Chapter 20 Cooper #2
“Don’t be modest, sister,” Mary says without looking up from her explosive Jenga tower. “She’s being humble. It also liquefies the internal organs over the course of about six hours. It’s a very thorough, albeit messy digestive aid. CIA approved.”
My stomach lurches at the thought of it dissolving. “Right. So, not for the squeamish.”
“It’s for the Baptistes,” Alice corrects, loading the dart into her weapon with a definitive click. “They are not known for playing fair.”
Reed hands me Kevlar vest as I try to process his mad scientist sisters. “Put this on.”
I sigh, hefting the bulky thing into the air. “It’s gonna slow me down. This is what, twenty, thirty pounds?”
“Twenty-two,” Reed says, his voice leaving no room for argument.
He steps behind me, his hands on my shoulders, guiding my arms through the straps.
“And it’s the difference between a broken rib and a punctured lung.
Between a nasty bruise and your aorta spewing the branches red.
” He pulls the front straps tight, his knuckles tickling my chest. “Speed is useless if you’re dead on the spot. ”
“Romantic,” I mutter, allowing the vest to settle against my body.
“Here take this,” Reed commands, handing me a ticking watch. “Put it on your left wrist.”
I take the cold, metallic band. “This is sweet of you. So, you can always have your eyes on me?”
“So I can find you,” he corrects, maintaining his gaze on mine. “That pulse is my business.”
A whip of lust burns through me, my cock twitching with life.
“Awww,” Alice coos from her workbench, not looking up from the biological hazard in her hands. “He’s microchipping his pet. How responsible.”
“It’s not a microchip,” Mary corrects. “It’s a military-grade biometric monitor. It tracks heart rate, blood oxygen, and can detect significant impact and blunt force trauma. Like getting slammed into a tree or having one’s throat slit.”
“Even better,” Alice chirps. “Now we can watch you die in high definition. Just the right timing, I’ve burned through all of my reality tv shows.”
Reed’s jaw clicks. He leans into me, his breath hovering over my lips. “They’re not wrong. If that thing flatlines, I will burn the entire forest to ashes to get to you. I’ll crack every neck in the woods. Do you understand?”
The sheer intensity in his eyes steals my breath. His words are a promise to me. Alive or dead, he’ll ravage this Earth in my name.
This should all make my heart race with panic. I can feel it pounding against my chest. I could die tonight. Once and for all. But I’m excited. Eager to be the bait. To be the catalyst of Reed Quinn.
“I understand,” I whisper, the words a vow between us.
“I knew you would, my little mouse,” he says softly, with a peck to my lips. “Now before we venture out into the woods, there’s something I want to show you first.”
***
The graveyard is extensive, behind the main mansion, stretching almost an entire square acre. Dark, willowing trees litter the area, their branches trailing like skeletal fingers over the tombstones of weathered granite and moss-eaten marble.
"Welcome to the Boneyard," Reed says as we move through the main path, stepping over dead leaves that slither with the breeze. The air is damp and tense, as if these skeletons are rolling in their graves.
“Cheerful place for a last stroll,” I murmur, lacing my hand with his.
“It’s our family’s greatest accomplishment over the centuries,” Reed says, his tone devoid of humor. “The Baptistes we’ve culled over the last two centuries. Sometimes we bury them where their tombstone is, but sometimes the rose bushes beg for something a bit more juicy.”
The roses on the south terrace are particularly vibrant now that he mentions it.
“Where is family buried?” I ask, curious to why they would waste their time burying the Canadians.
Reed stops, his gaze landing to the hill ahead of us, where an ancient, formidable mausoleum stands guard.
“Up there. The Quinns from centuries past. The soil has been consecrated with our blood. They rest up there for eternity, looking down at the scum they buried.” He pauses for a brief second.
“It’s a reminder for them and us, that even in death there is hierarchy. ”
“What started all of this familial beef?”
He huffs out a breath. “It goes back to the American Revolution. Quinns were Revolutionaries. Baptistes sided with English. They were traitors and opportunists, running a safe house for Redcoats sneaking down from Canada.” He gestures to the mausoleum on the top of the hill.
“My too many-great-great-great grandfather, Allistair Quinn, led a night raid with a few of Washington’s men.
They burned down the original Baptiste farmhouse and slaughtered most of them in their beds. ”
A grim smile cascades on his face. “But as you know, not all of them. They multiply like rabbits in a clovers field. And they hold a grudge through the grave. Claim we stole their ancestral homestead. All we did was beat back the British.”
“So this is a 250-year-old family feud over real estate?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around it.
“More like a 250-year-old pest control contract,” Reed corrects, his hand tightening on mine. “We have been the exterminators, trying to squash these cockroaches.”
The sun is beginning to fade into the horizon, the darkness seeming to overwhelm the trees, swallowing the lush green of the pines.
“Charming,” I murmur, leaning into his heat. “When was the last time Baptistes fought on this soil?”
“Fifty-years ago,” he seethes, the words dripping with venom.
“My father and his brother were just kids when they came in the night, killed his parents and the rest of the siblings as they hid. The extended family came, but the bloodshed was already done. The Baptistes painted the walls with Quinn blood and vanished back into Quebec. My father spent his whole childhood away from Wolfston.”
"That's awful", I say leaning into him. "No wonder why your father was so ruthless in raising you to be a killer."
Reed's gaze remains on the mausoleum, a monument to his family's legacy. "He wasn't raising kids, he was training assassins. He wanted to wipe the Baptistes from the face of this Earth."
I nod my head, my eyes absorbed with his.
"My childhood wasn't about Ring Around The Rosie and silly games. It was about lessons. How to track, how to kill quietly, how to withstand pain. The first time I held a knife, I was four. The first time I used one, I was seven."
A cold knot strangles my stomach, as the cold realization washes over me. He wasn't born to be a serial killer, it was meticulously instilled from the moment he could walk.
"He made you his revenge," I whisper.
"He made me his legacy," Reed corrects, looking down at me. The dying light catches the black flames burning in his pupils, but now I see the cracks behind the mortar. "A perfect, unfeeling weapon. The one thing he never accounted for was you."
His thumb caresses my cheek, a gesture so at odds with the imagery of a seven-year-old holding a knife. "You're the flaw in his plan, Cooper. The variable he didn't design for. My one and only deviation. He didn't expect us to harbor love."
The candor of his words burn deep in my core. I am the splinter in the weapon, the one thing that could either break him or embolden him.
And God, I am so devastatingly in love with him.
The thought arrives as a thunderclap that silences every other emotion sprinting through my skull—fear, logic, excitement.
It's a ruinous, all-encompassing truth. I am in love with a serial killer and everything about him.
In love with the hands that can cradle my face and crush a windpipe with the same chilling grace.
In love with the mind that's been manipulated since childhood, somehow being a sanctuary for my disgusting mess of a soul.
I never wanted the glass slipper or the fairy godmother's blessing.
A Cinderella ending feels like a lie wrapped in suffocating sunshine.
My yearning has been for something beautiful and petrifying.
I crave the beautiful end, not the happy one.
The one that would make the devil shudder and break down in tears.
And I have found it in him.
I would follow him into any darkness, not as a lost soul seeking freedom, but as his equal, his counterpart. A shadow to his blade. Partners in life. Partners in death.
I will help him bury the body, my hands digging the black earth beside his, our breath mingling in the corpse-scented air. I will kiss the blood from his knuckles, savoring every drop. It would be an honor.
Our love transcends words. It's a feral, ravenous force. I would flay my own skin, strip myself down to the myelin sheath of my nerves, just to see his eyes burn with a concern meant only for me. I would dig my own grave if that would make him happy.
To be his flaw is my greatest pride. Let the world call us damned.
Let the Baptistes see what the fury of two lovesick killers can do.