Chapter 9
Regret comes two more times.
The first is when I get into Talon’s car.
It’s a beat-up, mismatched, duct-taped monstrosity. The seats are torn open, foam bulging like exposed viscera. When I sit down, something metal shifts under my shoe.
A gun.
There’s another one shoved between the passenger seat and the center console. Cassian takes the front without reacting to either. He nudges one aside with his boot and looks out the window.
Talon drops into the driver’s seat, slams the door, and twists the key.
“Sorry for the state of my ride, Doc,” he mutters. “The car was already like this when I stole it.”
Stole it.
Great.
The second regret arrives thirty-two minutes later, when I open the door to my apartment and let both of them step inside.
Talon spins slowly in place, eyebrows lifted.
“Damn, it’s clean in here. You some kind of psycho neat freak?”
“No,” I answer. “I just prefer order.”
“So you are a freak,” he concludes. “Got it. Would’ve been weird if you weren’t.”
“Is that so?”
“Very much so.”
They move through the apartment slowly, cataloguing everything. Cassian is tactical about it. He checks for signs of the place being lived in, the marks years leave behind. Talon just seems interested in the furniture, the amenities, the state of things.
I gesture to the kitchen table. “Sit.”
Cassian doesn’t sit. He positions himself near the wall. I retrieve a brown folder from a cabinet above the fridge and place it on the table.
“You wanted a reason to trust me,” I say, and open the folder. “I’ve given you my address. Now I’m going to show you my crime.”
I take out the printed hospital records on Leonard’s history and slide them to the center of the table.
Then the notes on his bloodwork. A breakdown of his compromised liver function.
Timestamps showing when I entered and left the building.
Logs of the medications I removed from the hospital supply closet.
Diagrams calculating precise dosages. A list of the janitorial contractor’s employees, with the one name that mattered highlighted. A summary of motive.
At the bottom, a single line:
Outcome: Controlled cardiac arrest. Time to asystole: 2 minutes, 41 seconds.
Talon inhales sharply. Exhales in a long, incredulous whistle.
“I’m pretty sure just bringing us here would’ve been enough,” he mutters.
“I doubt it.” I look at Cassian. “Your acquaintance is very guarded.”
Even on his hard features, the surprise is visible. He pushes off the wall. Sits at the table. Picks up one of the pages.
“Did I shake your worldview to such an extent?” he says. “I could report you.”
“You could,” I agree. “But I wouldn’t get incriminated.”
“How come?” Talon asks. “You’ve got all this written down like a madman. This is basically a confession.”
“Only in theory.”
Papers on a table can be anything. Medical curiosity. Material for a case study. Creative writing. A man’s private fantasy about murdering his mother’s killer, written in the raw weeks after her death. Disturbing, perhaps. But not criminal.
There is no murder weapon. No sign that Leonard’s death was anything other than organ failure in a man whose organs were already failing. The hospital sign-in log shows me present at the time he died.
With enough finesse, I could defend myself in trial. It would mean relocating afterward, but I’ve already considered it.
I flatten my palms on the table. “Any doubts?”
Silence. It stretches long enough that I begin counting the seconds out of habit, and then Cassian breaks it.
“Do you want to develop the sight yourself?” he asks. “After Talon gets it?”
“If it works on him, then yes.”
“That would mean you put your life in our hands,” Cassian says. “Because if we do this, we’re not disclosing shit to anyone else. It’s just us three.”
“I agree,” Talon mutters. “Three is enough risk as it is.”
“Are you two from around here?” I ask.
“I am,” Cassian replies. “Talon’s a… tourist.”
I look at Talon. He swallows and looks away.
There’s some story there, clearly. But I don’t push. Whether he tells me or not is his choice. What I care about are results, not pasts.
Still. I’ve shown a sign of trust. I’m the only one exposed in this room. If we’re doing this, the hands need to come out.
“What have you done with your sister’s killer?” I ask Cassian.
His jaw flexes once.
“I did to him exactly what he did to her.”
“Which is?”
“He strapped my sister to a dartboard and used her as a target. Threw knives at her.” He inhales.
“So I strapped him to the same kind of board and threw knives too. I made sure he stayed alive as long as possible.” His mismatched eyes narrow by a fraction.
“He begged for death. Eventually. I’ve got a more precise throw than he did and knew how to prolong it. ”
Talon sits back. “Holy shit.”
“I’ve been hunting murderers ever since,” Cassian continues.
Talon’s head whips toward him. “As in… regularly?”
“Yes.”
“Man…”
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet.”
Talon stares. “A chance? What, you need a fucking PowerPoint presentation? You want me to die and come back to life and didn’t tell me you’re like some kind of Batman on steroids?”
“I don’t see why that matters.”
Talon scoffs. “Fuck you, man. You’re a fucking psycho.”
I fold my hands. “We’ve all killed. We’re equals on that front.”
Talon sputters. “Whoa—hey—no. No. I’m… an accidental murderer, okay? I don’t hunt people down. At least…” He stops. “Not regularly. I did that only once.”
“Did they deserve it?” Cassian asks.
“Yeah.”
“You did the right thing then.”
Talon stares at him.
Bizarre.
The three of us have committed homicide as a method of retribution and ended up in the same grief group. A strange coincidence. Or perhaps not a coincidence at all.
“How did the two of you meet?” I ask.
“I came to the grief counseling searching for people who lost loved ones and were willing to do something about it,” Cassian replies.
Thought so.
“So you’re preying on the weak,” Talon says.
“Quite the contrary. I’m searching for the strong ones.
” Cassian leans forward. “The world is full of people who pretend to care about justice. Very few will do the ugly part that actually keeps others alive. The people I killed would’ve killed again.
People like us”—he gestures between the three of us—“are the only ones who close the case.”
Talon snorts. “I didn’t kill for justice. I killed because they took things from me.”
“That can change,” Cassian says.
Talon winces. But that’s the full extent of his disagreement. After a moment his lips press together and his eyes drift somewhere else, somewhere past the walls of this room. He’s imagining it.
I can’t say it’s a bad notion myself. I’m a doctor. I save lives. What better way than at the source. Not the symptom. The cause.
I lean back against the counter and cross my arms. “So tell me, Cassian. Justice and grief aside, why keep doing it? Why not stop at the man who killed your sister?”
His eyes flicker.
“The sight,” he says.
“What about it?”
“Grim Reapers appear when someone dies. They come when the soul leaves the body. Pull something out. Take it somewhere. Then they vanish.” He pauses. “The only moment I can see them is when someone is actively dying.”
“So you force them to appear,” I say.
Cassian nods. “Every killer I track leads to a Reaper. Every Reaper I see gives me another piece of the pattern. If I understand the pattern, maybe I can understand the system.”
“And fix it,” I say.
His jaw tightens. “Someone has to.”
Talon rubs his face. “I cannot believe I’m actually considering this shit. It sounds fucking insane.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But insanity is one of those pesky sicknesses that never quite leave you once they appear.”
I walk to the counter. Open the drawer beneath the utensils and pull out the booklet I’ve been thinking about ever since I heard what needs to be done.
Talon whistles. “What is that?”
I ignore him. Open the booklet and turn it so both of them can see the page.
“A clinic?” Cassian asks.
I tap the page.
“This clinic is run by two of my colleagues. Private funding. Private equipment. Access to supplies a normal hospital would never let you use unsupervised.”
Cassian’s attention sharpens. “Meaning?”
“It’s the only place I know where I can induce cardiac arrest without triggering institutional alarms, digital logs, or administrative questions.”
Talon raises a brow. “Wait, wait, wait. You want to kill me in your buddies’ medical den? Without them knowing? What if they show up?”
“They won’t. They don’t work nights unless they have test subjects brought in, and those are always scheduled. All I need is access to that schedule.”
Cassian tilts his head. “What exactly do you mean by test subjects?”
“Volunteers for research trials.”
“I see.”
“The clinic closes around eight,” I continue. “Most staff leave by seven-thirty. Nights should be empty unless a research subject is booked.”
Cassian narrows his eyes. “Should be?”
“I’ll need to verify. But they run clinical trials not yet approved by national boards. There’s flexibility.”
“Whatever you say, doc,” Talon says. “I kind of figured we’d do the whole resuscitation thing somewhere shady anyway.”
“Shady?” I echo.
“Whenever there’s wiggle room for anything, some bastard’s gonna use it up. You know?”
I pause.
“I doubt it. My colleagues offered me a position there once. Perhaps there’s not much administrative oversight.” I fold the booklet shut. “But they’re not the type to abuse that.”
“Yeah, okay,” Talon says, raising his hands. “Speaking from experience, that’s all. Usually there’s shady money where there are no rules. But maybe I only know one kind of environment.”
“Rules exist,” I say. “They’re simply self-imposed.”
He stares at me.
A small thread tugs in my chest. Something that feels like doubt. For the first time since mentioning the clinic, a question forms quietly:
What exactly are my colleagues doing there?