Chapter 21
I follow Jagger down the hallway, each step taking me farther from her and deeper into what I can only assume is a reality I don’t want to face. Jagger walks fast, faster than his usual loose-limbed saunter, and the set of his shoulders—tense and rigid—sends a shard of ice through my gut.
“Jagger,” I call, my voice low to keep Devyn from hearing my concern. “What the hell is going on?”
He doesn’t look back. “Better you see it, Gun. Better you just see it.”
When we reach the den, the door is already open.
I step inside and stop short, the atmosphere in the room hitting me like a physical blow.
Hawk sits at the makeshift conference table, his massive frame hunched, his hands steepled beneath his chin with his eyes fixed on the laptop.
Damon stands beside him, his usually impassive face drawn tight, a darkness churning in his eyes that I’ve only seen on the worst days in the field.
“What’s going on?” I ask again, my hands finding the doorframe for stability.
Hawk looks up. His eyes meet mine, and the concern in their depths makes my stomach clench. “Shut the door,” he instructs, his voice gravelly, stripped of its usual calmness.
I push the door closed behind me, and the room suddenly feels smaller, like the walls are closing in.
“Mattis is on comms,” Damon shares, taking a seat and tapping his finger on the laptop between him and Hawk. “He’s got something. Something bad.”
As our resident tech guru—or ethically ambiguous hacker—Mattis has an innate ability to find secrets so deep, you’d think they were buried.
He’s been working this case since Abby assigned it to us, digging for anything that could lead us to the identity of Devyn’s stalker.
“Gunnar?” His voice comes through the speaker. “You there?”
“I’m here.” I answer, crossing the room and pulling out a chair. “Talk to me. What did you find?”
“I was digging…” Mattis pauses for a moment, his voice careful and measured when he continues, “In some questionable places. Places I shouldn’t have been, maybe—definitely. But I had this gut feeling I couldn’t shake. It was just a hunch—”
“Spit it out,” I growl, impatience coiling tight in my gut. I don’t have time for his cryptic bullshit. “Just tell me what you found.”
I can hear Mattis breathing through the speaker, and I can almost see him in whatever dark room he’s holed up in, surrounded by monitors and the glow of code. “I was on the dark web,” he shares finally. “And I found a site. A very specific and questionable site.
“Everything on the dark web is fucking questionable,” I snap, leaning forward, my hands flat against the table. “That’s the point of the dark web, Mattis. Get to the part that matters.”
“This is fucking disturbing.”
“It’s about Devyn.” Damon says what Mattis is struggling to.
The expression on his face is solemn, so grave my blood runs cold.
My heart slams against my ribs, a violent percussion that deafens the rest of the room.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush, and I stare at Damon, waiting for him to say more.
“Show me,” I rasp, my voice sounding like it belongs to someone else.
Hesitantly, Damon turns the laptop toward me, and my heart thumps into my chest wall with such force, it leaps into my throat as the blood whooshes through my ears.
The screen glows with a sickly light, illuminating a web page that looks innocuous at first—a black background, white text, and layout that could be any blog or forum.
But as my eyes skim the content, the blood drains from my face, replaced by a rage so pure it burns.
It’s a shrine to Devyn. The header image is a photograph of her: a candid, taken from a distance without her knowledge.
She’s walking down a street I don’t recognize, wearing a sundress, her hair catching the sunlight, and head turned slightly, as if she’s laughing at something just out of frame.
She looks alive and beautiful. Below the header, the page scrolls endlessly, a nightmare gallery that my brain struggles to process
I run my fingers over the trackpad, weeding through photo after photo.
Candid shots taken from windows, cars, and from shadows.
Devyn at a coffee shop, head bent over a book.
Devyn in workout clothes, leaving a gym.
Devyn sleeping—fucking sleeping—in what looks like a hotel room, the angle suggesting the photographer was a few feet from her bed instead of the other side of the window.
The further I scroll, the worse it gets.
It’s like watching the site’s owner decompensate before my eyes.
The images shift from candid to manipulated, photoshopped horrors that make my stomach lurch.
Devyn’s face edited onto bodies that are bruised, bleeding, and clearly mid-torture.
Devyn with eyes glazed and lifeless, staged in positions that suggest violation, abuse, and death.
Images of her throat slit, wrists opened, her body arranged like a doll in scenes of explicit, graphic violence.
Snuff fantasies that make my skin crawl.
There’s a section titled The Collection that has exhibits photographed like museum pieces—hair ties, coffee cups, a ring—all labeled with dates and locations where they were acquired.
Links lead to elaborately written prose so grotesquely detailed I’m forced to swallow the bile rising in my throat.
I scroll faster, disgusted but unable to look away.
The author—or more correctly, fucking psychopath—isn’t just writing about his fantasies to own her in the most obscene ways. This is a fucking plan.
My vision floods with crimson rage that makes my hands shake and my teeth grind together until my jaw aches.
The room disappears around me, all of it fades beneath the tidal wave of fury that crashes over me.
I want to kill someone. I want to tear the internet apart with my bare hands, find this sick fuck, and make him suffer in ways that would make these images look like fucking mercy.
“Gunnar.” Hawk’s voice cuts through my murderous haze. “Gunnar, look at me.”
I can’t. I can’t look away from the violation laid out in pixels and perversion.
My finger hovers over the trackpad, scrolling to a video section.
I fight the urge to click it, knowing I’ll lose what’s left of my sanity if I see moving images and hear audio.
The thumbnails tell me more than enough.
Enough to know this person has been close—close enough to touch her, breathe her air, and invade her space without her knowing.
“How long?” My voice is guttural, unrecognizable. “How long has this been up?”
“I haven’t been able to scroll through it all yet,” Mattis replies through the speaker, his voice tight. “He’s been watching her for… God, I don’t know how long. Years, maybe.”
Years.
Someone has been watching her for years; photographing her, fantasizing about her death, stealing her things. Fucking planning.
My body stills as my thoughts narrow to a single thought. “She can’t know about this.”
Hawk leans forward, his massive hands spreading on the table. “Gunnar—”
“She can’t know,” I repeat, lifting my stare and locking my eyes with his. “Work your magic, Mattis, and make this shit disappear. Find this bastard so I can put him in the fucking ground. But she doesn’t see this. She doesn’t ever know this exists.
“She needs to understand how severe this threat is,” Hawk argues, his voice so steady and reasonable I want to punch him. “She needs to know what she’s facing. She needs to understand there can be no defiance about her cooperation to our security protocols.”
“I’ll make her understand.” Standing up, my chair scrapes with a shriek of wood on wood.
I walk over to the window, staring out at the ocean over the terrace, the normalcy of the afternoon suddenly feeling obscene now that I know what hides in the dark.
“I’ll make her understand without showing her this…
this sickness. I’ll keep her safe without making her afraid. ”
“You’re talking about keeping her in the dark.” Damon shakes his head “About a direct threat to her life. That’s—”
I whirl on him, my fists clenched at my sides.
“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t understand the risk?
” I jab a finger toward the laptop, toward the obscenity still glowing on the screen.
“That is nightmare fuel. That’s the kind of shit that breaks something inside a person forever.
She’s already looking over her shoulder.
And now this? Some sick fuck has been cataloging her like she’s property for years, fantasizing about killing her, and you want me to show her that? To put that shit in her head?”
“She’s stronger than you think,” Hawk says quietly.
“She’s stronger than any of you know,” I snap, my voice rising, cracking with emotion I can’t suppress. “But strength has limits. Everyone has a breaking point. And this?” I gesture wildly at the screen. “This would break her. I won’t do that to her. I won’t let him do that to her.”
Jagger speaks for the first time, from the corner where he’s been silent, watching. “Gun, if she finds out we knew and didn’t tell her—”
“She won’t find out,” I interrupt, with a dangerous whisper.
“Because we’re going to handle it. We’re going to find this bastard, and we’re going to end him.
And she’s never going to have to know that someone out there collected her fucking hair ties and wrote fanfiction about her murder.
She’s never going to see her own face photoshopped onto a corpse.
She doesn’t need to know that the world holds this kind of fucking darkness. ”
I move back to the table, placing my palms against the wood, leaning in so they can see the absolute, unshakable certainty in my eyes.
“I will burn the world down to keep her from this pain. I will lie, cheat, steal, kill. I will become the monster that monsters fear to protect her. She will not be touched by this asshole’s sick imagination.
That is not up for debate. It is not open to discussion. That is the reality.”
My body shakes, emotion breaking through the barely controlled surface.
“She is… she is everything. Do you understand?” I straighten, squaring my shoulders, feeling the weight of command settle over me like armor.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen. Mattis, you’re going to fucking find him.
I don’t care if you have to use every contact, back door, and illegal trick you know.
You’re going to find the location and identity of whoever built that shrine.
Jagger, you tighten security. I want this house locked down tighter than Fort Knox.
Damon, you dig into her past. Every relationship, acquaintance—fuck—every person who’s ever looked at her twice. ”
“And what about Devyn?” Hawk asks, his voice gentle now, understanding even if he doesn’t agree.
I look at the laptop one last time, at her face staring back at me from a screen filled with death.
“I tell her there’s a threat. I tell her we found something concerning, and that we need to increase security and modify protocols.
I will tell her enough to keep her safe and nothing that will steal her peace.
I will carry this weight, the knowledge of what hunts her.
The only burden I’m placing on her is that of our protection. ”
Letting out a heavy sigh, I walk to the floor-to-ceiling windows and pace the length of them.
“I will not let her be haunted by this. I will not let her sleep with one eye open, wondering if every creak is him coming for her. He does not get the privilege of taking up residence in her head, rent-free, poisoning her thoughts. I will be the wall, the weapon. I will be the monster that keeps her nightmares at bay.”
Hawk breaks the silence, nodding slowly, his eyes meeting mine, filled with respect and recognition. “Okay,” he says softly. “Okay, Gunnar. We’ll do it your way.”
“Okay,” Damon agrees.
Jagger pushes off the wall and places his hand on my shoulder when he reaches me. “We’ve got your back, brother. Whatever you need.”
I look at each of them in turn: Hawk with his steady strength, Damon with his quiet competence, and Jagger with his irreverent loyalty. “I need you to understand,” I say, my voice raw, stripped bare. “This isn’t just protection. This isn’t just the job. This is… She is…”
“Yours,” Hawk finishes for me.
“She is,” I whisper. “And I will do anything—anything—to keep her safe and unbroken by the darkness of this world. I will lie to her face if it means she sleeps through the night. I will carry the burden of her safety alone if it means she never has to feel what I am right now.”
I turn to face the window, staring out at the afternoon light, at the world that seems so peaceful from a distance. Somewhere out there, someone is watching and waiting, thinking they have a claim on what’s mine.
But they don’t know what’s coming for them. The pits of hell I will descend into for Devyn will make them regret every thought they ever had about her, every photo they took, and every sick fucking fantasy they wrote into existence.
I will love her from the dark so she can live in the light.