Epilogue
Max
Three Years Later
Max McKinnon was dead.
At least, the version of me that went on romantic kayak rides and shot arrows for fun. That version of me lurked in the shadows of Blackshear’s trees.
These days, I was the new Max.
A killer.
A lethal weapon.
A psychopath.
A monster.
All because of a girl. All because of her. My fucking wife.
“Hypnotize” boomed in my ears from the nano, the bass rattling my skull.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Fuck off!” I groaned, mainly to myself, my hand trembling as I wiped it over my mask. I was high out of my fucking mind. Was I really hearing those taps, or was I creating them again?
Tap, tap, tap.
“What!” I screamed, pushing myself up off the floor.
The cargo van lurched violently, tires screeching against the asphalt as we raced toward my new target.
“Shut the fucking music off,” Kate whispered in my ear through the headpiece. Her voice was a venomous hiss, cold and threatening, controlling my every move.
“Fine.” I ripped the nano’s earbuds out of my ears, a shudder running through me as silence slammed into my skull with oppressive weight.
“On my count,” Kate hissed in my ear. The van jerked to a stop. “Door. Out. Execute.”
By the time the van door slid open, the high had settled into a vicious, buzzing calm. Rain slapped the pavement.
The masked men shoved the bat into my hand, pointed toward the alley, and closed me out.
My target hunched over, his hands and feet zip-tied, soaked in sweat, whimpering in terror. He was primed for me, a broken figure.
Fuck.
I wanted a cigarette. I wasn’t really a smoker, mainly because it wrecked my body for baseball. But now, I did things the old Max would have never dared.
Like, kill people.
I raised the bat and slammed it into his face.
My target spit out a mixture of blood and, I think, a tooth, but it was hard to tell behind my mask. My breath fogged the inside of the lenses. If I hadn’t been so goddamn drugged up, I probably would’ve made more of an effort to cover my tracks.
But I was a twenty-two-year-old killer now. Four kills under my belt. I did what I was told, no questions asked.
I was born and bred a warrior for the Alliance.
I was so deep in this world, I didn’t know how to claw myself out. I had tried a couple of times. They beat the shit out of me. They electrocuted me once. That was fun. I pissed myself.
Not my finest moment.
But they always threatened to kill her every time I tried to run.
Again. And again. And again.
So, I took it. The pain. I obeyed. I listened. I executed.
They sent me the coordinates. I followed the orders. I was a perfect little serial killer. I hadn’t been Max in three years. I was just a conduit for a world of darkness, killing unknown men I knew nothing about because they told me they would hurt her.
Some would say I’d gone mad. Maybe I had.
“What are you fucking laughing at, you psychopath?” the man screamed from behind thick gurgles of blood.
Had I been laughing? Shit, I had.
My laughter died instantly. The only sound left in the alley was the dull pitter-patter of the rain.
“Are you going to kill me?” he sobbed.
I lifted the bat, rubbing the blood-soaked wood against my FBI jacket. They had upgraded me over the years. It was tactical now, bulletproof, knife-proof.
Everything I needed to be an actual psychopathic war animal.
The skull mask was the same, though. It helped me disappear. It helped me become the man behind it.
The Executioner.
That’s what they called me in the news, anyway. I was an A-list celebrity in Athens.
I had no idea who this guy was. The only thing I was given was a picture of him touching Mackenzie. He had forced himself on her at a club in Florida.
So naturally, he was a dead man to me.
“Please. Please! I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m a good guy!”
I lowered the bat and tapped it against the pavement.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Most days, I didn’t feel right in the head. If I wasn’t hallucinating Mackenzie, I was killing. I liked the feeling of swinging my bat and hitting a target.
Every guy I killed was a predator anyway. After Blackshear, it felt like the only way to bleed out the trauma. I had held back too much then. I knew better now.
Did I hate that I had somehow become the very thing Mackenzie was terrified of? Her dad.
Yeah. It stung to think about. I’d spent years trying to protect her, and it turned out it was a complete waste of my time. In the end, she was always going to hate me, and I was always going to become a monster.
For the first two years after I was taken, after I lost Mackenzie, I obsessed over her. I checked the news. Hacked accounts. Drove past places we had been together, hoping maybe, just maybe, she’d be there.
I memorized every conversation. Every kiss. Every breath she ever gave. And I bled them into my nightmares. Every single fucking day.
After Jackson’s death, everything changed. I only remember flashes. The swing. His blood. Then, I woke up in my room with no real memory of how far I had gone.
They told me she would be killed. My parents would be killed.
So, I played along.
Until I didn’t want to anymore.
One afternoon, they cornered me on campus, dragged me into a van, and took me to a warehouse with barred windows on the outskirts of town. It happened so fast I barely felt it, but the pain seared my skin for weeks afterward.
They had branded me with a cattle prod—a deep, thirteen-pronged star. Right over my heart.
They had claimed me.
I was an Alliance creation now.
The cold band of my wedding ring scraped against my chest beneath the tactical vest. It was the last tether to the man I used to be.
I’d tried to get rid of it. Believe me, I had.
But even buried in a drawer, it mocked me. I still couldn’t let her go, even though I fucking hated Mackenzie McKinnon.
My wife.
The fucking bane of my existence.
I didn’t want her dead. I wasn’t a total sociopath.
But I wanted her to hurt.
I hated her for not saying goodbye. For moving on without me. For breaking me. For leaving me alive with a heart that wouldn’t stop beating her name.
It took me three years. Three fucking years to cage the love that owned me.
And I did it.
Or at least, I thought I had.
I could still feel the love for her locked deep inside me, buried by the hatred that now consumed me. The fucking rage.
She was the only thing that kept me moving through those years.
But grief has a way of rotting you.
And I was coming for her.
I looked down at the coughing mess at my feet. Rain blurred my vision, burning as it slid into my eyes. He was nearly blind from the blood in his eyes, so he wouldn’t notice who I was. Right?
I slid the mask off my face and exhaled into the heavy, wet air. It clung to my lungs like it didn’t want to leave. I forced myself to really look at my victim.
Was I as high as I thought, or did I actually know this guy?
I looked again. Through the blood and spit smeared across his face, past the swelling and the streaks of red, I still knew him.
“Rhett?”