Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Bennett
T he tracks were easy enough to follow . . . at first. Somewhere along the way, our prey realized we were tracking him, and he got a little smarter. His footprints eventually doubled back on themselves, and we lost him altogether. Now we’re standing in the middle of the woods without a clue in sight.
Maverick recommended we head back, but Cat and Eve argued that we still have a few hours of daylight left. He argued that it was lunchtime and he was hungry. In the end, the girls won.
“Maybe we should backtrack and look at the treetops,” Cat suggests. “He might have gone to higher ground. That’s what I would do if someone were hunting me.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to backtrack,” Eve says as she looks up.
We follow her gaze, and there, ten feet above our heads and roughly the same distance to our left, our target clings to a thin pine trunk and stares at us. His mouth opens, and he yells something, but we can’t understand him.
Four sets of boots cut a path through the snow as we race to the bottom of that tree. The Cattle tries to climb higher, but he’s losing his battle with gravity and physics.
I pull the dart gun from my shoulder, then ready a tranq dart. “He might die from the fall,” I say to the group. “Are we in agreement that if that happens, it’s not a fucking kill-block?”
“Yes, Bennett,” Eve says. “Now that I know what’s up, a lot of strange things make sense. Like that day in the rec room. You were covering for her, weren’t you?”
I don’t respond. I just steady my hand as I aim at the quivering red buttocks now twenty feet above me.
Fwoop !
The dart flies out of the chamber, the red-feathered end fluttering in the breeze until the needle finds its mark. The Cattle reaches back with one hand and pulls the dart from his ass cheek, but the damage is already done. The tranquilizer entered his body at the moment of impact, and now we just have to wait.
We lower our weapons and take a seat at the bases of some of the nearby pines, making sure to leave enough space for the asshole to fall without crushing any of us. The man doesn’t look terribly big, but any amount of weight could be painful when it falls from that height.
“Wait a minute,” Eve says. “If Cat’s weapon is a crossbow, why doesn’t she just shoot him now? She doesn’t need close combat.”
“Cat is a special killer,” I say. “She needs a little foreplay before she can commit the act.”
“Are you two sure you don’t want us to give you some privacy?” Maverick shifts uneasily.
“Not that kind of foreplay,” Cat says. “I just need to know what they did. I have to get mad.”
Eve peers skyward. “The color of his jumpsuit isn’t enough?”
“No, I think I get it,” I say. “We hear about their crimes so often that the blanket terms used to describe them don’t carry the same weight. We’re desensitized. Sexual assault is awful, but the term doesn’t make you feel awful enough. Hearing about the crime, however? The victim’s name? It makes it?—”
A red blur barrels from the sky, heading toward the snowy earth and silencing my voice. The man doesn’t even scream as he collides with the ground, but Cat, Eve, and Maverick do. Cat nearly leaps into my lap.
The figure on the ground coughs, then tries to roll to his side. His eyes nearly bulge from his head as realization dawns on him. “My legs! My legs! I can’t feel anything below my chest!”
He’s bent in half at the waist, and his feet rest near his head. It’s probably good that he can’t feel his legs. The unnatural angles they’re twisted into can’t feel great. Not even the heavy tranquilizers can cut through his panic.
“Tell us about your crimes, jackass,” I say as I step near him. “What did you do?”
He licks his lips, covering them in blood. One side of his tongue is missing, likely bitten off on impact. “She asked for it, man. She wanted it. The bitch let me buy her five drinks, and she was hanging all over me. I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Cat nudges me out of the way and steps closer. She squats down and looks into his face. “You’re dying. If we leave you here, you’ll suffer for hours, but you will die. I’m giving you a chance to confess your sins and receive a more merciful end.”
“Confess . . . confess my sins? What the fuck are you? The Grim Reaper?” The man pushes his arms out to his sides to gain traction to pull away. That’s when he discovers his mangled legs. “Oh, fuck! I’m dying. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going?—”
I pull back my leg and send the steel toe of my boot into his jaw. His head rocks to the side, and he shuts up.
“You killed him,” Eve says, but then the man groans again.
Cat turns his face toward hers, but his unfocused eyes are concerning. I didn’t push him through death’s doorway, but I brought him right to the threshold.
“He hurt women, kitten,” I say. “Look at his neck. He has tattoos of flowers with very few petals. There’s a meaning there, I’m sure.”
“The bitches who accused me of rape,” the man gargles through a mouthful of blood. He drops his head to the side and spits, but his words are still slurred. “They wanted it. All three of them. The first two juries got it right. They let me go.”
“Cat, you have about three seconds before I take the kill myself,” Eve grits out behind us.
Unfazed by Eve’s warning, Cat grips the man’s collar and stares into his unseeing eyes. “What were their names?”
“What does it matter? They aren’t the victims. I am!” He spits into Cat’s face, and I’ve had all I can stand.
I nudge Cat out of the way and grip the man’s right arm. Maverick has the same idea, because he grabs the man’s left arm, and together, we hoist him into what would have been a standing position if his legs didn’t dangle below him as they do.
“Kitten, load that crossbow and nail him to the tree by his wrists.”
Cat sets to work on her task, then sends a bolt straight through his lower wrist. He yowls and tries to jerk his arm free, which only intensifies the pain.
“Other side too,” I tell her.
“No, no more!” the man squeals.
It’s music to my fucking ears.
Maverick holds his wriggling arm in place as Cat fires another bolt and pins him to the tree. We all take a step back to admire our pseudo-crucifixion, and as the man screams and throws his head from side to side, two black birds join us. I don’t know if they’re ravens or crows, but either way, they’re harbingers of death.
The bolder of the two birds hops closer, then flutters upward to perch on the man’s head. It cocks its head and peers down at the blood around the man’s mouth before lowering his beak and pecking his upper lip.
“Ow! Fuck!” the man screams, and the four of us laugh.
“Go on, little bird friend,” Cat says to the more timid of the two. “We won’t let the big asshole harm you. Get yourself a strip of flesh.”
Eve chuckles. “You’re like a Disney princess, only darker.”
The little bird hops forward, then joins its friend. It clings to the red jumpsuit and pecks at the blood dribbling down the man’s neck. After a few well-placed jabs, the bird tears off a bit of meat and tips back its head to swallow the chunk. All the while, the man keeps screaming.
“I think our work here is done,” Cat says. “Let’s allow the birds to finish him off. It’s cold, and they’re hungry.”
I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her against my side. “If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Maverick and Eve agree, and we set off again.
The four of us hunt until dark. Cat surprises all of us when she tags a woman in a pink jumpsuit, proving me wrong about her inability to hit a moving target weaving through trees. Eve finished her off with a blade. Maverick and I don’t end up with a kill, but that’s okay. We’ve had more than the girls probably ever will, considering we’re contract killers.
Well, I was a contract killer. I don’t know what I’ll do when we get back from the trip.
“What’s bugging you?” Cat whispers as we make our way back to the starting area. Maverick and Eve walk a few feet ahead of us, arguing over who gets to hold the compass.
I don’t really want to talk to Cat about my employment woes. A man without a job isn’t exactly sexy. I also don’t want to give anyone ammo. Who could encourage their friend to date a man who can’t even keep a roof over his sickly mother’s head?
So I smile down at Cat and shake my head. “Nothing at all, kitten. I’m just thinking about the masquerade tonight.”
“Oh, shit!” Eve says, and she and Maverick stop walking so that we can catch up. “I completely forgot that was tonight. How will you two manage this . . . whatever this is?”
“I have no idea,” Cat says. She hooks her arm within Eve’s, and Maverick matches my stride as we all keep walking. “I hadn’t really thought about it. Maverick’s almost a foot taller than Bennett, so there’s no chance he can pull off a switcheroo with everyone that close.”
“Kindra has something planned for tonight, too, but she won’t tell me what,” Eve says.
“Yeah, she mentioned something to me,” Maverick adds. “She wanted to make sure Cat and I matched.”
“Ow!” Cat snatches her hand from mine, and only then do I realize I was squeezing it.
“Sorry,” I say as I take her hand in mine again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just hard to stomach . . .”
Eve glances at me. “Wow, you really do have it bad.”
Yeah, I do.
“Maybe we could break up,” Cat says. “At the ball, I can dump Maverick and say we’re better as friends. Then I can go to my room and hang out with Bennett.”
“And miss the entire ball?” Eve asks.
“Yeah,” Cat and I say in unison. After all the murder, we clearly have the same thing on our minds: a hot shower and hot sex.
“Not to be that guy,” Maverick says, “but Kindra and Ezra put a lot of work into the ball. I think you guys should at least attend.”
“I hate to admit it, but he’s right. Ezra won’t give a shit either way, but Kindra would want you there.” I brush the hair away from her eyes so that she can see how serious I am. “I’ll keep it together for you, and if seeing you and Maverick together gets to be too much, I’ll head back to your room and hang out with your stupid cat until you’re finished at the ball.”
“Maybe it won’t come to that,” Eve says. “We mainly just need to keep Kindra occupied. I can handle that, and I’m sure Ezra?—”
I shake my head. “Ezra wants no part in any scheming, and if you knew Kindra a little better, you wouldn’t either.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone has been pissed at me.” Eve shrugs. “But I don’t think Kindra will react how everyone anticipates. Maverick, are you in?” She faces him.
“I’m flying straight to Texas from here, so it won’t matter if Kindra is pissed at me,” Maverick says.
“And Rosie will help too,” Cat adds. “Grim does whatever she commands, so that puts two more people on our side.”
When they all put it like that, maybe it is doable.
“Cat, I have an idea!” Eve says, but before she can explain, we enter the clearing at the start of the hunting grounds. She leans closer to Cat, whispers something in her ear, then runs over to Kindra and Ezra, who stand by the armory.
A smile spreads across Cat’s face, and she looks up at me. “Pick me up at Eve’s room an hour before the party. Don’t be late.”
Before I can ask any questions, she races off to greet her friend.