“You have someone you look to for inspiration?” I ask her.
“Queen Latifah. Why?”
I smile to myself. “My father was an Einstein man. My mother loved Confucius. My brother, the hopeless romantic who was too easily emotional, lived and breathed Shakespeare.”
“What does that have to do with sheep?”
Smiling, I face her. “Personally, I was always in love with the words of Voltaire.”
“All that sounds a little pretentious to me. But your family liked dead people who had something to say that people felt the need to recite. Proceed.”
Still smiling, I say, “Voltaire said, ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.’ For too long, Sheriff Cannon has ruled the county, and very few ever break away from the corruption he instills. Women are beneath men. And his word is gospel.”
I gesture to the flock who are crying, panicking, and already on the verge of an all-out mutiny against the sheriff by now. After one single day of mind-fuckery.
“Sheep,” I repeat quietly. “Fucking baa.”
She blows out a shaky breath as we drive the rest of the way into town, and she texts someone. I look around, seeing the place that has jaded so many and broken many more.
“I’m back, motherfuckers,” I say quietly as we pass the town hall. “And I’m going to make your life hell before I paint your town red.”
I try to find Logan on the cameras, using the app Jake installed for me before the first kill, but can’t. He’s apparently in some blind spots.
I don’t even notice we’re parked until Hadley turns off the engine.
“I’m letting Logan know you’re here, in case—”
Her words end on a shrill scream when my door is ripped open, and Logan reaches in, heaving me out of the car with one pull. I grin against his lips the second he kisses me, and I wind my arms around his neck, enjoying the feel of his body pressing against mine.
“Sheesh! We’re in the middle of Fucking Madhouse Hollow, on the edge of the woods, and you give a girl a heart attack?! Not cool, Bennett. Not fucking cool,” says the redheaded girl who knowingly drove the killer into town.
Logan smiles against my lips despite the crazy he’s had to endure since he arrived early this morning. I’m trying not to laugh at the irony of Hadley screaming and freaking out like he was the killer coming to get us…when…yeah…
As he lifts me, my legs wrap around his waist, knowing their place. He holds me to him as he carries me inside what I assume must be our cabin. I don’t look around, worried it’ll be the cabin where Kyle used to take me.
Back before I knew the monster he was.
Back when I unknowingly trusted someone so dark.
Back when I was a sheep stuck in the same flock I intend to tear apart.
He bends, and a sense of weightlessness hits when I’m momentarily falling, before a bed hits my back. I grin up at him as he tugs his shirt off.
“You act like you missed me,” I say, committing every moment with him to memory.
I’ll need it to hold onto. I’ll need it to remember. I’ll need it to get me through the rest of this. Hopefully alive.
Then I’ll need it when it’s just me and Jake looking back on the chaos we created; the justice two killers achieved under the guise of avenging angels.
“I’m seriously considering seeing a shrink about this mindless obsession I have with you,” he mumbles, but his lips twitch with a smile before he pushes down his pants.
The timing of our arrival is perfect. Halloween is just around the corner.
There’s a reason I picked Myers as a surname.
But I don’t think of any of that right now. Nothing else exists when it’s just us, because my time is limited. I know that. He doesn’t.
He still loves me like it’s the last day when he comes down on top of me, pushing my dress up on my hips.