Page 24 of Playing with Fyre

“Your first,” I murmur, locking eyes with Peter as I slowly tighten the pliers against his pinkie toe. He squirms, but he’s bound too tightly to pull away. “Three.”

He laughs again.

“Two.”

“Fuck you, you cunt!”

“One.”

The crunch when I crush his toe between those steel jaws rushes through me in a swirl of adrenaline. His hoarse scream is almost as satisfying as the give when his skin bursts.

“Your first victim,” I say calmly, sliding the pliers over to his other foot and gripping his pinkie toe. “Three. Two—”

“Nebraska!” he yelps. “Fuck, Omaha.”

I tilt my head a little and take away the pliers, grabbing a worn notebook out of my trench coat and flipping it to a new page. “Be precise,” I tell him as I note down the place.

Peter tells me everything. I want to stop him—fuck knows I don’t want to know what the hell he did to little Yolly before he tossed her in a shallow grave in Gifford Point, but it makes him feel better, and at least I’ll be able to give her family some closure.

I move away from his chair and make a call, relaying all the information he just gave me—sparing the gory bits, of course—and then head back.

“Good. You’re doing well, Peter.” I let out a soft sigh and stare down at his mangled toe. “Pity you had to lose an appendage over this. I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

He nods, chokes a little. “Please, just let me—”

“Victim number two.”

Clearing his throat, Peter glances up at me for a second as if he’s considering.

I crouch down in front of him, tapping his knee with my cell phone. “Let me be straight with you, Mister Monroe. I’m part of a nationwide task force assigned to find people like you—” tap “—and obtain pertinent details. Want to know who I just called?” I lift my phone.

Peter’s eyes are shadowed. He says nothing, does nothing. Just stares pure hate at me like a blowtorch.

“The FBI, Mister Monroe. They have agents on the ground in every state. They’re on the way to Gifford Point as we speak. Within the hour, they’ll have found Yolly. Or…”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Or I’ll know you lied to me.” I stab out with the pliers, burrowing the blunt point into his shin.

Peter flinches, but his body is already coursing with endorphins—his senses are dulled to the pain.

For now. But in about twenty minutes, he’ll be fresh as a fucking daisy.

He grimaces at me, shakes his head. “What’s the fucking point? You’re gonna kill me anyway. Might as well do it now.” He hacks up a mouthful of spit and aims it for my face, but I’m already standing. It hits my pants, just to the right of my crotch.

Nausea wells in me at the thought of his contaminated spittle being in contact with me, even through my thick jeans. But I ignore the damp spot.

“I wish I could kill you,” I say quietly, boring into his eyes with a frustrated gaze. “But that’s a line I can’t cross. Not if I want to keep doing what I’m doing. And I’m sure you know by now, Mister Monroe, Ireallyenjoy what I do.”

There’s just enough truth in the statement that I come across as genuine. Plus, my frustration is real. If I don’t play this right, those families will never know what happened to their loved ones.

“So are we doing this?” I hold up the bloody pliers.

Peter’s jaw tics, then he looks down.

“She’s not in Omaha,” he mutters.

Something hot and thick floods through me.

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