Page 94 of Creeping Lily
“That’s not the right way,” I shoot back.
“No?” His voice hardens. “What about justice for those kids who will never be named? The ones tortured, murdered, and dumped in the dirt like garbage?”
I want to hate him. I want to tear apart his reasoning. But I can’t. Not completely. Because in a world like this, I know monsters don’t always get punished—and children don’t get second chances.
“I don’t kill for fun, Lily,” he says. “But I do take great pleasure in doing it, especially when I kill the kind of people who make the world a darker place.”
49
TITAN
Cutting Sheila Shine’s throat was all it took to turn Larry Shine into a sobbing, snot-nosed mess. The man actually thought that if he started spilling secrets, I’d take pity on him. That told me everything I needed to know about how deep he was in filth no decent human should ever be aware of. Monsters, real monsters, only care about themselves. By the time he realized I was dead serious—that I would gladly open his throat the way I’d opened his wife’s—he was standing ankle-deep in her blood, desperate enough to start singing every song he knew.
I turn the thick red leather-bound book over in my hands, brushing off the dirt from its cracked spine. The thing is heavy with secrets. Larry Shine’s meticulous record-keeping wasn’t for nostalgia—it was his weapon. Every page, every name, was part of his insurance policy, a collection of leverage on wealthy, powerful people he could blackmail into giving him anything he wanted.
“That’s what you killed two people for?”
Lily’s voice cuts through the air, sharp and incredulous. I glance up at her from under lowered lashes, then set the bookdown on the table between us. She doesn’t look away. When she ran after seeing me bathe the kitchen floor in red, she was all fear and panic. Now, her chin tips up in defiance, and her eyes demand an answer.
“No,” I say. “I killed two people to save countless others. That’s what happens in war.”
She scoffs, her lips curling. “This isn’t a war. It’s a one-man killing spree. And I’m not going to be your accomplice.”
I lean back, crossing my arms over my chest, studying her like she’s a puzzle I’m still deciding whether to solve or smash.
“What do you think will happen to you when the police catch up to you?”
“They’d have to catch me first, darling.”
“They will,” she says evenly. “They always do. At least, when it comes to the bad guys.”
I almost let the words slip—the question I want to throw in her face about whether those missing children would get the same ‘justice’ she got as a girl. But I hold it back. No sense pushing her away when she’s already circling the truth. She’s too curious for her own good, and that curiosity is dangerous.
“You need to take off your rose-colored glasses, Lily,” I tell her. “Not everyone gets the justice they deserve. That’s why people like me exist.”
The hit lands. I see it in the way her throat works, in the way her gaze shifts like she’s trying not to remember something she’s spent years burying. She swallows it down, but I know the taste of that kind of bile. And the fact that she chose journalism—a profession built on digging where you’re told not to—only makes her more vulnerable. She’ll never stop asking questions. Which means she’ll never truly be safe.
“There’s more of you,” she says, her voice tightening, her face paling.
I say nothing. My silence tells her all she needs to know.
I rise from my seat, scoop up the red leather ledger, and slide it under my arm. It’ll take me weeks to go through every page, but that’s fine. This isn’t work I can hand off to anyone else.
“Why am I here?” she asks again, and my patience for that question is running thin. Lily is proving to be more trouble than I anticipated.
When I start to turn away, she moves fast, wrapping her fingers around my arm. I glance down at the hand holding me, then back to her eyes. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she peels her fingers away, one by one, until her hand drops to her side.
Good. She’s remembering something important.
I’m the kind of man who touches.
Not the kind who gets touched.
From across the garden,I watch her—framed perfectly in the window like a portrait that doesn’t belong in this ugly world. She’s leaning against the glass, eyes fixed on something far away while I pace with my phone pressed to my ear. There’s a glow about her, but under it, a restless hum. A flicker of boredom twists at her expression. I curse myself for not bringing her something to read. Something to distract her from the walls closing in.
When my call ends and the phone drops from my ear, the door creaks open. She steps outside, each of the three steps taken slowly, like she’s making sure I notice. Her cardigan is pulled tight over a plain T-shirt—armor she wraps around herself in place of steel. The way she clutches it tells me she’s gearing up for a conversation she’s been rehearsing in her head.
“I can’t just sit around doing nothing all day,” she says, her voice steady, her dark eyes catching sunlight until they glow.
