My voice breaks on that last bit, but I force the emotion back. “Jake took his place. He loved my brother as more than just a friend, but was always too worried what the town would say or do if they came out about their relationship. It’s his deepest regret.”
She wipes away more tears, and she runs a hand through her hair.
“I won’t tell the team,” she finally says. “Unless someone innocent gets caught in the crosshairs, I owe you my silence. You saved the lives of countless children by ending a monster I let go free. You saved women all over, possibly even Logan, and saved me from Plemmons. Until you have that psychotic break, I’ll hold my tongue.”
That’s more than I expected. My entire chest feels like an anvil is being lifted off it.
“I’ve trained against the psychotic break. They turned me into a shell of a person. Now I use it against them. But my mind? My mind is whole, even if my soul is not.”
“How?” she asks, confused. “How do you train against the break?”
“Every form of martial arts I could squeeze in. From Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, to American Karate, to Colombian Grima, to Taekwando, to Bokator, to Krav Maga… You get the idea. I’ve gotten various black belts in an array of martial arts. Not to mention the weapons’ training I’ve mastered—knife throwing being one. You learn discipline over your mind with each new form of fighting or training. You learn control. It made me stronger mentally, physically, and emotionally.”
She wipes away another tear, then sucks in a sharp breath.
“Then let’s hope it keeps you sane enough to finish without hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve to be hurt. I don’t know if I can handle more guilt.”
I start to leave, then turn back to face her. “You tried to tell people when you were a child. Those people failed you. They failed those kids, and they warped your young, impressionable mind into believing you made it all up. Everything that has happened since then is not your fault. It’s on them. They may not deserve to die for their failures the way he deserved worse than death, but they do deserve to bear that guilt. Call your mother. Give her the burden to bear. Call that therapist, give her all the nasty details of his sins. Call the police station that ignored the cries of a child in pain. Only they deserve the weight of that failure. Not you.”
She sucks in a breath as I turn to leave.
“How’d you get that big bastard out of the basement and up that big-ass hill?”
The question is so random that it makes me smile. “I’m stronger than I look,” I say, looking over my shoulder. “But it wasn’t fucking easy.”
Her brittle smile toward the morbid humor is almost like a peace treaty. We’re not going to be besties or anything, but we have an understanding.
“Tell Logan I’ll be there in five,” she says as I walk out.
As soon as I’m out the door, I text Jake.
ME: Calling in twenty. We need to adjust our timeframes. I have some catching up to do.
Chapter 6
To do a great right, do a little wrong.
—William Shakespeare
LOGAN
We can barely stay in the cellar, because the air is perfumed with the scent of two rotting corpses.
“He’s getting bolder by killing them two at a time,” Elise says, gagging even as she soaks in the clean air from above. “Escalating his torture by making them watch each other.”
The bodies are already gone, since they cut them down from the chains once we arrived and saw the scene. But it’s still toxic down there. Hadley is with the coroner, possibly carrying around a garbage can to puke in.
The stench is overwhelming.
“All the other’s he’s left in their homes to be discovered quickly. Why the shift? It’s a risk to kidnap one and drive them all the way from New York to West Virginia,” Leonard says, battling his own nausea.
It’s hard to take in the scene down there, considering it needs to air out for several days before it’s tolerable.
“He’s chasing his endgame, but it’s obvious these two really pissed him off. Yet there were still no signs of rage,” I say absently.
Hadley’s name flashes o
n my screen, and I answer the phone, putting it on speaker.