6. MADOC
MADOC
“Shh, baby, shh. It’s okay.”
Murdering a toddler was about to become my in-flight entertainment. The high-pitched wails, the tiny sneakers kicking into my seat, the spray of drool—I’d killed over less.
I snapped a pen between my fingers and jabbed the pointy end into my thigh. Not hard enough to draw blood, but just enough to keep my homicidal tendencies in check.
It worked. Pain was good. It was reliable, a constant.
Proof of life.
With life, though, came the tediousness of it all. The boredom of existence. I’d slit my wrists if it weren’t so predictable.
On habit, I rolled my head toward the window. Blue skies, low turbulence. The chances of dying in a plane crash were one in eleven million. I never got picked.
Beside me, a pale man shuddered. He was sandwiched in the middle seat. He quickly averted his eyes from whatever expression he caught on my face. I didn’t need to look directly at him to know that he had salami for breakfast, he was sexually impotent, and he was terrified of losing his hair.
At hour two, he popped a pill and scrubbed a nervous hand over his head. His elbow jabbed mine on the armrest. He considered me from the corner of his eye, debating whether to start a feud over the territory.
Do it, my demons purred. Breaking his arm would be cathartic to me. My fingers itched, imagining the pressure, the exact right angle.
He averted his eyes again and tucked his arms securely in his lap.
Boring.
I twisted the pen harder into my thigh, seeking that euphoric rush of pain. I teased the resistance of muscle and flesh. Two inches to the right and I’d hit my femoral artery. I’d lose consciousness in thirty seconds, bleed to death in less than five minutes.
Tempting.
And when the fresh rotation of kicks pounded into my seat, my demons began to stir.
Fate intervened like the usual killjoy it was. My phone buzzed against my thigh. I loosened my grip on death, an automatic reaction, like blinking after too long in the dark.
He always knows…
Jax had a sixth sense for when I was on the brink of destruction. He was a study in paradoxical contrasts. Astute in some ways, completely fucking clueless in others. It was what made him interesting. It was what held my attention when nothing else did.
ALPHA: Update. Sparrow?
I typed a quick response. No movement.
Which was disappointing. The monster in me recognized the presence of another. Unlike me, Peter Vincilli wasn’t someone who existed in shadows. He hid in plain sight, attracting his prey like a moth to a flame. Those around him were helpless to resist him.
If only they knew about the bodies he’d buried. The women he’d raped. The men he’d disemboweled. He was a trophy killer, arrogant enough to sell the footage on the dark web. I’d watched every one of them, analyzing his technique. All the while, Zola had been gagging into the trash can behind me.
“How can you watch that stuff with a straight face?” She’d asked me.
Because it was boring. Because the depravity of men never shocked me anymore.
A deep voice boomed behind me: “Will you shut up that stupid kid!?”
The frantic mother fell silent, stunned by the outburst. Heads swiveled toward us, clowns in the corporate circus.
“I’m sorry,” the mother said tearfully, just as her sprog reached a new crescendo. My fingers clenched on the pen. Two inches, five minutes. A blissful, bloody end.
The man beside me shifted. A side effect of his hair loss medication, aside from the impotence, was roaring hemorrhoids. His eyes flicked nervously to the pen in my fist. I was the reason he clenched up.
A smile curled my lips just as the irritating voice boomed again: “Jesus Christ, woman! Keep him silent so the rest of us don’t have to suffer!”
The mother apologized again, not that she was heard. Not that anyone was listening.
No one ever listened.
Not now, and not back then. I closed my eyes and heard it again, softer, an echo of the past.
Stupid kid.
A fist.
A boot.
“I’m sorry,” the mother whimpered again.
The man scoffed at her.
My smile sharpened.
I stood up slowly, filling the space, ducking my head to avoid the overhead. The mother immediately locked onto me, a predator too close to her cub. I gave her a bland look, then shifted my focus to the portly asshole who would learn to swallow his tongue.
His eyes widened, then narrowed suspiciously. He’d built his career defending bad men. It made him arrogant, made him believe he was untouchable. He looked like a Gerald. Or a Richard. Dick, for short.
I slanted my gaze back to the mother. Barely older than a teenager, her skin flushed and pockmarked with acne. Her spawn wriggled in her arms.
“It’s your perfume.”
She blinked at me. “W-What?”
“You reek,” I said. Her cheeks flushed, humiliation creeping back in. No one jumped to intervene. Few people had Jax’s irritating hero complex.
“Oh, um, I’m…” the mother stammered, helpless. She was on the verge of tears. “They were giving out free samples at the airport. I just, I didn’t think…” She looked down at her red-faced toddler. “Oh.”
“Give him to me.”
“What?” Her head snapped up. The child screeched again. An insurgent fist cuffed her chin. She winced and barely caught the next one.
“Wash it off,” I said. “Come back when you’re not triggering his nervous system.”
Her embarrassment made her desperate. She nodded dumbly and stood, handing her child over to me, a complete stranger.
My lip curled in a snarl. The child was a hefty thing, all pudgy knees and fists.
One of those things hit directly into my bullet wound scar.
Pain lanced down my arm, unwelcome now. I only liked pain that I controlled.
“I’ll, um, be right back.” His mother kept her eyes on me until she ducked into the bathroom at the end of the cabin.
The toddler screeched, sensing the loss.
“Shut up,” I said. Instead of punting it across the cabin, I sat down and plastered my hand across his back. His lungs expanded, his heart rabbiting. My skin itched in disgust.
I hated vulnerability.
Dick scoffed behind me: “Typical.”
I inhaled the scent of baby powder and overly sweet perfume and thought about murdering Dick.
The toddler went quiet, one chubby fist clawing at the fabric of my shirt. I looked down and met wide, searching eyes.
“I could jam my pen into Dick’s carotid artery,” I murmured, like a lullaby. “I could twist and twist until it severed his spinal cord. Then he would flop around like a fleshy puppet.”
The toddler cracked a watery smile.
I settled him on my knee. “Something in common, then.”
The man beside me balked and leaned as far away as the seat allowed. I glanced at him, coolly. The last splotch of color drained from his face.
Things were turning around.
An approaching click of heels immediately followed that thought, a perfect cause-and-effect. I didn’t bother looking up. The stride faltered, a momentary shock, before they blazed over.
“Ma—um, mister?”
“Yes?” The toddler smiled again, unperturbed by my coldness.
Olivia fought with her composure, a note of something in her voice. Fear? No. I was familiar with her fear. It went deeper, but just as primal.
Resigned, I dragged my gaze up.
Olivia stared down at me like I’d single-handedly gutted, skinned, and dropped a dead bunny at her feet. The violent imagery made me smile.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Where did you get a baby?”
“They were giving them out.”
That made her panic. “So you just took it?” She reached out to grab, but I knocked her away. The toddler cackled.
“Ah,” I tsked in disapproval. “We don’t snatch.”
She flushed. I noticed the way it pooled on her neck, spreading like a rash. Her hand flew up automatically, as if to cover it. Too late.
I drank in the rest of her: the puffiness of her bottom lip, the off-center ponytail, that beautiful, mortified flush. The pieces clicked together with satisfying clarity.
She cleared her throat, trying to ease her awkwardness. “I can look after him, if you want.”
“I don’t think so,” I smirked. “I don’t know where your hands have been.”
Olivia bristled, cheeks violently red. “That’s—”
The mother returned in a frantic swoop, cutting her off. I returned her offspring, ignoring her plethora of pointless gratitude. I reclaimed my seat and the broken pen I’d wedged in the crack.
Olivia hovered, biting her lip.
I was getting bored again. “Spit it out.”
Olivia opened her mouth, then shut it. Like Jax, she was full of contradictions. She never did what I expected her to do. She didn’t run when she should. She didn’t ask the right questions. She was delicate, but she also climbed trees and dove headfirst into the sea to find me after I was shot.
I hated her.
Hated her enough that it made her interesting. I imagined cracking her open and dissecting that pretty grey matter until I understood her. Then I imagined slinging her legs over my shoulders and plunging my tongue into her body until her nails raked bloody down my back.
And then I’d let Jax taste her on my tongue.
My fingers curled over the pen reflexively.
Her eyes dropped down to my makeshift weapon and her face hardened. That, at least, was predictable. I made a habit of flashing my weapons at her—bonus points if she touched them first.
Olivia leaned down, her breath ghosting over my ear. “I’m not saying you’re right. But what should I do about the briefcase? We need to know if the prototype is in there.”
“Take it.”
She huffed. “No shit, Sherlock. I mean, how do I get it? I’m not a thief, remember?”
I reached up and tugged on her scarf. “No,” I drawled, watching her throat convulse. I hated vulnerability, but on her, it was alluring. Skin begging to be bruised. “You’re not a thief.”
I released her, and she straightened, fussing with her uniform while she glanced around nervously.
A moment later, she understood. I knew she would. She wasn’t stupid, though it would be easier to ignore her if she was.
“Oh,” she said in realization. “Of course. Duh.”
I rolled my head back toward the window, flipping the pen idly between my fingers.
She leaned in again, whispering: “You better not stab anyone.”
“Say please.”
She sighed in resignation and straightened. With a final sugary glare, she strutted away.
The man beside me released an appreciative noise. My eyes snapped to him. He flinched in fear.
“She didn’t say please.”
He gulped.