Chapter 31
Parker
Igroaned as I came back to consciousness. My head was throbbing worse than I had ever experienced before. No migraine had ever felt so terrible. It was as if my head were literally splitting in two like a watermelon that had been dropped onto the floor.
I tried to roll over as my stomach heaved with a sudden need to be sick. I could only manage to turn my head to the side as all the contents of my stomach left me. I let out a whimper and tried to lift my hand to grab my head, but couldn’t make my arm cooperate.
Cracking my eyes open, my vision swam, making me squeeze them closed again. My stomach roiled with pain as well as the stench of the vomit coating my shoulder and hair.
“You’re awake.”
I heard footsteps, the sound loud enough to make me whimper again. My whole body shivered, and I realized I was freezing. It only added to the pain. I hurt everywhere. My head, my ribs, my back. My entire body was so sore that it was hard to focus on only one source.
I tried to lift my arm again, but yet again, I was unable to move. I forced my eyes back open. Blinking through the pain of the light hitting my eyes, I waited until my vision cleared enough to see where I was.
“I thought you’d never wake up. I couldn’t start without you.”
The voice was familiar, but I had to force myself to think past the throbbing ache in my skull. “Walker,” I rasped out weakly.
Slowly, my last memories returned. I remembered the fight with Morris, which explained the pain I was feeling all over my body. But it didn’t explain my head. It took several more seconds for what happened next to come back to me.
Walker had shot Morris after he’d already been subdued. I had been furious. I followed Walker outside and then…
I shifted my head slowly, turning to find where his voice had come from. “You hit me,” I whispered.
The man walked forward, closer to my line of sight. He still looked the same, completely unbothered. His black suit jacket was slightly rumpled. As I looked closer, I could see smears of blood on his white dress shirt. I had been covered in Morris’s blood from the fight after I broke his nose.
I tore my eyes away from the man and looked down at myself, only to realize that I was almost completely naked; my bra and my panties were the only things that remained. A shiver wracked my body as a new fear rose inside of me.
“What are you doing?” I rasped out through my sore throat.
“I’m finishing what I started.”
I looked up at him in confusion as he stepped next to me. “Where are we?”
“A place I found while we’ve been in this godforsaken town. Don’t worry, no one will find you before I’m done.”
“Why?” He wasn’t supposed to be a monster. He was one of the good guys. Like me. Sure, he was pushy and tried to put some kind of weird claim on me, but he was law enforcement. Like Morris. A voice whispered in my mind.
I shook my head until the pain came rushing back at my sudden movements. Again, I tried to lift my arm. It wasn’t until then that I realized why my limbs weren’t cooperating with my brain’s signals to move. They couldn’t.
My chest started heaving as my breathing came in rapid pants. No. This wasn’t happening. “Why?” I cried out. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Instead of answering me, Walker lifted his hand and ran a finger over my chest and down my body slowly. “No,” I whispered brokenly. His finger stopped at the top of my panties. Then he leaned over me.
“You look exactly like her.” He ran his nose over my neck, breathing me in before he lifted his head up, disgust showing on his face. “I’ll have to clean you up first. Vomit doesn’t do it for me.”
Walker stepped away, out of my line of sight. I looked around frantically, wondering where he had taken me. All I saw were wooden planks that made up the walls. A cabin? But where?
I gasped as a bucket of cold water was tossed over my face.
The instinctive action had me inhaling water.
I immediately began choking, coughing desperately to expel the water I’d sucked into my lungs.
The coughing brought every pain that had faded to a dull ache in light of my situation back with a vengeance.
I couldn’t even curl up into a ball the way my body wanted to.
All I could do was lie there and cough as my lungs burned.
Through my teary eyes, I saw Walker return, a second bucket in his hands.
I turned my head, clamping my mouth shut and not breathing, to avoid a repeat of last time as the icy water flooded over my face and upper body.
The bucket dropped to the floor with a clatter. I gasped for air, immediately coughing again at the sensation that still hadn’t left after inhaling the water.
“Now, as I was saying,” Walker said as he leaned back over me, pulling the wet strands of my hair away from my face. “You look exactly like her.”
“Wh-who?” I managed to rasp out through chattering teeth. I let out another round of coughs.
“Mariposa Parker.”
Every cell in my body froze as my heart clenched painfully. “N-no.” Tears filled my eyes and spilled over. “No.”
Walker nodded. “Yes. She was my greatest achievement. So beautiful.” He stared down at me, not seeing me, just seeing my eyes. “So unique. Until I saw you. But you were too young then. I had to wait until the time was right. I had to keep you close, so I didn’t lose you, Cherish.”
I shook my head, Unable to believe the words I was hearing. The man who’d done those things to my sister nine years ago, the one who’d disappeared after he’d taken her from me, had been right in front of me for six whole months. A sob left my chest.
“No!” I screamed. “No!”
I began to thrash on the table I was tied to. I yanked on my bindings like a wild beast out of control as I screeched. Agony filled my chest. He was right there. The killer. The monster. “No!”
The Angel Killer let out a humorless chuckle as he watched me fighting the truth. “She was the best. But I bet you’ll be even better than she was. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it, Cherish? To finally be recognized as being better at something than your perfect sister?”
“Fuck you!” I screamed, my hands curved like claws, scratching at the wooden table underneath me.
“We’ll get to that,” he promised. He walked around the table to my other side, a filthy rag in his hand that smelled like motor oil. He began wiping at the spot I had thrown up, cleaning away any residue of my sickness left behind. I glared at him with all the hate I possessed.
“Your parents abandoned you. They treated you like nothing after your sister… left. Didn’t they?”
I hissed in response as I twisted my wrists, trying desperately to free myself so I could claw his eyes out.
“Do you know who was always there for you, Cherish Parker? Me. With my influence, you got into the FBI. You weren’t even going to apply. Isn’t that right?”
I remembered how I had planned to join the local police force, but found a flyer for the FBI. Then I received an email inviting me to apply to the academy. It had never crossed my mind until it had practically been shoved into my face. My chest ached at the reminder. I had been led to this moment.
“You made it onto my team so easily.”
Led. Like a lamb to slaughter.
“I watched you so closely. I knew you hadn’t let anyone between these pretty, broken thighs.”
My stomach roiled with nausea again as I felt his fingers drift over the scars.
“Such a pretty present you’ve given me. Except…”
The punch came out of nowhere, completely unexpected, and I had no way to prepare.
My stomach hurt so bad that it felt like something tore inside me.
I gasped but was unable to take in a breath as my vision darkened around the edges.
I was so consumed with the pain from the punch to my stomach that I could barely hear Walker as he yelled into my face.
Spit hit my cheek as his words penetrated the cloud of agony I was in.
“—fucking whore! You let those men take what was mine! You’re going to pay for that! When I’m done with you, I will make sure those men never see the light of day again!”
“Touch her again, and you’ll be eating that hand.”
Walker’s head whipped around and looked at the door. I couldn’t see who was there, but I would have recognized that cold, furious voice anywhere. Tears of relief filled my eyes.
I began laughing. It started slowly, bubbling up from my aching belly. Every shake of my body hurt, but the laughter kept coming.
Walker turned to me, his eyes blazing with madness.
“Shut up! Whore! I was going to kill you first, but now you get to watch me kill your lover instead.” I kept laughing even after he grabbed his gun and pointed it toward the door, toward Gage.
“Why are you laughing?” he demanded, swinging the gun in my direction instead.
“Because,” I wheezed out. “There’s a bigger and better monster than you. And he’s going to send you to hell where you belong.”
Walker looked ready to explode, his once passably handsome face twisted in an ugly expression and red with fury.
Before his finger could even twitch on the trigger, Gage had his hand yanked up.
The bullet exploded from the gun, shooting harmlessly into the wooden planks of the ceiling.
I turned my head and closed my eyes as fragments of splintered wood fell over me.
Hands were on my ankles and wrists, freeing me as I looked over to the floor, where Gage had Walker held in the chokehold I had attempted with Morris. I snorted at how easy he made it look.
“Cherish, baby girl,” Dante breathed, as he freed my right hand while Ry worked on my left. My legs were already loose, so I bent them, trying to get circulation back into the limbs.
As soon as my left hand had been released, the guys helped me sit up. “Slow,” Ry warned with his hand on my back. I gripped my stomach and paused, waiting out the wave of dizziness from the concussion Walker had probably given me.
Once I felt like I could open my eyes again, I gestured for the guys to help me up. “Cherish,” Dante started as I put a foot onto the ground. I just shook my head as I eyed the man that one of the men I had come to love held.
“He’s the one,” I whispered hoarsely. “He killed Mariposa. The Angel Killer.” I took one agonized step at a time, my body hunched over as it tried to protect itself from the injuries it had sustained. I stopped once I reached him. “You don’t deserve to live.”
I tore my eyes from my sister’s killer and looked at Gage, knowing he would see what I desperately needed in that moment. Gage eyed me, his face cold and expressionless, but his bright blue ocean eyes were understanding.
“My right boot,” he told me.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Leaning down, I bit my lip, holding back the whimper. I lifted his pant leg and found the large hunting knife in a special sheath. I gripped it firmly in my hand, feeling the weight of it there.
It was an immense effort to straighten back up. My abdominal muscles didn’t seem capable of working properly. Two sets of hands gently took me by my arms and helped me until I was facing Walker again.
I held the large knife in my hand, staring down at it for a long moment, knowing that what I was about to do, I’d never be able to come back from. Without any further hesitation, I plunged the knife into the Angel Killer’s neck.
As blood sprayed over me, I blinked away the drops that hit my eye, not wanting to miss the moment I’d been waiting for.
I watched while Walker gurgled as he choked on his own blood.
Soon, the flow slowed to nothing but a trickle.
Then it happened, the moment I had dreamed about for so long, but never admitted to a soul, not even myself.
I watched as the light dimmed, then disappeared in my sister’s killer’s eyes, done by my own hand.
Gage let go of his hold, and the body dropped lifelessly to the wooden floor of the cabin.
I held out the knife, and he took it in his hand.
He replaced it, returning it to the sheath in his boot.
When he straightened back up, he swept a hand gently over my face, wiping away some of the blood there.
Then he cupped my cheeks and pressed a soft kiss to my lips.
Dante was next, then Ry, each of them taking a turn, letting me know without words how scared they had been, how glad they were to see me standing there alive.
I looked at each of them. “How did you find me?”
Gage snorted as he glanced around the cabin. “This has been my dad’s kill cabin for decades. He has it wired to let him know if anyone approaches.”
I looked down at the dumbfuck lying dead at my feet and shook my head. “What an idiot.” I leaned heavily on Ry. “Okay, boys. I think I need a hospital now.” Then I passed out.