Page 51 of Broken Skulls

“Text Jackson and have him bring the doc in. I’m not going to listen to this all night,” Dirk finally says. He pushes himself off the bed and crouches down in front of me. His gaze bounces over my face as I breathe hard. “If you love this woman, it’s going to hurt like a motherfucker a lot of the time.”

He sits on the edge of the bed. “You think this sucks for you now? Someday you’re going to go through a long stretch where that woman is happy, content, and everything seems so fucking good, and then something as simple as a color … a smell … the fucking breeze on her skin, will set her off. It’s going to happen a lot, and you’re never going to know when.”

He looks over his shoulder at Dan before turning his attention back to me.

“In those times, she’s going to need you to be like that fucking room you have. Still, calm, sure. If you can’t handle that, then you better pull out now.”

The doc walks in, and I give him the side eye before turning back to Dirk. “I don’t need the doc.”

“You sure about that? Because if you wake me up, I’m going to go down there and kill that motherfucker myself.”

My lip curls, but I know he’s not lying. “I’m sure.”

He waves doc away while keeping his eyes on me. “Do you want me to untie you?”

“No,” I answer, turning away from him.

After he lies back down, Dan shuts the light off, leaving the TV on as a distraction for me.

Dirk tucks his hands behind his head. “Just so you know, I’d have reacted the same way.”

“Me too,” Dan adds.

I spend the rest of the night playing the videos we found over and over in my mind. The sound of her soft cries as he painted her skin, and then her portrait will haunt me forever.

My gaze goes to the dark forms of my friends, sound asleep in the room as the light from the TV dances over them. How many nights have they stayed awake worrying about their women?

I know what Dirk was talking about, though. I’ve seen both Jesse and Lily be triggered at the drop of a hat.

I remember one day in particular. A child began crying and throwing a fit in the store, and the mother covered the little girl’s mouth with her hand, attempting to muffle the child’s obnoxious screaming as she hurried out. For most people, including me, I saw a mom trying to quiet her little one as she politely left the building. Lily saw, or maybe it was what she heard, something completely different. She ran to the storeroom, covering her earsand sobbing. Nothing I said helped. I had to call Dan. He came right over, and the minute he stepped into the room, she calmed down.

I want to be that kind of peace for Elizabeth.

But I also have this blinding rage for the man we captured.

“It’s already happened. I’ve already survived it.”

I let my eyes fall closed, and sure as shit there it is. The painting. And even though it’s an image of the most beautiful woman in the world … it’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Please make it go away,” I whisper as exhaustion begins to blanket my bloodlust.

Instantly, the painting morphs into the watercolor painted dragonfly hanging on my refrigerator at home. While the image is more pleasant, it doesn’t hurt any less than the previous one. It only adds a layer to the pain.

I saw the look on Tank’s face as he took in Mr. Baxter’s “art” room. Don’t get me wrong, the teacher had plenty of science crap. Actually, what he had was more like a morgue. His scientific mind was the fuel for his creativity. At first, I thought he must be a serial killer, but Anthony did some digging on the man’s computer, and it looks like he gets his bodies on the black market.

In fact, there was a fresh one lying on the table. A young female.

Anthony and his crew are going to continue working on all of this. He said more than likely the corpses are coming from dirty funeral homes. How many people think their loved ones are being cremated only to be sold on the dark web?

I hope his team finds them and shuts them down, because even though the women might have died naturally, they deserve to be treated with respect. They deserve justice.

We all stood there, stunned, realizing that she didn’t tell anyone because no one would have believed her.

I just don’t know how to tell her what we found. But I guess she already knows.

Of course she knows. She lived through it.

She knew what we would find.

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