by Anne Malcom
“I know,” Maddox said mildly, not rising to the bait. “I know you have every right to do shit like that. To do anything you want. But I don’t like it. And before you fight me on this, it’s not because of what you went through, and it’s sure as shit not because you’re a victim. It’s because you’re you, Orion.”
There was so much naked emotion in his tone—the tequila didn’t soften the edges. It sure as shit didn’t give her a snappy retort to his words.
So she stayed silent right up until he parked in the lot of her building.
“Will you walk me up?” Orion asked. Or more accurately, tequila asked.
Maddox raised his brow. “What happened to the independent woman who can walk herself up to her apartment?” There was teasing in his voice.
“She comes and goes,” Orion replied with a little teasing of her own.
She didn’t know what she was doing. She knew this was a bad idea, that it was dangerous, that she wasn’t ready. But those things didn’t seem as important as they had in the past.
Orion was angry. She was angry at the girl who ruined her night. She was angry for not being able to control herself. She was angry those Things stole her ability to want a man without feeling dirty.
She just wanted to be fucking normal.
She just wanted Maddox to walk her to her door like he was just a guy and she was just a girl. That there weren’t years of pain and abuse between them.
“How is that strong, independent woman thing going?” Maddox asked when they got to her door.
He was standing at a comfortable, respectful distance. Maddox was always doing that. Respecting her fears, always the gentleman.
She didn’t want that, not tonight at least. So she stepped forward. The distance between them was no longer comfortable, and it was yanking all of her fears out of their hiding places.
Maddox stiffened, but he didn’t move. “Orion.” There was warning in his tone. No more teasing. “You’re drunk.”
Orion blinked. “Maybe,” she agreed. “But I’m not that drunk.”
“I’m not taking advantage of you.”
She wanted to scream in frustration. “Okay, then I’ll take advantage of you.”
Maddox eyed her, close to moving her back. She saw that, saw he was too fucking noble.
“All I know is pain,” she whispered, the words themselves agony. “I just want something different.”
His stare was unyielding. It was a different kind of chain, one that circled around her tighter than ones she’d worn for ten years. “Then I’ll do my fucking best to teach you different.” His lips touched hers—a whisper, really. A ghost of a kiss, something that resembled the one from that summer day a long time ago, but something darker than that too. A kiss that belonged in winter at midnight.
“You’re a pretty good teacher,” she admitted, trying to keep her voice even, trying to chase away the demons that came with that kiss.
His eyes danced with winter and summer. “Do you trust me?”
She sucked in a rough breath, the words from the past hitting her in the face. Did she trust him? The answer had come so easily when she was a child. But she wasn’t a child anymore.
He wasn’t a boy anymore.
He was infinitely more dangerous than that. Not only was he a man with expectations, he was a cop with the power to lock her away. He was a good one too. She was playing with fire.
“Yes,” she said, only a whisper slower than she had all those years ago.
Sixteen
Orion made the decision.
Jaclyn’s death had forged promises into her bones. Had forced her to add another name on the list of people gone from this world because of those monsters. Orion had grieved her in her own ways. Quietly sobbing in the shower. Watching fucking Game of Thrones.
She had not gone to her grave because she wasn’t there. Graveyards were just dirt, bones, and headstones. Nothing more, nothing less.
So yes, Jaclyn had forged her plan.
It was Maddox that cemented it.
What she’d said to Shelby and Jaclyn that first night in the hotel hadn’t been hot air. She’d meant every word. That night, she would’ve been prepared to sign a blood oath to declare that was her intention, to use the knowledge of the doctor to track him down and make him pay.
She’d been little more than an animal then. Unchained and let out into a world that made her feel feral, ruled by her emotions, but also afraid. Bone chillingly afraid.
These months out here in the real world, if that’s what this really was, she was becoming domesticated all over again. She was shown that in this world, the one up top, people didn’t go killing those who’d done them wrong down below, underneath it all.
Her need for revenge hadn’t gone anywhere, but her resolve had faltered. She wasn’t afraid of losing all of this. The money, the freedom, the life, because it was all on the surface. It didn’t matter. She didn’t escape because she wanted to eat Italian food, fall in love, and have a happily ever after. Those needs weren’t strong enough, visceral enough to break through the years of torture and terror.
It was revenge.
That’s why she escaped.
That drunken kiss with Maddox had shocked her back into her feral state. It had highlighted her purpose. Because once she got inside her apartment, once Maddox had respectfully stepped away from her and bid her goodnight, she’d been sickened. She wanted to tear apart her skin because she didn’t want its filth touching his. In that moment, she was certain, no matter what April or the shrinks said, she’d never have a first kiss again.
Maddox had been the first boy to kiss her. And he would be the last.
She spent that night in a state of confusion, torn between the feeling of his lips on hers, and the life of the best friend she still mourned. Orion could still feel Jaclyn’s presence, could still hear her sometimes too. Jaclyn had not faded away as Orion had secretly hoped. She haunted Orion, moved her toward revenge, toward bloodshed.
Orion wiped her glistening eyes, grabbed her computer, and went to work.
She had a lot to think about, to research. To consider. There was the location, for example. The easiest place for her would be his home. She’d been watching it for a while now. For as long as she had her license, her Range Rover fit in on the street, so no one even looked twice at her. She knew when his wife and children weren’t there, and when he was. Had memorized everyone’s schedules. There was a window of time when his wife was meeting with her personal trainer and the child was at some kind of sports practice. There were no street cameras that she could see, and interstate access within five miles. She would remove her plate, just in case, and find another. A plate from a random car would do. She’d switch them out and toss it when she was finished. As long as she was driving the speed limit and obeying traffic laws, no cop would waste time running the plate.
It should’ve bothered her. His wife. His child. The family she’d be ripping apart. It should’ve bothered her, but it didn’t. She had put herself in his wife’s shoes. Did she know she was living a filthy lifelong lie? She imagined the woman doing the deed herself if she knew. Or maybe she was one of those Stepford Wives, who knew but ignored it. In that case, the punishment of a broken family seemed more than fair.
Though she didn’t care about the repercussions his death would have on the family, she decided that night that she wouldn’t do it in the house. She couldn’t subject the child to such carnage. And carnage is what that motherfucker was going to face. Besides, it was too risky. Too many things could go wrong. Cameras likely in every corner of the house. The kid could get sick, sprain her ankle. The wife could decide to stop screwing the personal trainer. An unexpected visitor could stop by for a coffee. Too many people had the possibility to get caught up in it. Turn into witnesses, victims. No, she needed to do this quickly and on the street. Somewhere dark and desolate like the place she was taken from, or the place where she spent so many years of her life.
She fell
asleep with the computer in her lap and evil thoughts running through her brain.
Orion had only meant to watch him.
This was only meant to be another surveillance exercise. She still hadn’t organized the right location. She had already figured out how to navigate the Dark Web, and she’d also spent hours making sure her movements and IP address could never be traced to her.
It was interesting, how quickly she was picking up all of these nefarious skills. She wondered if it was something in her nature, something dark, that had always been lurking inside her. Like fate. Like what she had told April about that night over tequila. Something lurking in her veins. In her genes.
Or maybe it was just the burning need for revenge. She needed to learn this stuff quickly in order to get what she craved.
It didn’t quite matter why she was good at this stuff, why she understood it, it just mattered that she did it.
Because she was good at it, she knew that time was important. The Dark Web, she discovered, was full of dark things. You could hire a hitman, but she wouldn’t contract out her revenge. You could find fake documentation—which she had done in case things went bad and she had to disappear. You could order drugs—which she didn’t do, for obvious reasons. You could even order women, and that made her furious. That made her feel like that little girl with the chain on her ankle again.
Orion had tried to track these sites and the people on them, tried to get any kind of information. But her skills were rudimentary at best, and it was obvious this was an organized and sophisticated network. She could waste hours in front of a computer trying to find a scrap of information, or she could take what she had and do something with it.
She had to plan, to cover her tracks, to make things perfect. Patience. Knowledge. All those years ago, she’d thought about knowledge being power.
But it didn’t matter how much she knew about monsters. As long as they held the key to the chain around her ankle, they had all the power.
But that was in a dark basement where dark needs had no gatekeepers, no laws, no witnesses. This was the real world, or at least enough people believed it was. So, Orion had to play by different rules.
She’d known this. She’d understood it to her bones, that everything depended on her willpower. Her self-control.
She’d had it thus far, hadn’t she?
But something snapped inside her that night. The crack was so loud, so resounding, it blinded and deafened her. She was simply supposed to tail him again that night, watching him as he walked to the parking lot from his favorite strip club a few blocks away. The good doctor happened to have more vices than only young girls, and when Orion first saw the place and discovered his habitual visits, she knew it’s where the murder had to take place. Her best opportunity. The darkened streets and little foot traffic made it perfect. But she didn’t feel ready that night, didn’t feel right. She was just supposed to solidify the plan. The next thing she knew, as if driven by her inner demons and all that hatred, she was shoving him into a darkened alley and striking out with the flip knife she always carried with her.
It wasn’t smart.
The alley wasn’t private. Anyone walking past would see what was happening, though it was late and she hadn’t seen anyone else. There could be cameras. And he wasn’t the smallest guy in the world.
He turned around, his hands up and eyes wide, obviously suspecting someone much larger than the woman who stood before him.
As his face first turned from shock to disgust, she plunged the knife in his gut. His disgust turned to fury as she pulled the knife out, and he swung at her, hard, connecting his fist with her chin, and she saw stars for a moment.
He reared back again with one hand, his other clutching his gut, but Orion wasn’t about to take another punch. She stabbed the knife into him again, forcing his arm down in defense, and then she kept stabbing.
She wasn’t sure how many times the knife had sunk into his flesh, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy her. Not enough to stop him from fighting.
He wasn’t a large man, not overly muscular, which was why he usually liked his girls underage and strapped to a bed. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have sixty pounds on her and could fight back.
He hit her again, weaker this time, but it staggered her, nonetheless. Her face felt like it was on fire. She felt lightheaded.
Another fist slammed into her stomach and she doubled over. The doctor staggered back then, the blood seeping from the many wounds in his stomach. He sucked in a breath, looked from his stomach to her, and sneered at her. “You fucking bitch! You fucking whore!” He pushed her, not hard—he seemed weakened by the blood loss already—but enough to stagger toward the mouth of the alley, hands to his gut. “Help!” he called out, though it was snuffed out by a grimace. “Help,” he grunted, staggering still, closer and closer. “This bitch stabbed me!” He doubled over and hacked, blood and saliva splattering against the pavement.
Orion knew, with chilling certainty, this was her moment. If he made it to the entrance, if he was able to call for help, it would all be over. Her life, her freedom, her quest.
He would stumble into the lights, covered in blood. He would be saved by a passing car or some other drunk heathen stumbling his way from the strip club to the parking lot, because that was what happened to people like him. They got saved. And she would be caught because that’s what happened to people like her.
It was close. She grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking him backward at the same time as she sank the knife into his spinal cord.
No matter what it seemed like in the movies, stabbing someone wasn’t easy. Bone, muscle, flesh, it didn’t want metal to tear through it. Something fought back. Whether it was something in the body, something instinctive, the flesh itself, or the soul, something didn’t want to die.
It took all of Orion’s strength to yank the blade from his back while keeping a firm grip—he was still struggling now, but not as viciously—and drag him back into the shadows. He was heavy. Heavier than she thought he would be. The term dead weight made sense to her now. It was like hauling bricks. Her arms and shoulders screamed. Maybe it was the weight of his sins, or her own, but she was strong enough to drag him back. Stubborn enough. Scared enough.
That was the overpowering emotion. Orion was so damn terrified, she tasted her own bile in her mouth. Her bowels turned watery, and her bladder cried out for release. She had gotten herself into something, into bone, flesh, and blood. It was everything that she had promised herself it wouldn’t be. Messy, quick, amateur.
He was on the ground now, his back to the wall. It was stained with blood. He wasn’t dead yet. He was making sounds. Wet, coughing sounds. Trying to talk. One arm weakly raised toward her, trying to fight or begging for help, Orion wasn’t sure which.
“You’re her,” he grunted, blood lining his lips, pooling on his soiled shirt. He forced a smile, the blood smeared across his teeth. “You’re that little cunt . . .” He coughed, more blood, more saliva, and then wheezed.
She stared at him, cocked her head, smiled back.
He looked confused, but only for a moment. The confusion was replaced with frantic pleas as she unbuttoned and unzipped his pants.
“Wh-what are you doing?” he muttered, his voice rasped, the blood really pooling in his mouth now.
She pulled his flaccid cock from his pants, and in one swift movement, she severed it with the knife.
He gurgled out a scream, but she silenced him by stuffing the detached appendage in his mouth, and then ramming the blade of the knife into his neck.
As the life drained from his eyes, she held on to the vomit crawling up her throat because she could not leave DNA at the crime scene, and she could not let the death of this scum have such an impact on her.
Orion had planned on saying so many things to him. She had planned on taking it slow. She had planned on him seeing her as the monster. But there was no time for that. Her mouth was stuck shut, unable to utter a fucking wo
rd. So, she just stared at him blankly, the bloody stump of his penis showing between his lips, until he died.
Then she wiped the knife on her jeans, flipped it closed, and pocketed it. She walked to the mouth of the alley slowly, peeking around the corner. She saw no one. The other direction was clear as well.
With her body feeling as if it carried a hundred extra pounds, she ran as fast as she could to the street where she parked her SUV, trying to keep the vomit down that threatened to explode from her lips.
Her hands shook on the drive home.
They didn’t have any blood on them. Her leather gloves did. Winter in Missouri was the only thing that stopped her from leaving prints everywhere. The rest of her body was equally wrapped up, her hair tightly braided then tucked into her black beanie.
Orion had put a lot of thought into it, even the stalking, which was what that was meant to be. She had planned everything to a T. Their case was everywhere, wildfire across news and social media alike. He’d known that they were alive, that they were in his hospital, yet he still roamed the halls without fear, without shame. That said something about his arrogance. About his power. It told Orion what she already had suspected, even then. If she’d gone to the cops with no evidence but a memory, nothing would’ve been done. And she would’ve lost her chance to kill him because she would’ve tied herself to him. It wouldn’t have taken them long to look at Orion as the lead suspect. She’d done the right thing.
Tonight, she’d made one of the stupidest decisions since she decided to bike home alone that evening ten years ago.
Someone would find the body, that much was obvious. There would be publicity, not just because of the grisly, messy way she had killed him. This doctor was someone important. She’d learned that by watching him, researching him. He was well-known, well-respected. Business meetings and golf outings. Cigar rooms and happy hours. But there was the other side too. The side that frequented strip clubs routinely, staying for hours on end. That would certainly work to her benefit, and raise questions about his character, and what kind of people he was mixed up with.