64 - Monty
64
Monty
—
My hands fist so tightly on my naked lap that my knuckles crack.
The cabin reeks with the stench of decay despite Rhett’s assurances that the bodies don’t stink. They do. It’s not a smell that lingers in the air but one that seeps into the soul. The kind of stink that rots the living from the inside out.
Frankie lies on the table before me, her eyes wide and body rigid with that damn drug pumping through her veins. She’s supposed to be paralyzed, supposed to be helpless.
Yet I saw it. Just a twitch, but it was there. Her lips moved. She said something, but I didn’t understand it.
In my periphery, Wolf sits between Kody and Leo. His head lolls on his shoulders, his hair dangling in his face. He looks dead.
But he’s not.
My heart stutters, skipping beats as I try to wrap my mind around it. My son, who I thought I’d never meet, is here, breathing.
Knowing he’s alive but not safe is a cruel twist of fate. I’ve been on a roller coaster since I saw him, thinking I’d lost him only to find out he’s still lives.
The whirlwind of emotions hitting me one after another leaves me reeling and out of breath. But my expression remains composed, my hands frozen on my lap.
Kody has the knife now. I don’t know what he’ll do with it, but he’s smart. Smart enough to know he can’t make a move as long as Rhett holds that gun.
I just need to keep Rhett talking. Keep him distracted. Get answers.
He drones on in a sickening tone, vibrating with pride and madness as he explains everything that led up to this moment, how he meticulously planned it all, and how he orchestrated every move, with a detachment that makes my skin crawl.
He’s in control, or so he thinks. He doesn’t know Kody. He doesn’t know what’s coming.
“I saw Frankie first.” He reaches out and strokes her hair, testing our willpower.
All three of us tense, ready to lunge across the table and drag the chairs with us.
Unable to hold back, Leo releases a dark, guttural sound.
“Denver promised he would help me take her.” He scowls. “He said he would help me keep her without getting caught.”
“You didn’t think to ask her out on a date?” I growl. “Try to woo her the old-fashioned way?”
“She wasn’t interested. She was focused on her career and put me in the friend zone.”
“You told her you were gay,” Leo spits, seething.
“I never told her that. She assumed, and I let her believe it. I wanted more than a one-night stand, and that’s all she was willing to give anyone. Just one night.”
“Until me.” I meet her eyes.
She blinks once. Yes.
My chest fucking aches.
“You’re the reason Denver and I had a falling out,” Rhett says. “He mentored me for years. I no longer needed to collect flight logs from Alvis. Denver came to me on his own whenever he was in Anchorage. He taught me how to strategize, engineer bombs, utilize drones and spyware, and monitor Frankie undetected. He convinced me to be patient, to wait for the right moment. He promised that when the time was right, he would give me the coordinates to the cabin. He promised I could bring Frankie here, and we would have a life together.”
“A life together? You intended to imprison her.” My pulse accelerates, and my breathing turns shallow. “Just like you’re doing now.”
“I’m doing this for her.” Rhett glowers. “She’ll see that with time.”
Kody loosens a harsh, inhuman sound. “Denver said the same thing.”
“Denver was a liar. He wanted to ruin Montgomery’s life and told me that if I helped her meet him, he would help me rip her away, break Montgomery’s heart, and satisfy both our end goals. Then she would be mine.”
Instead, Denver kept her for himself.
For Leo, Kody, and Wolf.
To use her in a twisted bargain with the devil.
“You came in with a dislocated kneecap.” Rhett glares at me. “I assigned Frankie to you because I thought Denver would keep his word. For the next year, I didn’t think you had a chance with her. Then you did. You and Frankie became inseparable, got married, and Denver cut ties with me. Just like that. I couldn’t find him. I had stopped collecting the flight logs from Alvis and no longer had that connection. Denver evaded me. Used me. He saw me as a threat.”
He saw you as the unhinged serial killer that you are, Dr. Howell.
Denver despised violence unless he was the one wielding it. He knew what Rhett would do to her. In his sick way, Denver protected her by bringing her to Hoss.
The crazy shit he spewed in his video is starting to make sense.
Look around you. Is your admirer there now? Watching? You were safe with me in the hills. Out here, no hills can save you.
“How did you find this cabin?” I ask.
“When Sirena started helping you search for Frankie, I contacted her anonymously and offered her more money than she could refuse. When she clicked on the link to receive the payment, it downloaded spyware to her phone. That enabled me to monitor your search every step of the way.”
“Why did you return the flight logs and the book of Pushkin poems to Kodiak Island?” I grit my teeth.
“Your search went stale. I knew you would eventually look there and wanted to lead you to Alvis Duncan. Of course, I had to do it in a way that didn’t feel suspicious.” He pauses to squint at the illuminated chandelier over the table. “The blueprints for the cabin included instructions for the hydroelectric generator. I kept those instructions. That’s how I got the power back on.”
“Was it a missing circuit board?” Leo straightens.
“I’ll never tell.” He winks.
“Did you tell Sirena where to look for clues when we were searching Rurik’s estate?” I ask.
“I may have given her a little direction.”
That lying, traitorous bitch.
“Why did you tell her to seduce me?” I flex my hands.
“To test your loyalties. There’s something about you.” Rhett tips his head, studying all of us. “Something about the Strakh family that fascinates me. You’re resilient, faithful, and extraordinarily strong, physically and mentally. I tried to break you apart with Sirena’s propositions. I told her to seduce all of you.” He glances at her corpse. “She was a beautiful woman, yet none of you surrendered. Not a weak bone among you. It’s impressive.”
Jesus fucking Christ. He wants to be part of this family. I see it in his crazed eyes. Talk about hero worship. I get the feeling we’re here because he wants to take Denver’s place and rule over us in these fucking hills.
“How did you find the cabin?” I ask again.
“I searched for it, same as you. While you and Sirena spent months flying over the Interior, I told her where to look, taking you off course while I narrowed down the grid. I found it the week Denver died. I was here when Leonid and Kodiak dragged Denver’s body out into the tundra. I collected his remains the same day I pulled Wolf from the river.”
He goes on to boast about his bravery in the arctic climate and the difficulty in landing a bush plane in torrential snow.
“Wolf,” I say, cutting through his monologue. “Where has he been?”
He smiles. A twisted, self-satisfied smile that makes me want to saw his lips off his face with a dull knife. “That’s where Alvis Duncan fits in.”
My gaze shifts to the dead man across the table, and my stomach drops to my feet.
“That’s right.” Rhett pushes the gun against Frankie’s head. “When you went to Whittier to interrogate Alvis, he was holding Wolfson in an old outbuilding on another property not far away. I knew I could trust Alvis. He collected those flight logs for decades, took money from a Russian mobster, and never told a soul. He feared for his family, and I put that same fear in him when I left Wolf in his care for ten months. He and Thea fed Wolfson and kept him safe. They also held Denver’s body for me in one of their freezers.” His smile fades, replaced by something darker, more sinister. “He was a loose end. You know how it is. I had to deal with that when I collected Denver and Wolf.”
I want to roar, rage, leap across this table, and annihilate him. I can’t stay still. The chair feels like it’s confining me, suffocating me. I need to move, to act, to destroy.
I glance at Kody, and he meets my gaze, his expression broody and relaxed. But his eyes. The fire in them blazes with brutality.
“You’re insane.” I return to Rhett, my voice guttural. “You’ve done all this, killed all these people, for what? Some twisted sense of control? You think this makes you powerful?”
“It’s not about power. It’s about order. You and your family…you’re chaos. You make a mess of everything. Someone had to bring us all together.”
“Is that why we’re all here? To be together?” I feel lightheaded. Queasy. Anxious .
“If you’re willing.” Rhett turns his attention to Leo and Kody. “After I saved Wolf, I returned to check on you.”
“We saw you.” Leo hisses a breath past his teeth. “We built an SOS signal.”
“I know. But you were exactly where I wanted you. I went back to retrieve Monty. I was going to bring you all here. But I got sidetracked with the cardiac program at the hospital. It was my alibi for all the traveling, but I still had to run the damn thing.”
“So you just left us here to die?” Kody snarls.
“You didn’t die. You figured out how to fly. That really fucked up my plans.” Rhett takes a breath. “I didn’t expect Denver to warn you about me, either. That fucking riddle…it delayed this by five months. You locked down security and didn’t leave the island. And when you did, you were always surrounded by guards. I had to get creative.”
He knows about Denver’s riddle, our security, every detail of our lives because he’s been watching and listening through Frankie’s phone.
“When did you put spyware on her phone?” I ask.
“When I sent her the information for Melanie Stokes.”
Fuck.
That was the first fucking week.
“We searched for this cabin.” Leo clenches his jaw. “With Sirena. Did you tell her where to search? Or where not to search?”
“Yes.” Rhett’s smile returns, cold and calculating, as he looks around the kitchen. “I was remodeling. I couldn’t have you finding it. Not until you were all together. I encouraged Frankie to unite the three of you. As much as I want her for myself, let’s face it. I don’t know these hills. I can’t survive here and keep her safe without you. But the six of us together? We’ll be one big happy family.”
He’s insane. Certifiable. Fucking nuts.
And Denver knew it.
Not all wounds bleed. Not all scars show. Some live beneath bones, cold and alone. In the chambers of frost, pain is my art.
Denver knew he scarred this man irrevocably. He knew enough not to trust him. That’s why he cut ties with him.
Denver created a monster more evil than himself.
“How did you text Frankie while sitting beside her on the yacht?” Leo asks.
“I scheduled it through a third-party service, using a fake number.” Rhett wets his lips. “When I called her, I used another service to create the computerized voice.”
“The phrase you used…” Kody inhales. “It sounded like something Wolf would say.”
“That was intentional. I spent some time with Wolfson over the past ten months. He loves to quote movies. His humor is dry and inappropriate. He’s hilarious.” Rhett rakes his eyes over Wolf, making my entire body clench. “I led you to consider him a suspect to keep you from looking in my direction.”
“Wolf was never a suspect,” I snap. “But everyone else was, including you.”
“Mm. I wasn’t at the top of your list. Don’t forget. I heard most of your conversations.”
“Why would you risk your career and everything you’ve worked for to do this?” I ask.
“ This is what I worked for. This is what I want. To unify the Strakhs and become part of your family. I’ll lead you better than Denver did. I’m smarter and kinder. I killed for you.” He nods at the row of corpses. “I waited for you to come together. I want you all to see that this is for the best. You’ll thank me when it’s over.”
He’s wrong. I’ll never thank him. But I’ll make sure he pays for every life he’s taken, every horror he’s inflicted on Frankie. I’ll make sure he knows exactly who he’s dealing with.
Because this family, this chaos he thinks he’s controlling, we don’t go down easy. We fight, and we win.
“Here’s how this will go.” Rhett stands and pulls three syringes from his pocket. The gun doesn’t waver in his hand as he tosses the hypodermic needles onto the table in front of Leo. “This is the same paralytic I gave Frankie. Inject it into your arms. It’s just one dose. It’ll wear off in fifteen minutes.”
My breath hitches. He can’t be serious. But the look in his eyes tells me he’s deadly serious.
Leo growls, the sound vibrating in his chest.
Fifteen minutes is a long time in hell. What does Rhett have planned during that time?
“I’m not injecting myself with that,” I say, my voice hard as steel.
I won’t make myself helpless. Fuck that.
“You don’t get to decide.” Rhett’s expression darkens, his calm demeanor cracking. “You do it, or she dies. You all die.”
The gun presses harder into Frankie’s head, and a vise clamps around my lungs.
Why would he kill us after spending all this time collecting us?
I shift my eyes along the row of corpses on the other side of the table.
He’s a serial killer.
If he doesn’t kill us today. He’ll kill us, eventually.
My mind spins, trying to find a way out. I’m not about to make myself vulnerable like that. Not with Frankie’s life hanging by a thread.
I can’t let this happen. We can’t give him what he wants.
Before I can react, Leo reaches for the syringes and passes them down the table. “We’ll do it.”
Kody doesn’t say a word, just grabs a needle and removes the cap. His eyes flick to mine, and in that brief glance, I see something. A message. A plan. But I can’t decipher it. My mind is too clouded by fear, by the fury steaming from my ears.
“We want her to live,” he says. “Trust me.”
“You have two seconds to plunge those needles before I squeeze the trigger.” Rhett meets my eyes.
I’ve never been one to back down, never been one to surrender control.
As I watch a stream of tears track down Frankie’s temple, I know I don’t have a choice. If I don’t do this, she’s dead. We’re all dead.
Trust me.
I trust Kody and Leo with my life. And hers.
My pulse thunders as I snatch the syringe and flick off the cap.