Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Maverick
W ith a gleeful grin, Jim raises the bullhorn in his hand as the first contestants race toward the bellowing Cattle.
“Station one!” he yells, not realizing that he doesn’t need to shout into a device that is literally made to amplify your voice.
Feedback screams through the speaker, and the racing Sinners cover their ears.
“Keep running!” Aven shouts.
Jim jiggles the bullhorn, then raises it again. “Sorry! Station one, you must use the shovel to dig a pit. You must use the pail to fill your pit with water, then drown your Cattle. You may not use anything else, and you must work alone.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, how?” Cat screams as she drops to her knees and begins digging.
I get what she’s saying, though. She weighs maybe as much as her Cattle’s left quad. If she can even dig the hole deep enough, how will she ever get his head into it?
As she scoops sand, she speaks with the man on his knees beside her. Unfortunately, he isn’t speaking back, which is going to make this problem even greater. She’s the Confessor. If he won’t talk, she can’t kill.
“Are we allowed to talk to our teammates?” Frankie yells toward Jim.
He raises the bullhorn once more. “You may talk to your team, but be mindful! Everyone else will hear whatever you say because you may not cross the red line until it’s time to run to your station!”
“Cat, just . . . keep digging!” she screams.
I nibble my thumbnail and look at her Cattle. He stares out at the ocean, as if he isn’t at all bothered by what’s happening around him. Stepping to the side, I spot the band on his wrist. It’s red.
Okay, sexual crime. The victim was an adult.
Studying his exposed skin, I spy Jesus’ crying face peeking from the top of his t-shirt. He doesn’t exactly strike me as the religious type, what with the contrasting satanic imagery scrawled over his right hand, so I can only assume someone in his life is. Probably his mother.
“How did she feel when she found out her baby boy was a rapist?” Frankie yells toward the man as Cat continues to dig. She figured it out as quickly as I did, though that’s no surprise, given her career choice. And fuck, she was made for this.
The man’s head twitches to the side, but he continues staring at the ocean.
“Did she cry?” I add, hoping to goad him into a response. “I bet you broke your mama’s soul when she saw?—”
“Shut your mouth!” the Cattle screams. He moves to charge toward me, but a chain hidden in the sand holds him back. As it snatches taut, he falls onto his face.
Frankie smirks at him. “I’d tell you to come shut it for me, but you seem a little...tied up.”
The girls giggle in their line, and I’m pleased when I look up and see Frankie smiling at me. Hopefully she can forgive me for my sour mood earlier. My stance hasn’t changed, but my approach has. My mother always said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Frankie isn’t a fly any more than she’s a serial killer, but I hope the principle still applies.
I also hope that when she’s faced with the decision to end someone’s life, she hesitates.
That’s all I need. If she gets to her station and pauses for even a second, I’ll keep clinging to the shred of hope that I can save her from herself.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Bennett whispers. “Don’t help them.”
I shrug him off and turn my attention back to the competition. Cat is making good progress with her sand hole, but Ezra has pulled pretty far ahead of her. He’s already on his third trip to the ocean. Peering down the line, I see that everyone else is miles behind.
Grim and Rosie scream from the sidelines as their brain-cell-deficient teammate attempts to drown their Cattle with the bucket.
That’s it. Just the bucket filled with water.
Despite twelve trips to the ocean and back, their teammate still hasn’t realized that the water just falls out every time it’s tipped over the Cattle’s head.
It doesn’t help that Grim screams in German, and poor Rosie’s screams can’t be heard by anyone but Grim.
In the next lane, Ice Pick sits on his ass, dragging the shovel through the dirt and crying. His team walked off a few seconds ago, and I don’t think he noticed. I guess he’s taking the Amber situation harder than we realized.
I glance back at Ezra and Cat. It’ll be a minute before I need to run for my station. Frankie is locked in, watching as Cat hauls bucket after bucket to the slanted pit she’s dug. She should be fine for a moment.
“Hey, I’ll be right back,” I say to Bennett.
He waves me off, too focused on the event to spare me two seconds of his attention.
Shaking my head, I hurry over to Ice Pick. I squat beside him and place a hand on his shoulder. “Ice, talk to me, man.”
He blinks and swipes his hands over his eyes, then runs his hairy forearm under his nose. When he finally realizes it’s me, he smiles. “Oh, hey. Sorry I lost it for the team. I just...”
His lower lip quivers, and I haven’t been this tempted to comfort a grown man in my entire life.
Oh . . . fuck what the guys think .
I lean forward and pull Ice Pick in for a hug. I regret it when I take a breath in, but that’s okay. He’s sad, and sometimes it’s tough to shower when we’re sad.
Deodorant would have been nice, but?—
“Ice, I’m sorry we killed your girlfriend.” I pat his back and try to think of something more eloquent to say. “I mean, we didn’t kill her. But we kind of set it up so that you would want to kill her.”
Okay, that sounded better in my head, but I’m pretty sure it only made things worse. His shoulders shake as he starts to cry. Loudly.
I glance around to see if anyone has noticed, but each lane is hyper-focused on their own team. Even Ice Pick’s ex-teammates have gathered near Jim to root for their favorites.
Grim’s teammate has finally started digging a hole, and Ezra has damn near drowned his Cattle. The Confessor isn’t far behind him. Cat’s sloped design proves genius, and she’s able to slide her squirming Cattle down the sandy bank until his nose and mouth dip below the water.
When Ice Pick finally pulls back to take a breath, I see that he left a large snot stain on my shirt. Lovely. He swipes it with his hand and apologizes.
“It’s fine, but I need to get back to my team.
Come with me, okay?” I get to my feet and dust the sand from my knees, then reach out for him.
I’m surprised when he slips his hand in mine and smiles as he allows me to help him stand.
“You’ll be all right. It doesn’t feel like it right now, but you will.
Just...if you ever need someone to talk to, come to me. Yeah?”
Ice Pick chuckles and eases his hand out of mine. “Don’t go getting mushy on me, kid.” He looks at me and sobers. “But yeah. If I ever need someone to talk to, it’ll be you.”
We turn to walk back to the group and nearly bump into Frankie.
“Sorry,” she whispers, and when I see that adorably sheepish smirk, I almost believe she is.
“I’ll meet you over there,” I tell Ice Pick. “Go stand with Aven.”
Ice Pick nods, swiping the residual tears from his eyes as he hurries to join the boys.
“That was incredibly sweet,” Frankie says as she steps into me. “It’s kind of hot to see you nurture someone’s brokenness after the way you broke me last night.”
A breeze kicks up and sends her hair around her face. She laughs and brushes it away, and I’m stunned by how beautiful she is. I’m so taken aback that I can’t even form words.
She glances over her shoulder. “Cat’s nearly done, and Aven’s already running for the bat. Maybe we should get back to it.”
I place my fingers under her chin and gently force her to look at me. “And you’re certain this is what you want to do?”
“Are you trying to talk me out of it again?”
“No, if you want to do it, I won’t fight you on it.”
Momentary panic flits through her eyes. “Do you plan to punish me later by not punishing me at all if I go through with it?”
A laugh bursts out of me. I can’t help it.
She’s genuinely worried I won’t toss her around if she commits to the game.
“Sweetheart, punishing you in that way would only be a punishment to myself. My concern is only for you and what this could do to you on a mental level. Just...Just remember that you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.
If you get to your station and have second thoughts, just?—”
Bullhorn feedback cuts off the end of my sentence, as well as my train of thought.
“At station two, you must place your forehead on the upright bat and spin fifty times!” Jim screeches.
“Once you’ve completed the appropriate amount of revolutions, you may snatch up the bat and use it to beat your Cattle senseless! ”
“We gotta get back in line,” Frankie says.
She stands on tiptoes and places a soft kiss on my lips.
“Just trust me, Maverick. I’ll do what’s best for me, even if that means walking away from the kill.
I just need to know that my decision won’t change how you feel about me, regardless of the outcome. ”
I could end it all here. As she looks up at me with those crystal-blue eyes, I can see that telling her it would change how I feel would be enough to stop her madness.
But I have to be honest with her.
And myself.
“Nothing will change how I feel about you,” I admit. “I don’t know what this is, but I’m not ready to stop exploring what it could be. Your profession doesn’t matter to me. I just don’t want you to wake up one day and resent me for not stopping you.”
“Sometimes it has to be enough to know you tried.” She shrugs her shoulders.
“I’m not an easy woman to get along with, and it’s partly because I’m stubborn.
At my age, I’m pretty set in my ways. If I want to do something, I do it, and you can’t stop me.
That’s the entire reason my division wants me dead. ”
“Because you forced your way into male spaces?”
She shakes her head. “No, not male spaces so much as spaces I really don’t belong in. I see that now. I wasn’t cut out for the job, and King knew it. He blocked every attempt I made to get into his castle, but nepotism won the day.”
“I thought your mother didn’t want you in this line of work?”
“She didn’t, but remember what I said about being really stubborn? Yeah. I’m pretty sure she pulled the strings just to shut me up.”
“Frankie, it’s almost time!” Eve yells toward us.
We glance down the lanes. Blood coats the sand as Aven raises and lowers the bat on his Cattle’s head. His victim is clearly dead, but he’s lost to the violence. Kindra, on the other hand, stands patiently beside her Cattle as one of the crew checks for a pulse.
“Shit,” Frankie says. “I gotta get over there. We’ll continue this later.”
She stands on tiptoes and gives my cheek another peck before hurrying back to Eve’s side.
Just like that, hope evaporates from my heart.
There will be no hesitation on Frankie’s part.
I can tell that much from the determined way she stares down the lane, practically raring to rush across the sand and make a kill.
As I stare down the lane, I can only think one thing: I have to save Frankie before she reaches the point of no return.
We’re approaching that deadline, but I still have time.
Two more nights, to be exact. When Frankie leaves this ship, she’ll do so with her head on straight, even if that means I have to rip out my heart to make it happen.