Page 71 of Thorned Vengeance

“You can’t keep it in your pants, so they had to die?” I grit.

“I know what you think of me, what society thinks of people like me,” he begins. “But I didn’t show up to that party with the intention of killing. I ju?—”

“And raping,” I seethe.

“Yeah, yeah,” Shawn grumbles. “The point is, I didn’t set out to hurt Tamara. But she didn’t respond to my lustful advances, and that pissed me off.” Delaney begins to pace, but I remain focused on Shawn. “Ya know, I’m not a bad guy. Hell, you and I are exactly alike.”

Delaney stops in her tracks in front of him before kicking him in the balls. “You’re nothing like Thorn.”

“Really?” he asks. “Because I’ve been keeping an eye on your fuck buddy since that night, and what he does isn’t all that different from what I do. We both screw, we both kill, and we both get off on it.”

“I take out people like you,” I snarl. “Not innocent women.”

“They weren’t all women,” he corrects. “Don’t forget about Mr. Barker at the bookstore.” Shawn slides his stare to Delaney. “He begged me to stop while I was banging his wife.”

She gasps and slowly turns to face me. “Please tell me you brought my purse with you. I could really use some of my weapons right now.”

I shake my head. “Sorry. But…” Bending, I grab my knife from my boot. “Here. Use this.”

With lightning-quick movements, she grabs the knife and thrusts it into Shawn’s crotch. He wails in pain, and his screams get louder as she twists the blade before yanking it back out.

“You bitch!”

“That’s gonna be hard to cover up,” I say, pride in my tone.

Delaney shrugs. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize, sweetheart,” I tell her. “Do whatever you have to. We’re damn good at making things appear like something they’re not.”

“B-before you do your worst,” Shawn starts. “Don’t you wanna know about the others?”

“We know all about them,” she says.

“Sure about that?”

I stiffen. “If you’ve got something to say, spit it out,” I demand.

“Ten years is a long time, and I had to get through it somehow.”

“But the map…” Delaney narrows her eyes, her hand going to her mouth.

“Haven’t you figured it out by now? You only know what I wanted you to know.”

“How many more?” I bark.

“Victims?” I nod, and he continues. “I lost count.”

“You’re pure evil,” Delaney hisses.

“I’m human,” he snaps. “There’s evil in all of us. Take your boy, Kyle.” He nods at me. “He killed that girl in Vegas. Doesn’t that make him evil?”

“I had nothing to do with that, and you know it!” I shout.

“That’s not what the evidence at the crime scene says.”

“Yet here I am, not in jail,” I remind him. “If you were gonna set me up, you should’ve done a better job.”

“So it wasn’t exactly the coup de grâce I was going for. Everyone makes mistakes.”

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