Page 107 of Locked In Ice

“Help!”she cried out again.And her weak fingers began to claw at the bag.

***

The scalpel sliced across Lane’s cheek.He didn’t even feel the pain.He took that slice, and his hand drove into Benedict’s ribs.As brutally hard as he could.Lane thought he felt a crunch beneath his fist.

Benedict howled.He also scuttled back.His fingers remained clenched around the scalpel.

“You’re not running for help,” Lane noted grimly.

Blood dripped from Benedict’s lips.

“You could have run.If you were innocent, you would have run when I turned my back on you.I wasn’t a threat to you with my back turned.Instead, you rushed at me with your scalpel.”He felt the blood slide down his face.“You have my Ophelia in one of those fucking cold storage drawers.”The drawers for the dead.

Benedict smiled.

You sick sonofabitch.

“You don’t need her,” Benedict told him.

The fuck I don’t.He needed her more than he needed anything in the world.

“We can be a team.I knew it from the first moment I heard your story.I’ve been watching you for a long time.Studying you.”Benedict’s fingers rotated the scalpel in his grip.“You must hate the monsters out there just as much as I do.You were innocent, and the guilty walked.”

Yeah, that had pretty much just been a confession from the ME.

“Sam gave a talk on duo killers once.God, I used to love his lectures.Would catch as many as I could when I was an undergrad.”

“Samuel Hitchcock,” Lane supplied.And there it was.The fucking connection.

Benedict nodded eagerly.“He was brilliant.”

Or insane.“Youknewwhat he was doing?All those years?”Oh, hell, who cared?What mattered right then—Ophelia is locked in a body storage drawer.Lane could not leave her inside for another second.He spun around and yanked on the handle even as Benedict yelled behind him.

Lane got the door open.He saw a body bag inside.One that was moving.“Ophelia!”

“Get away from her!”The scalpel drove into Lane’s back.Just below his shoulder.

Lane grabbed the shelf and hauled the slab from the drawer.

The scalpel drove into him again.

He caught the top of the body bag’s zipper.Hauled it down.

Saw Ophelia’s terrified face as she drew in a deep gasp of air.

The scalpel slashed him—

Lane whirled around and tackled Benedict.They slammed into the floor with a bone-jarring thud.And that scalpel?Lane wrenched it out of Benedict’s hand.

And he put it right against Benedict’s jugular.“I will kill you.”

Benedict smiled his bloody smile.“You won’t,” he denied.“Because I’m not evil.I haven’t done anything wrong.Every life I took—it was the guilty being punished.I learned that from Sam.The guilty pay.”

“You were working with him?”

“Didn’t know what he was doing back then, but I would have.Gladly.”He didn’t even seem to notice the scalpel.“His wife mailed me his journal.Included a note and said I’d know what to do with it.And I did.I knewexactlywhat to do.Ophelia killed him.So I started hunting her.”

“Youhiredher.She helped you.”

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