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.