Page 70 of Locke

Bitch needed to relax.

He stuck his foot in before the door closed. He stood still for a few more moments, waiting for her to take the elevator up. The second she was gone, he slipped inside and took the stairs to the third floor. Pulling out his phone, he took a seat by the door to the hallway leading to her apartment and waited.

Sliding off the knuckleduster, he retrieved his lockpick set from his back pocket and waited. Patience was his forte. It was what he excelled at. He took his time with all things. Strategizing was a comfortable pastime, especially when he used it to hunt the monsters that hid in the light, that smiled into a camera as the world celebrated their virtues.

But tonight—

His back stiffened with discomfort.

Tonight, she was so close, and it took a lot for him not to break the door down, plant a bullet in her dim-witted friend’s forehead and abduct her.

“Too soon,” Obsession murmured. “And that bimbo doesn’t deserve to die for talking shit about our little lion.”

But the sooner he had her again, the sooner he could work on hunting the last few of the monsters down.

Three left, he reminded himself.

And the first on the list hadn’t been seen in fucking years.

That trench coat wearing fuck that Conor and Dominic had bumped into the day Locke went missing was still at large. The two boys had been searching for Locke, and when they happened across the man that was on the same trail as them, Conor had explained that he knew instantly he had something to do with Locke’s disappearance.

“He was abnormal,” Conor had admitted to him when he implored him for more information. “There was something…inhuman about him, Max. It’s why I told Dominic to go back, to alert the police and let them know we found the culprit. I wound up following him, but he knew, and when he caught me, I ran. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, Max…I wound up flying over a cliff and into the rapids. It’s…why I failed you. When I got rescued, they booked me into the hospital for hyperthermia and a broken bone and fucking nobody would listen to me about the trench coat wearing man. But when you find him, take a good look at his hand. You’ll find a scar I put there when I drove my blade into it when he caught me right before I ran. And you’ll know, Max, that I didn’t give up. That I tried so fucking hard to find you.”

Locke knew about the wound because when the man ventured down the hole, he smelled of rain and blood and he was cursing up a storm. He had beaten Locke good, blaming him for the pain inflicted on him by those “rat kids.”

But even at his worst, that trench coat wearing man never actually touched Locke.

As the ringleader, he simply watched.

And for some sick fucking reason, that man enraged Locke most of all.

Do not lose sight of the greater goal.

He would not.

He had made a promise to his former self. He had to make it up to that little boy in that Hole. He had to heal him by snuffing out the last of them. Only then would Max be okay.

Shutting his eyes, he breathed deeply, concentrating on the darkness as he twisted his watchband around his wrist, determined not to go back there again.

Minutes later, Locke checked the time on his phone. He had scheduled another drive-by to Kali’s place. He had noticed her paranoia. She seemed to think he was always behind the wheel of that black Mercedes. Sometimes he was. Other times he dressed like this and tailed her closely, his obsession a never-ending reel of need. He watched her stare at the cars, and he’d see her eyes widen when she saw that black car, the fear mixed with intrigue. His little prey fucking loved the thought of him stalking her. She gets high off the chase. She would never know that he was always going to be one step ahead of her.

His phone buzzed. A text from a recruiter for the Raven Brotherhood alerting him to the last safety check on Conor’s house. After everything that had gone down, he had made sure Conor and his family were safe, and that there were no other hidden threats he did not know of.

His heart slowed as he thought of Conor, of him searching for Locke when he had been trapped in that Hole. Lured like a fucking fish in water, Locke had taken a nibble of that hanging bait, and bam—he had forever fucked myself.

Locke could still hear Conor’s screams as he wept in that Hole. He called out for him, and he—

I’m here!

I’m here, Conor!

Tears streamed down his face as a hand pressed over his mouth, gripping it shut, forcing him quiet and immobile. A voice slithered into his ears.

“I’ll kill that boy if you open your mouth. I’ll gut him right in front of you. Silence, pet, or I will not be easy on you.”

Twenty-One

Locke

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