Chapter 8 Cesar
Cesar
The motion sensor on the east perimeter triggers.
I'm awake before the alert finishes buzzing. Diamond is curled against me, warm and soft, and I ease out of bed without waking her. Grab my phone. Check the camera feed.
There.
A figure moving along the cliffside path, hugging the rocks where he thinks the cameras can't see him. Dark clothing, baseball cap. The same build as the shadow from the gate footage.
The Stalker. He finally got impatient.
I pull on pants, a black shirt. Retrieve my knife from the nightstand drawer.
It’s eight inches, serrated edge, the one I've carried since I got out.
I stuff my handgun down the back of my pants, just in case.
The rifle is by the door but I don't reach for it.
This isn't going to be a long-range situation.
This is going to be personal.
I check on Diamond one more time. Still sleeping. Good. I ease the bedroom door closed and move through the house in the dark, every sense sharpened.
Eight years in prison taught me a lot of things. How to read a room. How to sense danger before it arrives. How to become the thing that other predators fear.
Poor idiot has no idea what he's walking into.
I slip out the side door, circle around toward the cliffs. The moon is half-full, enough light to see by, the ocean crashing against the rocks below. I move along the property line like a ghost, making no sound.
He's ahead of me. Maybe fifty yards. Picking his way along the narrow path between the cliff edge and the house, moving slowly, carefully, like he thinks he's being stealthy.
Amateur. His footsteps scrape against the loose gravel, his breathing too loud over the sound of the waves.
He's carrying a backpack, and something else. Something that glints in the moonlight.
A knife. A kitchen knife.
Of course.
I close the distance. Forty yards. Thirty. He's so focused on the house, on the windows, on whatever sick fantasy is playing in his head, that he doesn't hear me coming over the crash of the surf.
Twenty yards.
I could give him a chance to surrender, to run, to face justice through proper channels.
I don't.
This man has been stalking Diamond for months. Sent her death threats. Photographed her through windows while she changed. Left notes promising to make her scream. He came here tonight with a knife, and I know exactly what he planned to do with it.
Some threats you don't neutralize through proper channels.
Some threats you end.
Ten yards.
He stops. Turns. And for one second, I see his face in the moonlight—pale, ordinary, the kind of face you'd pass on the street without noticing. That's the thing about monsters. They don't look like monsters.
"Who?"
I hit him before he finishes the word.
My fist connects with his jaw and he staggers, drops his knife. I'm on him before he can recover, driving him to the ground, my knee in his chest.
"You shouldn't have come here," I say.
He's struggling, gasping, trying to throw me off. He's not weak, he’s in decent shape, probably works out, but he's never fought anyone who actually wanted to hurt him. His movements are panicked, sloppy.
Mine are not.
"Please!" He's wheezing now, my weight crushing the air from his lungs. "I just wanted to talk to her."
"You wanted to kill her."
"No! I love her. I've always loved her. She doesn't understand."
"She understands perfectly." I pull my knife. Let him see it. Watch his eyes go wide with terror. "And so do I."
"Wait! Please, I'll leave. I'll never come back!"
"You're right about one of those things."
I don't drag it out.
One clean motion. The blade across his throat. Not deep enough to be quick, but deep enough to be fatal. I want him to know what's happening. I want him to feel the life draining out of him and know exactly why.
His hands come up, clutching at his neck, blood pouring between his fingers. He's making wet, gurgling sounds but no words. No more words.
I stand up. Watch him bleed out on the rocks, the ocean roaring below us.
It takes about ninety seconds. Longer than I expected. He fights it, clinging to life with the same pathetic desperation he clung to his fantasy about Diamond. But in the end, the outcome is inevitable.
When his eyes go glassy and his chest stops moving, I wipe my knife on his jacket and slide it back into its sheath.
One threat neutralized.
I search his body. His phone is password protected, but the cops can deal with that. Wallet with a California driver's license: Kyle Andrew Mercer, 29, Sacramento. The backpack contains duct tape, zip ties, a rag that smells like chloroform, and a Polaroid camera.
He didn't come here to talk.
I leave the body where it lies and head back to the house. I need to call this in, get ahead of the narrative. Self-defense is going to be a stretch, he never touched me, never got close to the house, but I have connections now. Sterling's connections. The kind that can make problems disappear.
Or I could just disappear the body myself.
I'm considering my options when I walk into the kitchen and find Diamond standing there.
She's wearing my shirt. Nothing else. Her hair is mussed from sleep, her eyes wide and dark in the dim light.
She's looking at my hands.
I look down. Blood. Kyle's blood, smeared across my knuckles, under my fingernails.
"Is he dead?" Her voice is steady. Calmer than I expected.
"Yes."
"Did he suffer?"
I hold her gaze. "A little."
She nods slowly. Processes. I watch her face for horror, for fear, for the moment she realizes she's been sleeping with a killer and runs.
It doesn't come.
"Good," she says.
Something shifts in my chest. I cross the room, stop in front of her.
"Diamond."
"I saw him on the cameras." She's still calm, eerily so. "I woke up when you left. I watched you go after him." A pause. "I watched you kill him."
She watched.
"And you're not running."
"No." She reaches out, takes my bloody hand in hers. "I'm not running."
"I just killed a man. Not in self-defense. Not because I had to. Because I wanted to. I wanted to make sure he never touched you."
"I know."
"That doesn't scare you?"
She looks up at me. Those blue eyes, so clear, so certain.
"You killed him for me," she says. "You killed him because he wanted to hurt me and you weren't going to let that happen. You think that makes you a monster?"
"Doesn't it?"
"Maybe." She lifts my bloody hand to her lips. Presses a kiss to my knuckles. "But you're my monster."
I pull her into my arms. Hold her tight, blood and all. She doesn't flinch. Doesn't pull away. Just melts into me like this is exactly where she belongs.
"We need to call the police," I say against her hair.
"What will you tell them?"
"That he broke into the house. That he attacked me and I defended myself." The lie comes easy. It's not even much of a lie. He would have, if I'd given him the chance. "Sterling's lawyers will handle the rest."
"Will they believe you?"
"They'll believe what they're paid to believe." I pull back, cup her face in my hands. "But I need you to trust me. Can you do that?"
"I already do."
"Even now? Even knowing what I am?"
She rises on her tiptoes. Kisses me soft and slow.
"Especially now," she says.
***
The next few hours are chaos.
Cops. Statements. Sterling's lawyers descending like avenging angels. The body is removed. The scene is processed. I tell my story: intruder with a weapon, tresspassing, self-defense, and everyone nods along.
Diamond backs me up. Calm, collected, the perfect witness. She says she heard a noise, found me fighting off an attacker, watched me save her life.
She doesn't mention the cameras. Doesn't mention watching me hunt him through the trees. Doesn't mention the ninety seconds it took him to bleed out on the forest floor.
By dawn, it's over.
The cops leave. The lawyers leave. Sterling himself calls, his voice tight with something between gratitude and horror, promising that this will all go away.
I believe him. Men like Sterling can make anything go away.
When the house is finally empty, I find Diamond on the back deck, watching the sun rise over the ocean. She looks exhausted. Wrung out. But when I sit down beside her, she leans into me without hesitation.
"It's over," I say.
"Is it?"
"That creep will never hurt you again. No one will."
She's quiet for a moment. The waves crash against the cliffs below.
"I thought I would feel different," she says finally. "When I watched him die. I thought I would feel guilty, or sick, or... something."
"What did you feel?"
She turns her head. Looks at me.
"Relief," she says. "And then something else. Something I didn't expect."
"What?"
"I watched you kill someone for me. And all I could think was... that's the man I love. That's the man who would do anything to protect me." She shakes her head. "What does that say about me?"
"It says you're human." I pull her closer. "It says you know the difference between a monster and a man who does monstrous things for the right reasons."
"Is there a difference?"
"I hope so." I press a kiss to her temple. "For both our sakes."
We sit there in silence, watching the sun climb higher. The ocean glitters. The world keeps turning.