. A sociopath like him isn’t capable of feeling remorse or guilt. Hell, I doubt he can even love.
‘If you want out of this basement, you’re going to do exactly as we say,’ I begin. See, if there’s one thing I know about Simon-slash-Levi, it’s that he’s clever. He thinks outside the box, and now that we’re here and it’s time to bring this all to an end, for the two of them to get what they deserve, simply pummeling them until my knuckles ache and then putting a bullet between the eyes seems too easy. It’ll never be enough.
I slip gloves on then Indy tosses me a video camera, and I kneel down in front of Caroline so we’re on eye-level with each other. “Take this, aim it at your brother, and hit record when we tell you.” She pulls the camera out of my grasp with trembling fingers and flips the screen open, aiming it at Simon.
‘Now, Simon, when Caroline asks you about the women you killed, this is your chance. Every serial killer wants to be recognized for his greatness, right? Now’s your time for confession. Spill your guts, share it all.’
He scoffs. ‘Why the fuck would I do that? When I get out of here, I’ll make an exception to my rules for the three of you. I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth, and I’ll make trophies of you yet.’
‘You’ll do it because if you don’t, I’ll string you up there,’ I gesture toward the hook in the ceiling, ‘cut you open here,’ I draw a line across my lower stomach, ‘and feed you your own goddamn intestines. To start.’
He looks at me with narrowed eyes, or maybe they’re just swollen nearly shut, and I get impatient. ‘Three seconds left to decide. Two. One.’
‘Fine,’ he snaps, and I nod at Caroline, who hits record.
Simon starts to talk, and at first, he’s reserved. He goes back to when he was a teenager with his first kill, someone from a school in mine and my sister’s district because we grew up in the same area. He details the brutality, the high he got, and then he gets to Makenna.
‘I just got my license. I was sixteen and driving home from school when I saw her walking home from the bus. As soon as I saw her, I knew I had to have her, so I watched for a while and learned her routines. Grabbing her was easy, and she made the prettiest sounds when I took her. I can still hear them sometimes.’
I wanted details, wanted to know more about how my sister met her end, but Simon moved on to his next victim and the next. My teeth ached from biting down so hard. Every muscle in my body was like a loaded weapon, cocked and ready to be unleashed. Still, I held back. Every family who’d lost someone deserved this, deserved to know what happened.
When he finally finishes his confession—looking disgustingly pleased with his little jaunt down memory lane—Caroline has turned a shade of grey-green. Maybe up until now, she didn’t truly realize how sick her brother is, but maybe that will make this next part even easier.
Indy makes a slicing motion across his throat, and Caroline stops the recording. I take the camera from her and set it up on a tripod so we could see both of them in the shot. Behind them is nothing but a nondescript wall. No one could track this location by anything in the frame, and after I double-check and then have Asher look, too, I walk over to his tool bench and pick up a gun he brought in just for this.
It was stolen, the serial number filed off, and no way to track where it’d come from.
The weight is comforting in my grip as I walk over to Caroline. Her wide eyes notice the gun and then lift to mine. ‘W-what’s that for?’
I’m not fucking around, so I spell it out for her. ‘If you want to get out of this basement alive, you’re going to shoot your brother in the head.’
She sucks in a breath. ‘I can’t!’
‘Well, if you don’t, then I’m going to shoot you in the head, and then I’ll shoot him.’
She starts to cry, begging, promising anything and everything, but there’s nothing I want except Simon’s death. Nothing I want except Caroline’s hands dirty in this in a way that she can’t escape.
‘Just like your brother, you have three seconds to decide.’
‘Caroline, don’t do this. We can get out of here, we can-‘
‘Three.’
‘Take them out when we-‘
‘Two.’
She reaches for the gun and rips it out of my gloved hand, aiming it at her brother as I jump out of the way. The last thing I want is to be caught in the recording as Indy starts the camera.
Her hand trembles, and tears streak down her cheeks. ‘If you didn’t have to play your fucking games, Simon, we could’ve avoided this but no. You had to get sloppy and now look where we are.’
I wish I could say her narcissism surprises me, but it doesn’t.
‘Car-‘
She pulls the trigger, her aim terrible. Some of the shots miss, and some hit, but it’s not until the clip is almost empty that she finally nails him in the head. At that moment, it’s like something snaps in her, and she starts laughing hysterically.
Simon’s slumped over with a smoking wound through one of his eyes, and his sister seems to have snapped. I step around the back of the camera and shut it off, and Ash looks to me. ‘Did we get enough?’
‘Oh, this bitch won’t ever taste freedom again.’
I pull out my phone and dial an old buddy of mine from my cop days who’s an FBI agent now and owes me a favor. It takes him two rings to answer. ‘Coleman.’
Walking to the far end of the basement near the door, I explain to him what’s going on. ‘I’m calling in that favor, Jase. I don’t care how you do it, but a serial killer is off the streets, and his killer is in my boss’s house. However, you want to spin that, there’s evidence and a taped confession.’
‘Shit, what the fuck did you do?’
‘What did we say when we agreed to this favor deal?’
‘No questions,’ he grumbles.
‘Right.’
‘Fine. I’ll handle it. Give me an hour.’ He hangs up, but I know he’ll be here. A few years ago, Jase had a witness go missing, and I somehow managed to dig up another one hours before the case that made his career was due to go to trial.
It was shady as shit, but I’ve never been more grateful for my grey moral code than this moment right here.
‘What do you want to do with her?’ Indy asks, jerking his head back to the room where insane laughter is still drifting out.
‘Have Ash give her something to knock her out while we wait. My guy’ll be here in half an hour.’
Indy nods. ‘Yeah, speaking of that, you should probably go upstairs and fill Connor in. He’s waiting.’
Before I go upstairs, I walk back into the back room. Asher is kneeling down by Caroline whose deranged gaze is locked onto him. He finishes murmuring something to her and then jabs a needle into her neck. She doesn’t even fight.
‘What’d you tell her?’ I ask as she slumps over in her chair.
He turns toward me, a sadistic glint in his eye. ‘That with my mafia connections, I’d make sure jail is torture for her. That she’ll never have a day of peace, and that by the time her sentence is over, she’ll wish she would’ve died today.’
‘Damn, bro,’ I let out a chuckle that feels cathartic, like maybe having seen all this go down, I can finally start to process and heal. ‘I can’t believe it’s over. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop hovering over Montana and the babies after this.’
Asher raises his eyebrow, and Indy chokes on the water he was just drinking. ‘Babies?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ I grin. ‘Twins.’
‘Fuck,’ Indy laughs when he can talk again, but my phone goes off in my pocket, a text from Connor.
I leave the two of them to handle the cleanup and head upstairs.
Connor’s grabbing a couple of beers out of the fridge when I spot him, so I walk in his direction, taking the beer he holds out to me. Absently, I wonder if Gigi knows the kind of shit that happens in their basement but dismiss the thought right away. She’d have to. We come in and out at all hours; there’s no way he could hide it from her. Plus, I know the life she came from.
‘Is it taken care of?’ he asks, clinking the top of his bottle with mine.
‘Almost. He’s not going to be a problem anymore, and as for his sister, she’s Jase Coleman’s problem now.’
Connor grins. ‘Guess those old FBI connections came in handy, huh?’
‘Yeah, guess so.’ I down half my beer in one gulp while we sit in comfortable silence. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was.
‘You’ll write me up a full report as soon as you get Montana settled?’ He asks it as a question, but I know it for what it really is—an order.
‘Already on it, but once that’s submitted, I’m requesting a couple of weeks off. I need to take care of my girl. You know how it is.’ Shadows swirl in Connor’s eyes, but then he blinks, and they’re gone.
‘I do. Just let Julian know how much time you’ll need.’
I nod and finish my beer, tossing the bottle in the recycling bin before heading out to my car. It’s been hours since I left Montana, and when I check my phone, there’s a text letting me know she’s still at the hospital.
Now that the threat is taken care of and I know Montana will be safe with Kennedy at the hospital for a while longer, I detour to a property I’ve been eyeing for weeks. It’s a fixer-upper, but it’s near the beach with every single thing Montana wanted in a house. Does it have carpet in the bathroom? Yes. But is that a deal-breaker?
Not even a little bit.
Last week, I put in an offer without talking to her first, which might’ve been the stupidest move I’ve ever made, but with the babies and Montana’s stress levels, I was determined to handle this on my own. When it was accepted, and the closing date moved up to this week, it felt like fate.
Now, I’m on a mission to find a contractor and get this place livable in the next two weeks. It’s a tall order, but I’m determined to make it happen.
I drive by, and everything looks fine. Getting out of the car, a swell of pride fills my chest as I see the sold sign out front. This will be the place we raise our kids and grow old together, and if she hates it, the site of my murder.
With one last look at the towering Moreton Bay fig tree out front, I climb back in my car and head for the hospital. The drive is quiet, peaceful even. Bone-deep exhaustion makes me want to pass out, but I can’t yet.
When I get to Montana’s room, she’s dressed in clothes Kennedy must’ve brought her, and I want to kick my own ass for not considering she’d need something to wear home. Montana’s eyes light up when she sees me, and I cross the room, pulling her gently into my arms and breathing her in.
‘It’s done,’ I murmur against her ear, and she shudders and sinks into my body as if the weight she’s been carrying around has lifted, and now she’s just as exhausted as I am. Relieved, but fucking tired beyond measure.
‘You ready to go home?’ I ask, holding her like she weighs nothing.
Her bright green eyes study mine. ‘Home?’
‘For now, we’ll stay in a hotel.’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘That’s not exactly home.’
‘Even if it’s a five-star?’
She laughs lightly. ‘Getting closer, but no. Still not home.’
‘How about wherever I am?’
She rolls her eyes and then rests her forehead on my chest. ‘You know, that actually sounds pretty fucking good. Let’s go home, Ro.’
