5. Caleb
FIVE
Caleb
To say I reacted badly to the recording Novak sent me was an understatement. The truth was simpler and uglier—I saw red.
Not just because of the contents of the audio, but that Novak’s low, deep tone did something to me, which was deeply irritating, because my body reacted before my brain caught up.
It scared me that Novak had this effect on me as much as it fascinated me.
I should have avoided him, should have buried my interest under a mountain of self-preservation, but every time I thought I was done with the fucked-up magnetism between us, some new crack opened in my resolve.
Maybe it was guilt too—guilt that I could want someone so dangerous, so immune to the kind of feeling and empathy I believed in and still feel heat rising in my chest and blood thrumming behind my eyes when he was in the room.
He was a killer, a psychopath, and he recorded torture as if he was collecting data.
But all his hard focus and intensity did things to my libido I couldn’t get control of.
One second, he got under my skin in a way that was dangerous and distracting. Then he sent me that, and it reminded me who he was—and what he was capable of.
And I couldn’t decide if that should push me further away… or drag me in deeper.
I could rationalize why we needed the information because Reverend Neil Langston was the worst kind of man; I’d known it the second his name had surfaced in the files—too clean, too righteous, too carefully insulated by people who owed him favors.
A man of the cloth who preyed on kids and secrets they could never hide from me.
But still—Jesus Christ—did Novak have to send recordings where the screams outweighed the useful intel? And why the fuck did he narrate the entire thing?
I shouldn’t have noticed how steady Novak’s breathing was on the recording. I made it twelve seconds longer than I should have before ripping off my headphones and swearing loud enough to rattle the glass in my office.
“Fucking freak!”
I couldn’t think of a better descriptor for someone so broken, and that should’ve made him easier to categorize. It didn’t.
Being attracted to him didn’t fit. Obsession didn’t fit. Nothing fit—and that made it worse. Novak unsettled me because he never once tried to hide what he was, and he didn’t have to be in the room to get under my skin.
Sonya didn’t glance up from the tablet in her hands. She sat at the small conference table by the window, sleeves rolled, dark hair pulled back, glasses low on her nose—calm as ever.
“You know, Novak’s not a freak.”
“Psychopath.” Sexy, focused, asshole of a psychopath.
“Yeah, but not the kind of psychopath you think he is.”
“Then what is he?”
Sonya tapped her stylus against the tablet. “It’s complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it for me and tell me why Freak thinks it’s okay to record the torture.”
“You shouldn’t call him ‘Freak’.”
I knew that. But for some fucking reason, every time I said it to his face, he raised an eyebrow, and that was the closest I think he ever came to a reaction.
“I know, but he likes it.” Well, he reacts to it, and I love seeing him react to me when he barely interacted with anyone else apart from Doc.
It killed me that I liked that he reacted.
“So, the uncomplicated version,” she began, reading from her screen. “The primary type is born a psychopath—reduced fear response, shallow emotional processing, almost no capacity for empathy.”
“That sounds exactly like him.”
“Not quite.” She tilted her head and frowned.
“It says most primary psychopaths are impulsive. They chase stimulation. They escalate, burn out, end up in prison, or die. But Leon Novak is controlled,” she said.
“Which means that he’s a high-functioning psychopath.
” I huffed because that was what Doc had said, too.
“People like Novak build a framework they operate inside and have lines they decide not to cross.” I stared at her, and she huffed.
“Meaning he chooses violence because it’s necessary,” she added. “Not just to react.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Maybe?”
“He sent me his version of torture porn and narrated every fucking step.”
Sonya watched me for a moment, stylus resting against her lower lip. “You know he only ever shows you his work,” she said. “It’s kinda cute him wanting you to see he did it right, so you can be proud of him. I think he likes you.”
“Fuck off.”
“He stares at you.” She raised her eyebrows. “And the recording is his way of giving you flowers, only his version involves knives and more screaming.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but the memory of Novak’s gaze on me flickered through my head before I could stop it. Then there was the whole stalking thing, and the way I couldn’t quite ignore him, my attention caught on him more than it should have.
“He doesn’t do that for anyone else,” she added.
“You’re creating something out of nothing,” I snapped.
“I’m serious.” She tilted her head and smirked. “He probably wants you to be his boyfriend .”
I barked a laugh. “Fuck no.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s Novak .” I mean, that was all I had to say, right?
“That’s not a reason.”
“It is when the man solves problems with a body count.”
Sonya shrugged. “Lots of people have questionable hobbies.”
“His form of torture and murder isn’t a hobby, Sonya.”
“Still,” she said mildly. “He clearly wants your attention, and the poor guy probably doesn’t think it will upset you.”
I bristled. “Poor guy, my ass. And I’m not upset.” I didn’t like how easily he got under my skin.
“Sure.”
“I’m not.”
She huffed. “Then ignore the torture and get the intel.”
“Easy for you to say.”
She leveled a glance at me. “Is it?”
“We don’t know anything about him,” I said, which came from nowhere. “His army file is a mess of redactions. I mean, who the fuck is this man and why is he anywhere near the Cave?”
“Stop changing the subject.”
“I’m not?—”
“Novak has bad guy energy, and it’s attractive in a he-would-kill-you way,” she added after a moment, tapping the stylus against the tablet again.
I stared at her. “You cannot be serious.” Because if she was right, then I had a bigger problem than Novak.
“I’m very serious.”
“He’s six feet of Terminator, built like a tank, covered in tattoos, and kills people for a living,” I said.
“Yes,” she said patiently. “That is what some people call bad-boy hot. And this is his form of flirting with you, aiming for your competency kink.”
“I don’t have a competency kink!” I lied. “Anyway, you know he’s not my type.” I wasn’t getting pulled into whatever this was.
She gave me a slow once-over. “I forgot, you like railing twinks.”
“Exactly,” I said, then it hit me what she said. How in hell did she know I liked my partner’s small and cute and easily railable ? “Wait, what?
She nodded. “So, it’s because he’s a big guy you won’t return his affection.”
“I swear to god, Sonya?—”
“Your objection isn’t only the murder.”
I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Look,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose again. “All I’m saying is Novak’s behavior toward you is… statistically interesting.”
“‘Statistically’?”
“He doesn’t perform this way for anyone else. He stares at you, and it’s cute.”
“Only you could call a psychopath cute,” I said and turned back to my screen.
“Big and scary with a side order of cute,” she amended.
I huffed and put my headphones back on. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to sit through this shit—headphones on, jaw locked, forcing myself to drag usable intel out of someone’s last minutes—and it wasn’t just this time, it was every damn time Novak sent a file.
He narrated everything as if I needed to know how he extracted information.
Was Sonya right? Was Novak showing me his work, hoping for what… approval?
Neil Langston had to be stopped, and I had zero moral conflict with that.
But there was a difference between the how of what he did, and this darkness Novak recorded for me to hear.
What he got for us was a string of usable intel—names, locations, accounts—enough to start dismantling another layer of the network hiding behind scripture and charity galas, enough to save kids who didn’t know they needed saving.
I’ll give him that.
But no one wants to hear about a murder in such detail. Apart from Novak, and possibly Jamie, oh, and Doc, and maybe Enzo and Rio… fuck, I was surrounded by murdering obsessive assholes.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “The bastard could’ve edited it.
Sent a transcript. I didn’t need to hear every second of it.
” I broke off, jaw tightening. I didn’t need the screams burned into my head.
I didn’t need to hear the moment Langston realized no one was coming to save him.
I’d seen some of the videos of the kids he’d helped to sell, and while I felt sick to my stomach, something dark and ugly in me was satisfied that he’d died screaming.
There weren’t words strong enough for the kind of damage he’d been instrumental in inflicting on innocent kids.
I rewound to one section, though.
He runs all of it. He picks who. He picks where. He calls everyone son. None of us know his name.
I wrote the handle down. SaintMichael. Up until tonight he’d been a username on three platforms and a cluster of metadata. I started a new file.
“Well, he’s got us a step further,” I grudgingly admitted as I collated the information and uploaded it to the new file.