Chapter Twenty-Nine – Tristan
He took her out of town. By the look of it, they’re on some hiking trail—but all trails around here close at dusk according to Wolf.
Wolf. The only thing stopping me from wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing the life out of him is the fact that he sewed in tiny trackers into all of Mabel’s shoes; without that, we wouldn’t know where to go.
This is a set-up. A fucking test. I know it is. When it comes to Wolf, it’s not surprising. What I don’t quite get is which outcome he wants to see. Does he want me to unleash the Cobra again? Does he want me to hold it back?
Or maybe the asshole just wants to see what I’d do if I lose Mabel.
A moot possibility, because I refuse to lose her.
The GPS tracker on Wolf’s phone blinks; a red dot in a sea of white on the screen that lights up the darkness inside the vehicle. I can’t take my eyes off it as we drive along. The red dot stopped moving a bit ago; I just hope to God it doesn’t mean she’s dead.
Mabel brought me back to life. She took my corpse and breathed life into my lungs once more. I don’t think I could go on without her. She’s everything to me. I need her more than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire fucking life.
I will not lose her.
The road is somewhat winding; Wolf can only speed so much in the pitch-blackness without putting us in danger. We don’t come across any other cars.
“If I remember correctly, there’s a trailhead a mile or so away. If I have to guess, that’s where he must’ve parked,” Wolf remarks dryly, sounding totally uninterested in the current situation. “It does appear that he took her onto a trail, though. It might take a bit to reach them—”
My eyes are glued to the phone screen, my attention so zeroed in on that electronic device that I hardly hear what he’s saying. The red dot blinks, now directly to our right. I can’t tell just by that how far off the road they are, but it doesn’t matter. I yell, “Stop the car!”
Wolf hits the brakes, and the car rolls to a halt.
“I’m going for her,” I say, halfway out of the car already.
Wolf may nod; I don’t know for sure, since I’m not looking at him. “I’ll drive to the trailhead.” By the time he finishes that sentence, I’m already climbing up the short rocky cliff that the road cut into.
My eyes aren’t as used to the darkness as they should be; staring at Wolf’s phone without blinking didn’t help—but I don’t let that stop me from rushing through the thick woods. The trees are mostly pine, the air around me thick with their scent.
If I don’t reach her in time, I’m going to kill the asshole that took her and then I’m going to kill Wolf.
Though in reality it’s probably only a few minutes, it feels like I spend an eternity zipping through the darkened forest with nothing but shreds of moonlight guiding my way. I haven’t moved like this in a long time; if the situation was different, it’d be a welcome change to how I normally spend my time in that mansion. Like picking up a long-forgotten hobby after neglecting it for years.
Except for me it hasn’t been years, so it comes back to me all too easily.
Becoming the shadow. Moving quickly and far more quietly than my surroundings should allow. Almost otherworldly. A man pushed to become the hunter once more, a man who can see only red and who craves the vengeance that can only come with death.
I am death. I am its right hand. I have delivered countless people to its embrace throughout my life—and it looks like tonight I will deliver at least one more man to oblivion.
In the distance, I hear voices, and I immediately slow down so as to not make a sound as I creep closer. A man’s voice mixed with Mabel’s, and the second I recognize her voice, something inside me twists.
Still alive. Thank fuck, but it’s too early to be relieved. I need to separate her from her captor, and then I need to deliver a swift, cold kind of justice.
As I get closer, sticking to the trees, I can now discern what they’re saying.
The man’s voice: “No? What the fuck do you mean, no? If I say to run, you’re going to run—”
Then Mabel’s: “No. I’m not going to run. If you want to kill me, then you’re going to do it right now, and you’re going to have to look at my face while you do it—not my back.” Her words shock me; I’ve never heard her sound so firm before. I would be proud of her, if the situation was literally anything else.
But this? Not the time to stand her ground.
I peer around the tree I’m behind and see that they’re ten feet away now. My eyes have finally gotten used to the darkness of the night, so I can see the hunting rifle the man carries. With only five feet between him and Mabel, they’re far too close for my liking.
The man’s voice is absolutely venomous when he hisses out, “Fine. If that’s what you want, I don’t care. As long as tonight ends with you getting the same treatment your brother got.” He points the hunting rifle directly at Mabel; no possible way he could miss, even if he’s a crap shot.
I think fast. I pick up a stick and whip it as hard as I can off to the side, away from me and away from where he and Mabel are. The sudden noise causes the man to say, “What the fuck was that?” And he does exactly what I hoped he would do: he turns away from Mabel and takes the hunting rifle with him, pointing it in the direction of the noise.
I am a man of action after that. I leap out of the shadows and rush him before he can swing the rifle toward me. You can tell he’s not used to this sort of thing in how slow his reaction time is. By the time he tries to point the weapon at me, I knee him in the lower stomach and grab the gun, stopping him from pointing it anywhere.
“Tristan!” Mabel cries my name as I rip the rifle from the man’s grasp and give him a winding kick to the chest, knocking him back and causing him to lose his balance. He falls to the ground, and in the next second I have the rifle’s stock against my shoulder and am aiming it down, directly at his face.
My finger is on the trigger, and I’m literally a millisecond away from ending this miserable fool’s life when I hear Mabel yell, “Stop!”
No one in the world could make me stop. I am the Cobra. This is what I do. Quick and efficient. Cold and merciless. I stare death in the eyes every damn day and never so much as flinch. This is literally what I was made for, what I was raised to do.
To hunt. To kill. To end.
And yet, when Mabel tells me to stop, I freeze. My finger doesn’t pull the trigger. I stand there, ready to kill, wanting to kill—and yet I don’t. I let her stop me. I hesitate for her.
“Tristan,” Mabel takes a step toward me. “Don’t kill him.”
I glare at the man on the ground, at the terror on his face, illuminated by the moonlight. For a man who was so gung-ho about killing Mabel, now that he stares his own death in the face, he can’t seem to take it.
“He was going to kill you,” I whisper furiously. “He deserves a bullet to the brain for daring to hurt you.”
“He lost his son. He has every right to feel angry and broken.” Softer, Mabel adds, “I don’t want you to kill him.”
All of the fury in me, all of the rage and indignation; all signs should point to me pulling the trigger and killing this asshole. If I was the old me, the man would already be dead.
But I guess that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’m not the old me. I may still have the skills that made the Cobra so deadly, but I’m not just the Cobra anymore. I’m so much more. No longer am I a dead man walking—I am alive.
And I owe it to the girl behind me, telling me not to end this miserable fool’s life.
I let out a harsh breath as my shoulders relax. The man lays on his back on the ground, too terrified to get up. That said, just because I’m not putting a bullet into him right now doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods completely.
With an expert twirl of the hunting rifle, I smash the butt of it against his nose hard enough to crack the cartilage and knock him out. One swift hit is all it takes for his head to fly back against the ground as unconsciousness takes hold of him and blood oozes from his nostrils.
The rifle has a strap, so I swing it up and over my head and fling the rifle around to my back before I turn to face Mabel. My plan is to take her in my arms and bury my face in her hair and tell her she’s never leaving my sight again, but she beats me to the punch, so to speak.
Mabel rushes into me, throwing her arms around me and saying, “I thought I was going to die.”
My arms wrap around her, and I hold her tightly as I lean my head down and breathe her in. “Not while I’m still breathing. No one in the world could stop me from getting to you, Mabel.”
She angles her head back and gazes up at me, the expression on her face way too soft and gentle, considering what nearly happened. “It was so close to happening… but it made me realize, I don’t want to die anymore. I want to live—and I want to be with you. I…” She swallows, as if what she’s about to say isn’t the easiest thing. “I love you.”
The words hit me like a brick, but in the best way. If I wasn’t holding onto Mabel herself, I might think I walked into a dream. The world around us fades away, nothing but fuzzy shadows, and the only thing that matters is the girl in my arms.
My Mabel.
My hands raise to her face, and I cup her cheeks as I lean down. I never thought a man like me could feel the kind of love they make movies about, the kind of soul-altering love that changes you, but here I am. Just a man, about to bear his soul to the one person in all the world that completes him.
“I was born incomplete,” I whisper. “A shell of a person, never whole. I thought that was all I could ever be, but you proved me wrong. You turned my world right-side up, and for the first time in my life, I am whole. With you, I am whole—and I will spend the rest of my life being the man you deserve. I love you more than life itself.”
And then, because there’s absolutely nothing left to say, I kiss her.
Mabel melts into me, her mouth pliant and supple as she receives the urgent kiss. I practically see stars in my mind’s eye. The world spins around us. Nothing at all matters to me other than the soft, sweet girl in my hands.
I could kiss her all night—well, kiss her and do other things to her. Or with her, depending on how you look at it. Either way, I can’t truly show her just how much I love her standing here, in the middle of the forest, with an unconscious asshole nearby.
Plus, I have a little something I want to give to Wolf.
So in the end, though it’s laborious to do so, I tug my mouth off hers and say, “Wolf is waiting for us at the trailhead.” I let go of Mabel’s face and turn to the man on the ground. The blood from his broken nose almost looks black in the moonlight, and with his unconscious position, it trailed down both sides of his face.
I know we can’t leave him here, so I pick him up and bring him with us. Of course, I’d much rather have Mabel in my arms, but sometimes sacrifices must be made. Besides, when we reach the house, I plan on taking Mabel to her room and diving deep into her by showing her how much I love her with things other than words.
With the man scrunched up in my arms, it’s a bit of a chore to reach the trailhead. Sometime during the trek, Mabel asks, “How did you find me so fast?”
I bet Wolf wouldn’t want me telling her, but what’s the harm? She could have died tonight. She should know just how deep Wolf’s machinations lie. “Wolf put trackers into all of your shoes.” My jaw grinds after I say it aloud; I bet he put trackers into mine, too, now that I’m thinking about it. Son of a bitch.
“What? Trackers in my… how?” She actually sounds shocked, like she hadn’t ever thought that was a possibility. The wonders of being naive to Wolf’s true nature. “And why?”
“That’s something you’ll have to ask him.”
“Hmm. I guess so.”
As we hike it to the trailhead, I can’t help but feel a certain kind of relief. In fact, I’ve never felt more relieved in my entire life. If Mabel would have died tonight… there would have been three other souls following. The asshole in my arms, Wolf… and me.
There is no life worth living if Mabel isn’t in it.
After a while, we make it to the trailhead and the small parking lot there, where Wolf is waiting, leaning on the front of his car. His vehicle is still running, so the headlights are on and facing us as we approach him. Fortunately, a thick line of trees fill the space between the parking lot and the road, so if someone happened to drive by, they wouldn’t see exactly what’s going on.
And what’s going on would be pretty damn difficult to explain to the authorities.
I’m not careful as I drop the man onto the gravel and dirt parking lot floor as I glare at Wolf. Wolf, for his part, sees Mabel is still alive, but he only manages to speak one word, “Mabel,” before I step closer and level a hard punch right at his face. I hit him so hard his body has to take a step back, and his glasses fall to the ground as a result of the punch.
“That’s for putting Mabel’s life in danger,” I growl out the words. Part of me expects a retaliation of some sort, so I remain poised and ready for a fight. To be honest, I’ve been dying to fight Wolf from the get-go.
It’s fast, so fast someone like Mabel would miss it, but I’m not a normal person. I’m perceptive to a fault, so I see it even though it lasts a millisecond: Wolf’s demeanor cracks, and I get a quick flash of the inner monster inside of him. The look of a psychopath. Dangerous. Angry. Volatile.
But just like that, the twisted expression fades and Wolf bends to pick up his glasses. When he does so, he holds his glasses up in the headlights and sees that one lens is cracked thanks to me, and all he says is, “A pity.”
Does he mean it’s a pity I broke his glasses, or it’s a pity that Mabel is still alive? Maybe he really did expect me to reach her too late. Maybe he wanted to see me lose it all over again, some kind of sick, monstrous game.
I don’t say a word, and neither does Mabel. She does, however, glance between us, making it obvious she’s a little confused.
Wolf tells me, “Take Mabel to the house. I’ll handle this one.” His shoe nudges the leg of the unconscious man.
He doesn’t have to tell me twice, but Mabel says, “Wait. Shouldn’t we call the cops?”
All Wolf does is smirk for a fast second before saying, “Just let me worry about him, all right? It’s probably best if we don’t discuss this night and what happened with anyone outside of this circle.”
Mabel is still unsure, and as much as I hate to align with Wolf about anything, he’s right about this: cops would be bad news. We don’t want them. So, I take Mabel’s hand and guide her to the front passenger seat of Wolf’s car. I help her inside, and then I get into the driver’s seat after tossing the hunting rifle into the back.
As I back the car up, the only thing Wolf does is give us a wave.
Whatever. I’m just dying to be alone with Mabel and have the house to ourselves for a bit. It means we can be as loud as we want.