Page 41 of The Catalyst

I barely make it to five hundred in counting the seconds–which only comes out to roughly eight minutes–when the sliding door is thrown open, and I hear the sound of a muffled, masculine cry for help. What I witness is something I can never unsee.

CHAPTER 20

BETH

One of the masked men tosses a full-grown man, duct-taped and hog-tied into the van, his body tumbling as he screams into the duct tape covering his mouth.

“Help!” the man bellows into his gag, and I stare at him. Maybe this is a hallucination?

Everyone piles back into the van, and the one in the driver’s seat–possibly Oisin–speeds away from this…kidnapping? Is that what’s happening?

“Butterfly, look at me,” Nigel mutters as he sits beside me and pulls off his mask. My gaze jumps between the gagged and bound man and Nigel. A mixture of confusion and disbelief muddles my thoughts. “Look. At. Me,” he demands, and my eyes snap back to him, gulping down my ball of nerves.

“Who is that?” I ask, my voice trembling slightly.

“It’s Tan Tan!” Charlie says, peeling off his mask before throwing it at their victim. “Ain’t that right, Tan Tan? It’s your last ride, Tan Tan.”

“Stop calling the fucker Tan Tan,” Oliver growls as he shoots daggers at Charlie.

“It will catch on eventually. Beth will definitely remember the name Tan Tan,” Charlie jokes before winking at me, but my playfulness has completely drained.

“Tanner Vaughn,” Oliver says before Ronan elbows Charlie in the gut to shut him up. “He was a math teacher at the high school two years ago until he was arrested. He was released earlier today from prison.”

My brain whirls from whatever is happening here.

“Do you wanna know what the sick fucker did?” Oliver asks, with an antagonizing energy about him, but I get the feeling it's whatever Tanner Vaughn did that put him in this mood.

“Ollie, stop,” Nigel warns as his arm tightens around my waist, but Oliver glances briefly at him before moving his eyes back to me.

“Tanner’s ex-wife filed for divorce and was awarded everything, including custody of their daughter, Ana, but his ex-wife was gracious. She elected to give him three out of four weekends a month. She only took the second weekend, so Ana might have some type of normalcy, still getting a decent amount of time with her dad.”

Oliver pauses for a moment but then kicks Tanner in the face, the man crying like a baby.

What do you know…maybe even psychopaths have feelings.

He takes a seat as Tanner wails on the floor.

“He got his first weekend and didn’t take Ana home to her mother. Instead, Bianca–the ex-wife–had to go to the hospital for her daughter because her father savagely beat, raped and sodomized the poor child. They had to stitch her back up. She was only five years old and this piece of shit only got two years behind bars because he was released early for good behavior.” Oliver is highly affected in his speech, even though his expression seems impassive. He’s trying to hide it, but he hates Tanner for what he did to Ana.

“I didn’t!” Tanner screams through his gag as he thrashes on the ground.

What kind of twisted fuck does something like that to their own daughter?

“What happened to her?” I ask, my words barely over a whisper. “Ana…what happened after that?”

All eyes fall on me, including Tanner’s pleading eyes. I have no sympathy for him. The only ones who seem to understand why I ask are Oliver and Nigel. I feel Nigel's eyes as I hold Oliver's gaze.

I locked the incident away so I wouldn’t think about it, but maybe that little girl has the answer for how to move on, how to get over it.

“She was traumatized, for fuck sake. What do you think happens to a little kid that goes through something like that? Her mother had no choice but to put her into an RTC program for abused children. The little girl is afraid to leave, afraid her father will return and finish the job.”

I flinch from his words.

Okay, so maybe he didn't actually understand why I was asking.

Nigel glares at Oliver and kicks his leg as if to tell him to stop talking, but everything is clear now.

Justice didn’t get served for Ana Vaughn, and the Bastards are taking that justice into their own hands. This isn’t a punishment. It’s an execution. Nigel didn’t want me to get out of the van because, if I did, I could be considered a suspect in this pedophile’s murder.

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