Page 15 of Monsters in the Dark

“No, no, no,” Kenneth begged. “I’m not lying.”

Noah was yanking his head back by his bloody hair. “And that’s the problem, you stupid fuck. What kind of man uses a woman as a fucking shield?”

I eyed Noah, wondering what was going on with him. Normally, Noah wasn’t this hotheaded. In actuality, Noah was apathetic to most everything in life if it didn’t pertain to his family. He was the voice of reason when there usually wasn’t any, so I was a little surprised by how pissed he was right now. Could be that he just didn’t appreciate how Kenneth had turned out to be a bigger problem than our time deserved, but still. This part usually bored Noah, and I’d never seen any amount of begging move the man. If he partook in the torturing of someone, it was because he was more interested in the information being extracted than he was the gore.

“She was no one,” Kenneth mistakenly choked out.

Noah let go of his hair right before Cathal walked over, then sliced all the fingers from his left hand off. Blood squirted everywhere as Kenneth howled, but no one cared. Yeah, this woman was a complete stranger, and if Kenneth was telling the truth, then yeah, we were probably going to have to kill her, but she wasn’t a no one. Before Kenneth had made her acquaintance, she’d been a person with a life, a job, possibly a family, friends, and all that other shit. Even if she didn’t matter to him, she mattered to someone, and we were about to ruin some people’s lives by killing her, and all because the piece of shit in front of me was worse than a fucking coward.

“Okay, so…here’s what’s going to happen,” I finally said, doing my best to calm down since Noah obviously had something going on. “You’re going to hang out here until Elizabeth Bathory accepts your friend request or shows up to work.”

“Who?” Kenneth asked, his brows furrowing, his pain momentarily forgotten through his confusion. “Who’s that? Her name is Keavy.”

Cathal let out a deep sigh. “Just when you think that he can’t be any stupider.”

“Now, Lochlan is going to patch you up, so that you don’t bleed out on us,” I went on, ignoring both Cathal and Kenneth. “Cathal will be keeping you company throughout the day, and once we’ve got the girl, once we’ve got no more need of you, then Cathal will kindly put you out of your misery because he’s a compassionate soul like that.”

Kenneth started shaking his head as Noah just snorted next to me. “Please…please…I’ll do anything,” he begged. “It wasn’t me…I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Even if you didn’t, there’s still the issue of your tab, Kenneth,” I reminded him. “And quite frankly, we’re tired of hunting you down for whatever scraps you happen to have on you at the time.”

“I can get you the money,” he lied, sobbing again.

“How?” Noah asked. “I mean…it’s kind of hard to roll dice without fingers.”

Lochlan laughed as he finally made his way over to patch up Kenneth’s injuries. “That’s harsh,” he said, finally chiming in on the conversation.

“But not untrue,” Cathal chuckled.

Ignoring all of them, I brought Kenneth’s phone back to life, and there was still no activity on his social media account. Glancing back over at Lochlan patching Kenneth up, I asked, “Can you preserve his fingers?”

Lochlan stopped what he was doing, then looked back at me. “You want to save his fingers?”

I shook my head. “Just his thumb,” I clarified. “I’ll need it to unlock his phone later.”

“You’re a sick motherfucker,” Noah smirked. “You can just remove the locking feature in the settings.”

I grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Cathal just shook his head. “Maybe we need to talk to Mam,” he said. “Maybe you shouldn’t reproduce.”

Instead of remarking on that, I handed Noah Kenneth’s phone. “Open it up.”

“I need some fucking sleep,” Noah muttered as he took the device from me.

“We all do,” Lochlan agreed as he went back to patching up Kenneth.

I cracked my neck, thinking that they both weren’t wrong.

Chapter 10

Keavy~

Showered with a new purse in hand, I drove to work, doing my best to appear like everything was okay. When I’d woken up, it’d been with the decision not to accept Kenneth’s friend request. Even though I didn’t know where to find him, he knew that I worked at Miller’s, so if the request really had been from him, then he could find me there. If Kenneth, the police, or the O’Briens were looking for me, then they could come to me. I’d rather have them meet me on familiar ground than have me walking into the unknown.

As soon as I pulled into the back parking lot of Miller’s, I got out, locked my car, then glanced around like a paranoid crack addict as I made my way to the front door. Since it was a Friday night, the place was already busy enough, even though it was only six. Some people liked to make an entire night of it, and others liked getting here early for a guaranteed table or spot at the bar.

Walking in, my eyes scanned the entire place, and I saw Kenneth nowhere. Praying that no one could see inside my mind, I rushed to put my stuff away in the back, then grabbed my apron, quickly getting to work.

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