Page 85 of Eden's Joker

A lot of them looked shocked as I said it. Truth is, I would give anything to find my daughter alive at the end of all this. But I’ll go insane if I have my hopes dashed one more time. Better to assume the worst. Easier.Eden, forgive me.

“He’s right, we don’t have time to analyze this,” Cross says. “We go in. Put an end to Joker’s scheming the old-fashioned way. With a bullet to his brain.”

“After I spend a couple of weeks cutting him up,” I mutter and the silence that falls in the room is thick enough for things to bounce off it. But I’m done hiding the monster. And Joker’s gonna meet it very soon too.

We spent the rest of the night planning and all of the next day riding to Justice.

The plan we end up with is simple, as most of our plans always are. Surround the town, hide in the hills, and close in slowly. I’ll be riding into town along the main road. Plenty of opportunity for Joker to kill me from afar. But I think he’ll want to do it up close and personal. I’m the reason his parents are dead, after all. I hated his father, Seven. He wasn’t content with just keeping me in a cage. He had to mess with me one way or another constantly. Joker won’t get his revenge, but I will. Just like I got it on his father. I just need to get close enough to stick a knife in his throat.

Twilight is falling as we reach the first of thehills surrounding the town of Justice. A maze of valleys, ravines and yet more hills lie beyond them with the town in the center. We camped out, but lit no fires.

The ones who will be surrounding the town via those hills head out, armed with as many guns and as much ammo as they can carry and night vision goggles. The rest of us will follow the main road into town.

“Try and get some sleep at some point,” Cross instructs before they head out. “We attack before first light.”

I already know I won’t be getting any sleep. Tomorrow’s first light can’t come fast enough.

Cross joins me on the boulder I’ve claimed because it faces east.

“Call Barbie,” he says.

“You think I can tell her about this?”

I can’t see his eyes very clearly, yet somehow, he’s still managing to pierce me with his gaze. “I think you have to. She’ll want to hear it from you.”

He’s not wrong, so I stop arguing. But it still takes a long while before I’m able to dial her number. The line barely rings before she answers.

“Ice? What’s happening?”

She’s breathless and anxious like she already knows. She’s her mother. She probably does.

“We… I failed,” I manage to choke out. “Eden’s… she’s… we’re not getting her back.”

I can’t saydeadand my daughter’s name in the same sentence.

She gasps and it sounds like something tearing. Then the line goes so quiet I’m sure we got disconnected.

“She can’t be dead,” Eden’s sister Summer says. “I’d know it if she were dead. We’re identical twins, we’re connected… I always know what’s going on with her… I’d know it if she were dead… I would…”

She’s trying to convince herself as much as us. The desperate hope in her voice is hard to listen to, makes me feel like the boulder I’m sitting on is actually on top of me.

“Are you sure, Ice?” Barbie asks me in a deathly calm voice.

“I will be tomorrow morning,” I say. “When I get the bastard who did this to her.”

“Come back to us,” my wife pleads.

I can’t make her another promise I might not be able to keep. So I don’t.

“I love you both,” I tell them. “The three of you… you’re my whole world. Never forget that.”

Then I let them go. Because there’s nothing more to say.

There’s only what I must do to get justice for my daughter.

45

Eden

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