“I hear you like little girls.”
He looked caught before he quickly shook his head. “That was a long time ago. I changed. I paid for what I did.”
I took out the laptop and showed him the first image of Dinara on the bed.
“You sure as hell didn’t pay for what you did to her.”
Horror entered the man’s eyes. Being confronted with your own depravity must have stung.
“But you will,” I promised. “This girl on the screen. Her name is Dinara and she wants you to die. She doesn’t want me to torture you but maybe I’ll do it just for myself.”
I had dreamed about it last night.
A knock sent a wave of tension through my body.
The man cried out, “Help! Call the police!”
I kicked his right side, on level of his kidney and liver, silencing him effectively as he gasped for breath. When I spotted Dinara at the door, I relaxed and went over to her. I unlocked the door and let her in. A brief glance down the street told me that nobody had noticed anything yet.
She stepped in hesitantly, still a spooked look on her face. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea that she was here. It was fucking selfish, but I was worried she’d change her mind and spare the asshole.
Her eyes moved past me to the man on the floor who was holding his side, crying. His teary gaze settled on her. “Please help me.”
Slowly Dinara moved toward him and stopped right over him. “Do you remember my face?” she whispered.
The man shook his head frantically.
“That’s funny because I see your face and every revolting inch of your body every night when I close my eyes,” Dinara said, her voice cracking.
“I’m sorry! I swear. I changed. I was a bad person back then, but I don’t do this anymore. I paid for my sins. I was in jail.”
“For hurting other girls like me,” Dinara said. “Girls whose nights will forever be haunted by nightmares.”
I stepped up beside her, touched her shoulder to show her my support. She trembled under my touch.
“Please don’t kill me. Don’t I deserve a second chance?”
I gritted my teeth, wanting nothing more than to smash his face so he’d shut up. I could see the hesitation in Dinara’s face. It took all of my control not to try to talk her into killing him. This was her decision. I had no right to force her in a certain direction only because I was a twisted fuck who wanted to torture and kill the guy before me.
Dinara tore her eyes away from the man. “Do you think he says the truth? Do you think he changed?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Do you want me to search his living quarters? Maybe we can find something.”
Dinara gave a small nod. I wasn’t sure if new proof would really matter. This was an internal battle for Dinara, one between her dark side and her good side. I’d fought the same battle.
I handed her my second gun. “If he makes a move, you shoot him.”
I wasn’t sure if she would but from the look on his face, the asshole believed she was capable of killing him and that was all that mattered.
I headed to the backrooms of the store that he used as his apartment. I didn’t want to find proof of his continued depravity because it would mean more girls had suffered but at the same time, I wanted to find something that would convince Dinara to continue with our plan. Something that would tip the scale in favor of her dark side.
After twenty minutes of searching, I found images on his computer that left no doubt that he still harbored the same disgusting desires from the past, even if he wasn’t in the photos. They looked as if he’d downloaded them from the Darknet. I went back into the store. Dinara stood a few steps away from the man, the gun trained on him. Her eyes darted to me and I gave a nod. “I found photos.”
Another almost imperceptible nod.
Number one glanced back and forth between Dinara and me. “They are just photos. I never touched a kid since I came out of jail.”
“The kids in those photos were touched by other perverts like yourself so you could wank off looking at those photos,” I growled.
I stepped close to Dinara and she lowered the gun. We moved a few steps away from the man. “What do you want to do now?”
Dinara swallowed audibly, conflict dancing across her tense features. “I want him dead. I want to be the one, but…I just don’t know if I can. It’s like something is still holding me back.”
“You’ve never done this before. It’s only natural that you hesitate.”
I didn’t remember the moments prior to pulling the trigger on another human for the very first time. It had happened too fast, no time to let my conscience speak up. I sometimes wondered if it would have. In the weeks after my kill, I hadn’t so much been bothered by my conscience but the lack thereof.