Page 127 of Devilish Ink

The drive home had been long enough to imagine dozens of different scenarios. In some there was blood on the walls, bloody torn clothes, tangles of ripped-out hair in others.

There was none of that. The sheets were messy, a few thingsknocked to the floor from the bedside table, the rug askew on the floor.

Ry’s attacker had come with the express purpose of taking her somewhere else. This had just been a means to an end.

Not the end.

Ry was a doll and this room had merely been her shelf. He was taking her to where he was going to play with her.

A shiver ran down my spine as I stood there just inside our bedroom in the lamplight. My hair was wet from the rain, my jacket damp at the shoulders. But this was a deeper kind of cold that sent my skin erupting in goosebumps. This was the cold of fuckingevil.

In my nostrils I could just make out the same expensive sharp cologne I’d smelled at the garage.

“Peter”wasRyleigh’s stalker.

I’d shaken his fucking hand. Let him sit in my office chair. Took money from him.

I’d let him trick me into leaving Ryleigh alone.

My stomach turned, and I shivered as if I were burning up from fever.

I imagined his hands on Ry, his beady eyes daring to trace over her skin, his breath like a foul, hot wind on the hollows of her throat.

I stoked the blood lust inside of me.

Suddenly, I was no longer breathing heavily. No longer feeling panicked or sick. My fingers didn’t shake when I righted the lamp in the bedroom. I was calm. Focused. Determined.

I’d lived on the farm long enough to know you can’t let something rabid live. When you got your barrel between its mad eyes you didn’t fucking hesitate.

And I wouldn’t hesitate.

I was going to kill him.

Rian was there when I turned around. His eyes searched mine and I wondered what they saw amongst the shadows.

Did he still recognise me as his brother? Or had I already become something else?

“I called Mason and Conor and left messages for both of them,” he said, gravel in his voice.

I nodded. It felt robotic, unnatural.

But I reasoned that everything was going to feel that way till she was back in my arms.

“Maybe we should call Diarmuid, file a missing persons with the Gards—”

“No cops,” I replied darkly, already moving back toward the door.

Rian was fast at my heels.

“Liam, I think we need as many people as we can get to figure out who this stalker guy is that’s taken her.”

“I knowexactlywho took her.”

“What?Who?” Rian asked, anger entering his voice.

I ignored him. There was no time…

I was surprised by the strength of Rian’s sudden death grip on my upper arm.

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