Page 81 of The Keeper

“Let’s grab a cigarette,” Grey said, holding his hands out like I was some skittish animal he was trying to calm.

I pushed past him, trying to get to the room at the end of the hall, when Bear stepped into my path and latched onto my upper body, trying to haul me back.

“Dane, don’t,” he warned, shaking his head. The last time he’d called me by my real name, I was still a kid.

Their faces were ashen, and I knew—I fucking knew that whatever I was about to see was going to wreck me. But my feet continued moving as if on autopilot. The moment I stepped inside, my world tilted on its axis, horror washing over me in icy waves.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of photos of Piper littered every square inch of wall space. Some had clearly been taken from a distance—at work, the grocery store, while she was at the park with Avery.

But it was the ones taken inside our home that made my blood run cold.

There were shots of her in the shower and sleeping in our bed, her face peaceful and unaware. In some, she was visibly pregnant, her swollen belly on full display. One section of the wall appeared to be devoted solely to images of Piper nursing Avery.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I choked out, feeling as if I was going to puke. I reached out to touch one of the photos with shaking hands, half-convinced this was some fucked up nightmare.

“Don’t touch anything,” Carnage warned, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves before moving to the desk in the corner where a laptop sat. With a few keystrokes, he’d hacked into the system, revealing an entire folder of videos.

“Wait,” I said, but he’d already clicked on one.

The screen flickered to life, showing Piper naked and masturbating in our bed, her belly swollen with Avery. The camera angle suggested the person filming was somewhere in our bedroom, yet she seemed oblivious to their presence.

“Shut it the fuck off,” I snarled, my hands clenched at my sides.

Carnage quickly closed the video and opened another file. I steeled myself, expecting more footage of Piper, but what I saw made my blood run cold.

The camera was in Avery’s bedroom, focused on my baby girl huddled in the corner of her crib. Her little face was red and tear-stained, her lower lip quivering.

“Nuh-no, owie,” she whimpered, her little voice quietly pleading with the person holding the camera.

Ice flooded my veins as I recalled Avery using that phrase at the bakery. What if it hadn’t been random babbling but her trying to tell her daddy the delivery guy was the monster who had been hurting her?

Jesus.

The person filming chuckled cruelly before holding a pillow over her face, and I dropped to my fucking knees with a pained howl that didn’t sound human. Carnage shut it off, but not before I saw her tiny arms and legs flailing as she struggled to take a breath, her muffled cries barely audible.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” Grey said, his voice catching.

She’d been so fucking quiet, almost like that fucking monster had trained her not to cry out for Piper.

“I’ll fucking kill him!” I roared, tears streaming down my face as I lunged for the laptop. Carnage caught me around the chest, restraining me as I thrashed against his grip. “Let me go! My baby—he fucking touched my little girl! I’m going to tear that motherfucker apart!”

“Hey, hey. He’s already dead,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “It’s over.”

I shoved him off me, my chest heaving as I fought to catch my breath. The walls seemed to close in around me, the evidence of my failure to protect Piper mocking me from every angle. My failure to protect my daughter.

“Jesus, how the fuck did he get these? How the fuck did he get that close to them?” I drove my fist into the doorframe, splintering the wood. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the anguish ripping me apart from the inside. “I’ll bring him back from the dead just to kill him all over again.”

“There are detailed floor plans for both Piper’s house and her mother’s place on here, as well as notes on entry points and how to bypass the security system remotely,” Carnage said before slamming the laptop shut.

“Son of a bitch.” My hands shook as I raked them through my hair, tugging at the roots. “He was trying to find a way back in after we upgraded the system. To disable it?—”

I couldn’t finish the thought. The image of that monster’s hands on my girls sent my stomach lurching. I barely made it to the trash can in the corner before emptying the liquor from my stomach.

Carnage tucked the laptop under his arm and stood, jaw ticking as he surveyed the walls. “I want to get back and do a full sweep on both houses. There are obviously hidden cameras, and we need to make sure Isaac was the only one with access to them. But first, we need to pack all this up.”

While they stripped the pictures off the wall, I knelt by the trash can, paralyzed by a toxic cocktail of rage and guilt. If I’d left my number at the hotel that night for Piper, none of this would havehappened. My daughter wouldn’t have come face to face with a monster.

“Hey,” Grey’s gruff voice cut into my self-flagellation. “Reached out to Nails and had him check on your girls. He laid eyes on ‘em, and they’re both safe.”

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