Chapter 37
Did I Say That Out Loud?
CORMAC
Parking half a block down the road, Skyler and I spill out of the car and run toward the house.
My heart is racing with fury and fear, my only thought keeping that fucking prick as far away from my girl as possible.
“I’ll go in here, you go climb into a window or something,” Skyler grumbles, still fighting against the nausea from the car ride.
I nod, filtering off to sneak around the building.
I’ve thought a thousand times since I’ve been back about how I would break into my own house if I had to.
Truthfully, I do it for almost every house I see, some weird form of meditation or something I picked up with my other unhealthy habits.
Starting from the fence, I pull myself up onto the ledge overlooking my small yard before using all of my upper body strength to hold myself up with one hand and open the window with the other.
Sliding through the opening, I land silently, listening for any kind of clue about what’s happening downstairs.
I can vaguely hear Skyler’s voice followed by Ben’s, but it’s impossible to tell what they’re saying. As long as there’s no shouting or shooting, I’ll assume Sky is just getting a little information out of him before deciding how to deal with it.
As I reach the top of the stairs, my phone silently vibrates in my pocket.
There’s almost no one who has my new number. Basically just Brigit, Sky, and Stella.
Knowing it has to be one of them, and likely one of the two within the walls of this house, I pull my phone out and see a text from Brigit, telling me Skyler and Steele are in the kitchen.
The warmth blooming in my chest almost outweighs the pressure there, knowing she’s both in immense danger with Steele here and furious enough with me that she very well might never speak to me again after tonight.
I couldn’t even blame her if that’s the choice she made.
But she’s safe, and she wants me alive.
For now, that’s going to have to be good enough.
After a couple of flirtatious texts to ease her mind, I put the phone away, filing away the knowledge of exactly where the two of them are and how I could use it to my advantage.
Another message alerts me, and I smile, looking forward to another vicious text from my girl.
But instead, I find something even better.
A warning.
I have to bite back the grin growing across my face.
Brigit can insist she hates me and wants nothing to do with me, but her actions more than prove otherwise. She knows full well just how dangerous I am, what I’m likely going to do to this extra intruder, and she didn’t even hesitate to tell me about him anyway.
Now that I’m listening for it, I can hear his light steps crossing my floor, walking increasingly closer to me with every tread of his feet.
Silently moving down the stairs, I wait for him to cross into my reach, just outside of the camera view.
The second he does, I strike from behind him, sliding my blade swiftly across his throat, my other hand covering his mouth to hide those first few gargles of resistance before his body completely sags against mine.
Blood still pouring from his body, all the life quickly escapes him as I gently lower the almost-corpse to the stairs.
I should probably be having more of a reaction to killing a stranger, but he broke into my house in the dead of night. There’s absolutely no reason to believe he was here for anything other than blood.
And he found it, just not the way he hoped.
I drag the body up the stairs, keeping it away from the eyes of the men in the kitchen and my girl hidden safely away, before stopping to wave hello to her through the camera.
She’ll never admit it, but not being able to see that I was safe would have driven her absolutely insane with worry.
I don’t want to know what she would do if that happened.
Only seconds later, the voices in the kitchen grow, followed shortly by the firing of a gun, sending me sprinting onto the ground floor.
Once I spot them, fury blazes through me, more than ready to kill this man for repeatedly ruining my fucking day.
Skyler is alive, at least, but his shoulder isn’t going to be doing much of anything for a while.
“Fomori,” Steele points his firearm at Skyler as he leans against the wall, cradling his bleeding shoulder. “I wondered how quickly you’d be getting here.”
I hold out my arms to my sides in a mock bow and display, “Here I am.”
“Lose your weapons, or I’ll shoot him in the fucking head right now,” he threatens. When I hesitate, he takes another step toward my best friend, so I do as he says, throwing a knife and a gun far to the side, keeping only the smallest blade hidden in my shoe, hoping I’ll have a chance to use it.
With a satisfied grin, he finally points the weapon at me instead of Skyler.
“Is that Jesse’s?” he gestures with his gun to the blood soaking into my clothes and drying on my skin.
I grin, feral and cruel, “Some of it.”
His lip curls, “Jesus Christ, that guy. Can’t do anything without me holding his fucking hand.”
“As you’ve now both learned, I’m not that easy to kill,” I chuckle, letting my eyes land on Skyler.
I don’t ask if he’s okay, but he gives me a brief nod to tell me yes, silently communicating what we can’t say aloud.
“You should ask your friend on the stairs, except… oh, wait, you can’t. He also had to learn the hard way.”
“Well, finding good help is hard these days,” he bites, but I can see the fear hiding under his frustration. Even if Skyler is injured and I’m far out of range to stab him, he knows he’s in danger here without his backup.
Skyler groans quietly in pain, leaning his head against the wall behind him, looking increasingly pale.
“Go ahead,” I gesture sarcastically to Steele.
His eyes narrow, “Go ahead what?”
“I’m sure you have a big speech about all of this before you kill us,” I offer. “Come on, we’re your captive audience.”
If he thinks he’s completely in control, his ego will force him to talk. It doesn’t hurt that right now, he is in control. But I’ve been in worse situations than this.
Well, I assume.
“There’s no big speech,” he scoffs. “It wouldn’t matter if there was. You’ll both be dead soon.”
“Because we stopped someone from stealing a couple of guns?”
His eyes narrow, “You assholes blew up the biggest payday of my fucking life, almost got me fucking killed.”
“Yet you’re still standing there,” I motion to him with a wave of my hand. “You got off a lot fucking better than I did.”
“The only reason the buyers didn’t put us six feet under is because we agreed to deal with you ourselves,” Steele argues.
“It was all planned out, easy peasy. Foley dealt with getting security out of the way. Morrison dismantled the codes so the robbers could sneak in and out. I come behind to get rid of any evidence. But, imagine my surprise when I show up to half a dozen bodies and my least favorite psychopath swimming in their blood.”
“Least favorite?” I fake a pout. “That’s a little mean.”
He rolls his eyes, shaking his gun in my direction, “Getting beat to death was your comeuppance, Cormac. I considered ending it quickly, but the symbolism of using a bat was too good to resist. And then, the useless investigators couldn’t even find a crumb of evidence against you as you crawled your way back out of hell. ”
“And what about me?” Sky groans.
“What about you?” he laughs, barely glancing at Skyler. “You don’t have the balls to kill anyone. Once Cormac was out of the way, it would have been easy to send someone to take care of you. You’re only dangerous when you have your rabid dog around. He had to go first.”
“And then I didn’t.”
“And then you didn’t,” he agrees. “So I get to kill you all over again. Then Skyler. And once I deal with the piece of ass you had to drag into it, I’ll—”
“You don’t get to talk about her,” I warn him through gritted teeth. “You don’t even get to fucking think about her. She has no part of this.”
He grins, “You know, Brigit hasn’t been seen in a few days. An old colleague filed a missing person’s report this morning.”
I stop myself from responding before I reveal anything.
His smile is too smug, too happy with the fact that she’s missing. Does he still think Aidan got to her?
It’s been almost a week since we killed Aidan. How does he not know he’s dead?
The answer to that question laughs outright, but the sound is drenched with pain.
Steele glares at him but doesn’t move the weapon pointed at me.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re just so fucking bad at this,” Skyler taunts. “Can’t deliver product. Can’t kill Cormac no matter how many times you try. Can’t keep your fucking lackeys alive.”
“Do you think I care that you killed Jesse?” he snarls.
“He’s far outlived his usefulness. You saved me the trouble of doing it myself.
Now, I’ll only have to deal with Aidan, once he’s done staging your final victim.
You might not have sliced her open, but make no mistake, you’re the one who killed her by bringing her into your life. ”
My blood boils, even knowing she’s perfectly safe in the next room, just the idea that someone might take her from this world makes me vibrate with rage, aching to sever every threat to her from this fucking planet.
“Why Brigit?” I ask through gritted teeth, not even having to fake the anger I’m showing anymore. “You could have set me up for anybody’s death. Why hers?”
“I can’t have any loose ends,” he shrugs. “Not ideal, but a beautiful woman will always be the public’s favorite victim. Her death will destroy any public sympathy you might have had.”
This guy is a fucking monster.
I’m going to be doing the world a favor when I cleave him from it.
The drive to slice every bit of skin from his bones drowns me, the world shrinking down into nothing but killing him and making sure every person knows just what kind of monster he is, doing it before he can get his hands on Brigit or anyone else.