Chapter 33
Quill
Present Day
Turns out, it’s fucking hard to find a snake.
I guess that’s what they’re good at. Hiding under rocks and in dark crevasses, waiting for their prey.
I’ve been wrong this whole time. I’m not the monster. She is.
She’s not the helpless deer, her heart beating fast against my chest, her body imprisoned in my arms.
She owns me, and she can do exactly what she wants with me.
And I guess what she wants to do is destroy me.
I spent the rest of the night hunting for her. My first stop was my apartment, just in case the duct tape had kept her there, but I already knew before I opened the door to my bedroom that she’d slithered out of those bonds, exactly like the fucking snake she is.
Then I searched her family home. Went back to the Astley hotel, even though I knew that was a dead end. Walked around Devil Tower and in the streets surrounding it, because surely, she can’t have just abandoned her hunt for answers.
But I guess she has. Maybe she never gave a shit about her parents either. Maybe she’s incapable of love.
Maybe that’s why she always seemed to understand me. Because she’s secretly just as coldblooded and monstrous as I am.
The difference is that I did love her.
No, love is too soft a word for the way it feels like every cell in her body is wrapped around every one of my cells. How the hell can you ever move on from someone who has changed your DNA?
I’m going to fucking kill her, and then I’m going to string up Liam and Dane and flay them alive.
I’ll leave them to bleed out slowly, riddled with stab wounds, chunks of flesh missing from their bodies, their tongues cut out so they can’t beg for mercy.
But I’ll leave their eyeballs intact so they can see me die when I turn the gun on myself.
Cold horror will be their fate. Not because of my death. I have no illusion they’d even give a shit. But because they will know, then, just how long and hopeless the rest of their miserable lives will be.
Their physical suffering beyond anything imaginable, while understanding their fate will be to die, not of their wounds, but of slow starvation.
But first, the insect.
Goddamnit, the frustration of not knowing where she is is killing me. The only thing I’m running on right now is fury, so freezing cold it burns me.
I’ve exhausted every avenue by the time I return home. After my sleepless night, I’m relieved to see that Liam and Dane aren’t at my apartment. I don’t think I could refrain from killing them on the spot if I ran into them now, and they deserve so much worse.
Then I hear a soft thud in my bedroom. Even if I weren’t boiling with rage right now, my soldier training would make me razor-focused. I grab my gun, cocking it in front of me, then kick open the door.
The last person I ever imagined seeing is standing in front of me.
“What. The. Fuck?” I growl, my gun pointed straight at the guy I’ve inexplicably let live.
Piper’s friend. Another sign of my weakness since he’s still breathing. It didn’t take long for me to realize there was no romantic or sexual attraction there, so I let him escape.
Big fucking mistake. The snake doesn’t deserve a friend.
Luckily, I can remedy that right now, and I put my finger to the trigger, keeping the barrel pointed to his stupid face.
“Please,” he gasps. “It’s just Josh.”
Then he raises his hands as if he could possibly pose a threat to me with those useless appendages dangling at his sides.
“I need to tell you something,” he adds.
Fine. I’ll bite.
After all, he’s seen enough of me to realize just how dangerous I am. If he’s come, it’s for a reason.
But it better be a good one, or I’ll blow his head off.
I probably will, anyway.
“You have three seconds. Go.”
“Wait… I…”
“Three.”
“I just need to make sure you won’t hurt Piper if—”
“Two.”
“Okay. Okay. Fine. She’s in trouble!”
Not as much trouble as she’ll be in when I find her.
But I guess that means Josh knows where she is.
Gritting my teeth, I remove my finger from the trigger.
“Where is she?”
“I need to make sure you won’t hurt her if you find her,” blurts out Josh, shaking at how close he’s come to getting shot.
“Sure,” I say.
Lying comes easily to me. After all, I am a psychopath, according to pretty much everyone whose paths I’ve crossed.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He exhales in a low shuddering sound, then grips the side of my desk to keep himself from falling.
“By the way, I climbed up from the balcony below,” he says in an apologetic tone, nodding to the open window.
Yeah, I figured. I never bother to lock it. People lock their windows and doors to keep threats out. But nothing could possibly threaten me.
“Where is she?” I ask again, this time with the kind of smooth tone I hope will make him relax a bit and give me the information I need so I can finally blow his brains out.
I even loop my gun back into my belt, because the guy is looking like he’ll shit his pants, and I do not want to deal with that on top of having to get rid of his body.
He’s still not talking, so I click my tongue impatiently, realizing I’m going to have to draw him out.
I sit down on the bed across from him, trying to look as harmless as possible. Which is probably not all that harmless, what with the jagged scar flashing white across my face, and the tattoos on my neck that my shirt doesn’t hide.
“Why’d you come to me, by the way?” I ask in the tone of someone discussing the weather.
He huffs out a breath, looking like he’s slowly growing less freaked out. “Well, I know you two have a history.”
He pauses as if expecting confirmation of that, but I merely wait.
“You kidnapped Piper and didn’t harm a hair on her head. So my theory is…”
Okay, I’ve drawn him out enough. I definitely do not want to hear more psychobabble today. Tragen giving me his pseudoanalysis was enough for a lifetime.
In a flash, I’ve whipped out my gun again, and his eyes practically bulge out of his head.
“Okay, man. Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean–”
“Don’t fucking call me man. And tell me where the fuck she is.”
“Okay.” He swallows. “To answer your earlier question, uhm, more succinctly…” He gulps out the last word as I wave my gun around in impatience, “Piper’s in a lot of trouble, and I can’t think of anyone who could possibly save her, except you.”
The hair on the back of my neck pricks up, but I steel myself so he doesn’t notice my changing expression. I try to steel myself from my own heart too, because I really need to be finished giving a shit.
But I can’t help the way fury chokes my chest at his words.
No one threatens her. No one touches her. No one even thinks about her.
No one but me.
“Where is she?” I ask again, my voice cold.
“Listen, man… I mean, er, pal… that is…”
By now, he’s wiping his brow, rivulets of sweat winding down his face, and I do derive just a touch of satisfaction at how he’s coming undone just from my eyes fixed on him.
“I just want to make sure you don’t hurt her,” he concludes weakly.
“I promised already. Haven’t I?”
“Right.” He barely manages to meet my eyes, but when he does, what he sees there clearly doesn’t reassure him.
I exhale, once more fighting the impulse to just kill him. But if I do, I won’t find my snake. And right now, although I hate myself for realizing it, the situation’s become urgent. Because she’s in trouble, and I guess I’m going to have to protect her again.
Before killing her myself.
“Josh,” I say slowly, grimacing slightly at the way that bland milquetoast name feels on my tongue, “you seem to really care about Piper. I understand your predicament. Having to trust the man who’s already kidnapped your friend must not be easy.
But you told me yourself she’s in trouble, and I’m the only one who can help.
So what sounds better to you: leaving her in the hands of this new, unknown danger, or trusting the man who did not kill her when he could have? ”
He nods his head eagerly, as if my logic makes total sense to him.
Fool.
“You’re right. You’re right. I’ll tell you. She’s with… Logan Colt.”
I was preparing to bring my gun up and shoot him the minute he opened his mouth, but that name stops me dead in my tracks.
Logan… Colt? As in, one of the founders of Devil?
“What the fuck?”
He’s back to wiping his face, back to being terrified by the look in my eyes. Idiot. He has no idea how close he just came to dying. The shock and anger distorting my features and freaking him out are the same ones that are saving him.
He’s still useful.
“What the fuck?” I repeat, and he takes the hint and starts explaining.
“We figured out the reason her parents were killed was… because of her name on a piece of paper. A name her dad found when he was cleaning. It was on… Bob Nelson’s desk.”
“As in, my father?” I hiss.
He nods, his eyes carefully averted from mine.
“And what did it say?” I prompt.
“Uhm… that’s all we know. Her name is on the paper, in block letters. That’s probably not all it said. But that’s the only thing her dad told her before… before he died.”
“And what the hell does that have to do with Logan Colt?” I growl.
“Nothing, uhm, nothing,” he stammers. “Just that in the same conversation, the last one they had before her dad died, he also asked if she knew who Logan Colt was.”
I frown in confusion. “Of course she would know. Everyone knows who Logan Colt is. Why the fuck would he have asked that?”
“Well, the way Piper was repeating it, it didn’t sound like he was asking if she actually knew who he was.
It sounded more like he was saying, ‘hey, you know that guy? Well, get this’, kind of thing.
Her dad was just starting to talk to her about how the paper he found on Bob Nels—I mean, your dad’s—desk was going to get him a promotion.
And mentioning, in the same breath, Logan Colt’s name.
Next thing you know, bam. Dead. I mean, uh, her dad sadly passed away. ”
He’s still blathering on as I stare at the wall behind him in shock, unable to move from my sitting position on my bed.
I never really gave Piper’s parents’ murder much thought. I’d heard enough to realize it was a contract kill, and as a soldier, you just don’t question contracts.
If I thought about it at all, I figured her dad had pissed someone off at Devil Tower during his work. I never in a million years would have thought it was connected to Piper.
In my mind, Piper was in danger because she was a snoop, not because she was actually at the center of the case.
But her father discovered something he shouldn’t have on my dad’s desk, and that something is connected to Piper Day.
And whatever it is involves Logan Colt.
The answer to her parents’ murder, this whole time, has been with… my dad. I’m going to go find him and stick a knife through his ribs repeatedly until he tells me that answer.
No. I need to find her first.
I repress a shudder as I train my eyes toward Josh once more. “And you’re saying she’s with Logan Colt? What proof do you have?”
“Well, I saw it happen.”
“What?” I didn’t think it was possible to feel colder, but it’s like the temperature in the room just dropped twenty points.
“We were in the tower,” he admits bashfully. “The second we put those pieces together, we walked up Devil Tower, all the way to the executive floor.”
I rub my eyes, feeling more confused than ever. “What the fuck? How did you even manage that? There are about twenty different access badges needed to–”
“Uh.” He clears his throat, sounding just as confused as me. “We only had one visitor’s badge. Not even in either of our names. And it brought us all the way up. We just pressed on the button and it brought us up.”
Motherfucker. They were set up. Someone laid a neat little trap and my insect flew straight into the web.
“So we got to the executive floor,” rambles on Josh, “and that’s when we heard two of the Devils—Vincent Murilla and Everest Grant—talking about how they were hunting for Piper. To kill her.”
I’m gnashing my teeth together without even realizing it, so hard they hurt. “And then?”
“Then, just when we started to actually realize the trouble we were in… Logan Colt swooped in from behind her. He knocked me out with his gun, but just before, I saw him inject something in Piper’s neck.”
I inhale sharply, my hands fisting on my thighs. Fuck. Me. He touched her. He actually touched her. He has no fucking right to touch her.
Devil or no Devil, he’s fucking dead.
“When I woke up,” concludes Josh sheepishly, “I was in my bed, back at my parents’ house, as if he knew exactly where I live, which bedroom is mine, everything about me. It was kind of freaky. And… Piper was nowhere to be found.”
I jump up suddenly, and he draws back in fear, but I’m no longer thinking about killing him. I have more important matters at hand.
Matters like, killing a Devil founder.
I’m already in my soldier outfit: camo pants, combat boots, leather jacket.
The hoodie beneath is mine, but I never take it off.
And in the pocket of my jacket is my white mask.
I grab a second gun for good measure, because it’s going to be a lot harder to kill a Devil founder than it will be to crush an insect.
“You’re… you’re already going?” squeaks out Josh. “Don’t we need, like, a plan? What are you doing?”
“No plan,” I grit out. “I’m off to take back what’s mine.”
I exit the room, slamming the door shut behind me, so he doesn’t see me mouth the words, “And then I’m going to kill her.”