Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Wrong time.
After he’d just had sex with Sloane—her first time to actually have sex—that was not the moment when he should confess to killing his father.
Technically, there was probably never a good time to do that.
But here the fuck they were.
Sloane didn’t leap from the bed. Didn’t jerk away from his touch. Didn’t call him a sick freak. All expected responses. All justified responses.
Nope.
She snuggled closer. “I would have done the same.”
What?
“He kidnapped you. He tortured you by trapping you in a coffin. He’d already killed all those other people…what were you supposed to do? Let him keep hunting? Let him keep attacking? He wanted you to be exactly like him, but that wasn’t going to happen.”
“It did happen, angel.” He should leave the bed. He shouldn’t have ever touched her in the first place.
But I have never wanted someone more than I want her.
“Do you want to tell me the story?” she asked. “Or do you want me to tell you what I know happened?”
She’d said…what I know. Not…what I believe. Or even what I suspect. “You can’t know what happened.” She hadn’t been there. No one had been there. Just him. Just him and the blood and the death and…
“You got out of the grave. The grave your biological father had buried you in. Even as you crawled out, the cops were searching for you. Combing those woods. He’d called your parents, just like he always did with his victims. He called and gave coordinates but…
because it was you, because he wanted you to make it out of the ground, he called them sooner than he had the others. Didn’t wait twenty-four hours.”
No, he’d only waited a few hours after the abduction before contacting Preston’s family.
“He was still there when you dug yourself out. Still there as the cops closed in. He had to be there because he was watching you.”
Preston could feel the dirt beneath his fingers. Taste it on his lips. He hated that taste. He hated—
She kissed him.
He tasted her. Not the dirt. Not the fear. Not the rage.
“It’s okay,” she promised him. “No one else will know. Trust me. And I will trust you.”
“You don’t have a bad secret in your past. You didn’t kill anyone.” They were not the same.
“It’s not my past that I’m trusting you with. It’s my future.” Then she snuggled up against him. “I haven’t killed yet, but I will.” A yawn. “It’s all a matter of time.”
He blinked at that unexpected response. “Just who are you planning to kill?”
“Cody Crenshaw.” An instant answer. “If he gets parole, he will come after me. He swore to me once that I would be dead before he ever let me go. I believed him when he made that promise, so when he comes for me again. I’ll be ready. I will kill him. That’s my confession to you.”
No, angel, you don’t have to kill him. Preston’s lips brushed against her temple. If that prick gets out of prison, I will kill him for you.
It had been surprisingly easy to kill the first time.
His eyes closed. And the past swallowed him whole.
“He got away! That monster got away! He tried to murder our boy—and he escaped!”
“No, No, Sylvia, he didn’t get away. The cops said they shot him. He fell into the river. He’s dead. He’s just…they just haven’t found his body yet.”
A choked sob. His mother’s sob. Sylvia Byron didn’t cry often.
In fact, Preston had never seen her cry at all in his life.
Until that night. Until she’d arrived at the scene in the woods and rushed toward the ambulance.
Tears had streamed down her face, streaking her mascara, and huge sobs had shaken her chest as she hugged him, over and over again. As if she never wanted to let go.
“He buried my baby.” Pain broke his mother’s voice. “He buried my baby, and then he got away. What if he comes after Preston again? What if he comes after our son? We can’t let that happen. We can’t!”
Preston stood behind the door. They were at a small hotel, one on the outskirts of the Eldorado National Forest. He’d been checked at a nearby hospital, released, but the cops had wanted him staying close by while they searched for the man who’d taken him.
“He’s dead, Sylvia. Dead. Doesn’t matter if we have a body or not. The cops shot him, and that man will never hurt our son again.”
But I’m not your son.
Preston edged away from the door. Even as he’d been hauling himself out of the ground, that bastard who’d taken him had been laughing. And clapping. Like Preston had just performed some kind of fabulous trick.
“I knew you could do it, boy! Come out of the dark and be reborn! My son. Mine!”
The man had shone a flashlight at his own face. Under his chin, pointing upward. He’d been terrifying and yet…familiar. Because when Preston looked in the mirror, he saw a younger version of that face. Cheekbones not as sharp. Not yet. Jaw not as hard. Not yet. But…
I see myself in that face. What I will become.
Preston had heaved up, sprawling face-first near the grave, spitting out dirt, and sirens had blasted into the night.
“Shit. They’re coming. Too close. I have to go.” A hand had slapped on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be me and you, son. Me and you. You’re the one I want with me.” Then he’d rattled off coordinates. Longitude and latitude. As Preston had struggled to breathe. “My special spot. Meet me there.”
Pounding footsteps had rushed toward them. The cops. They’d come in with their guns and their flashlights and the man who’d taken him—the man who claimed to be his real father—had fled into the night.
Preston heard gunfire blasting when the EMTs pushed him into the ambulance, as his mother hugged and hugged him…
At the hospital, a police officer had told him that he was safe. That they’d shot the man who abducted him.
But…
They just hadn’t found his body yet.
Preston hadn’t mentioned the coordinates. Not to anyone. He should have. He’d thought about telling everyone but…
But rage had burned inside of him. A dark, twisting rage.
As he stood in his hotel room, as he heard his parents, that twisting rage spread throughout his whole body. His adoptive parents. He’d always known he was adopted. They’d told him the truth for as long as he could remember. He was their gift, the perfect son they’d prayed to have.
I am not perfect. I’m evil.
A cop was stationed in front of his hotel room.
But no one was behind the hotel, so no one saw when Preston climbed off the narrow balcony in the back and jumped down to the first floor.
They all thought he was safe inside. Sleeping in the hotel room bed.
He’d found extra pillows in the closet of his room.
He’d put them under the covers. It looked like he was sleeping. But he wasn’t. He was hunting.
He just had to be fast.
Fast enough…
He’d taken the keys to his dad’s car. A car parked behind the hotel. Hidden because his parents hadn’t wanted to attract attention from reporters who were coming to the area.
Preston unlocked the car, and he climbed inside.
The coordinates he’d been given were burned into his memory. But he still put them in the car’s GPS. His adoptive dad was a techie who had a full directional system in his car, and it was pretty easy to find the location.
Pretty easy to drive, too, considering it was his first time behind the wheel.
He drove until the road ended. Then he hopped out. He ran toward the trees—
“I knew you’d come.” The sun had started to rise, and the man was right there. Right there. Just waiting in the woods. “Come with me, son.”
Disgust filled him. “I’m not your son.”
Laughter. “Have you looked in a mirror?”
The man wasn’t dead. Didn’t appear injured at all. The cops had said they shot him…
“We have to hurry. You could have been followed.” His father turned away and started walking.
That was when Preston realized the man’s back was soaked with blood.
The man disappeared into the thick trees. Preston ran to the back of the car. He popped the trunk and grabbed a crowbar that had been tossed inside. He was not going to let that bastard get away. He was not—
“What are you going to do with that, son?”
He hadn’t left. Preston’s hold tightened on the crowbar. “Stop calling me that!”
“You gonna use that bar on me?” More laughter. “I’d like to see you try.”
Then, before Preston could even turn around, he drove a fist straight into Preston’s back. Into his spine. Hard.
Preston slammed forward. His head rammed into the top of the trunk. The jerk yanked the crowbar right out of his hand, and then he slammed it into Preston’s back. Once. Twice.
Then Preston’s legs. Behind his knees. Preston went down. Hard. He landed on his stomach, but rolled quickly, breath heaving in and out.
“You think you’re gonna hurt me?” The man stood over him. So much bigger than Preston. That crowbar gripped tightly in his right hand. “You raced out here because you were gonna try and hurt me?”
Not just hurt him. Kill him.
“Did you tell the cops where I was?” The man leaned over him. “Are they closing in?” He drove his booted foot into Preston’s ribs.
Preston felt one rib break. He felt it.
“I had such high hopes for you. I let you live.”
“I…crawled out…on my own.”
Laughter. Mocking. So mocking. “Crawled out and came to kill me. Maybe I should be proud.” He straightened. Then drove the crowbar down onto Preston’s chest.
The pain ripped through him.
“But I’m not proud. Because you’re a fucking screw up.
You didn’t even get one good swing in at me, did you?
Don’t worry. I’ll make you harder.” He tossed away the crowbar.
“I’ll get rid of that fake family you have.
I’ll bury them deep. So deep that no one will ever find them again.
Then you will understand. Then the darkness will consume you. ”
It already was consuming him.
You won’t hurt my mom. The mom who’d cried and hugged him so tightly. You won’t hurt my dad. The dad who stayed up late with him at night, teaching him about tech and playing video games when Preston’s mom was sleeping.
Not adoptive parents—my parents. My real parents. And you will not hurt them.