Page 23 of Playing with Fyre

No one’s been in this barn for years. Two, possibly three. Before that, it was used for the type of activities I’m on a mission to stop. Young people chained up like dogs, treated worse than any living creature should.

I’m not an animal lover. I have a dog, but he stays out by my cabin, deep in Waspwood Forest.

I was surprised to find out that Peter’s lake house was there, but it’s almost on the other side of that vast stretch of densely packed woodland. A few times this past week, I’ve wondered if Charlotte hadn’t found the roadside, hadn’t flagged down help from a passing vehicle, if she’d somehow have made it to my property.

It would have taken her a few days, but it is possible.

I wish she had. I wish she’d come straight to me and not bothered with the fucking cops.

I’d have taken care of Peter Monroe the way nature intended.

Like I’m taking care of him now.

He’s long since stopped begging. I guess he smells his own death in the air like the hay and the stink of rotting wood.

“How many were there?” I ask him again.

His head lolls to the side, and it takes him a second to focus on my face. One eye is swollen shut, the other is crusted with blood. His nose sits at an angle, several deep cuts sliced into his cheeks and chin. Some of those were from my hunting knife, some from my knuckles.

I close my hand into a fist, making the tight leather glove I’m wearing creak as it stretches.

Peter’s eye twitches, and his lips quickly part. “Seven.”

I’m not surprised. The news report said there’d been two other girls beside Charlotte, but Peter’s been doing this shit for fucking decades. The other victims would have been handled more sloppily, but I already know he committed those terrible crimes in other states, perhaps even across the border.

Only when he became this egotistical shit show on its knees in front of me, that’s when he built himself a nest. A trophy case where he could keep his pretty prizes for as long as he wanted.

Or until they gave up and passed on.

His body slumps when my fist slams into his face. I lean back, huffing out a breath and forcing my eyes open wide. I need to rein myself in, but every time I think about how much this creature hurt my Charlotte, how close she was to death…

Thud.

“Okay!” Peter blubbers, a ragged sob bursting out with the word. “Twelve, all right? Twelve of them.”

Christ, I’m seconds away from puking, but I force that bitterness down deep, deep as it can fucking go.

“Where are they?”

“Them? They’re, they’re…everywhere.” Peter ducks his head, but I know he’s not ashamed of what he did. On the contrary—it looks like he’s hiding a smile behind the blood oozing from his freshly injured nose. I nearly hit him again, but another strike could leave him unconscious.

He’s already been in those manacles for three hours. I need another four.

It’s the only way I can prove myself to Charlotte.

I shrug my shoulders, crack my knuckles inside my gloves. Peter peeks up at me, and shifts a little. We both know it can’t go on much longer—he’s looking for a swift end, and I’m trying to drag this out as much as possible.

Notjustfor Charlotte.

This is for me too.

Catharsis. Bloodletting. Peter’s pain draws the venom from my veins, renders me less harmful, less…toxic. To myself, to others.

To my dear Charlotte.

I walk away to fetch the map I left in my car. Fresh air, brisk wind, a glimpse of the stars overhead. Peter screams back in the barn. It’s futile—there’s no one but me to hear him.

When I come back with the map, he starts laughing. But he stops as soon as I yank off his shoes and wedge one of his toes between the jaws of a pair of pliers. I lay the map on his lap and start tracing my finger through the state we’re in.

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