2. Micah
TWO
MICAH
“Knife!” I yell, already moving toward her. She’s half animal, bright-eyed and smeared with tears, and most of that wild shimmer is focused on the blade she’s just yanked out of Knox’s boot.
It happens so fast my brain processes it in little fragments instead of whole scenes—her fingers curled and white-knuckled, the blade up and forward, her legs thrumming a split second before she launches.
Holy shit. She’s going to—
“Fuck!” Eli’s head snaps toward me, and Milo takes a step forward, and Knox—
Knox doesn’t move.
He stands there, watching this girl with sand on her knees and mascara streaking her cheeks as she raises a blade over her head and screams like something in her has finally torn loose.
Before we can stop her, she plunges it straight into Brock’s gut.
He howls, but it’s muffled by the noose, his body jerking wildly as she yanks the knife out and rams it back in—lower this time, right into his exposed crotch.
Blood sprays, hot and dark, soaking her arms, her face, the pink dress that’s already half-ruined from what he did to her.
Jesus Christ, she’s—
I freeze for a split second, brain screaming at me to intervene, but fuck—there’s something in it I recognize.
She’s not stopping. Brock thrashes, legs kicking uselessly, but the rope holds him high, his face purple and bulging, eyes rolling back as she keeps going, her scream turning into guttural snarls.
“Heaven has sent us an angel, and her name is death,” Holden mutters, but no one moves. Knox remains statue-still, watching her like he’s seeing a kindred spirit or some shit.
“It’s the world’s most fucked-up pinata,” Milo says, watching organs spill out like candy.
Stab after stab, the knife sinks and twists and pulls free. This isn’t rage. It’s precision. She’s not just stabbing. She’s destroying.
Like she knows exactly what she wants to take from him.
She’s one of us.
Brock’s pants are down around his knees, and she’s turning everything below his belt into ground meat, guts spilling out in slick loops. The fifth stab goes deep, and there’s a wet thunk as debris hits the sand.
I look down.
Brock’s dick is lying there like a sad, severed sausage.
Without thinking, I kick it.
It flies in a perfect arc and smacks Milo in the chest. He looks down, processes what bounced off him, and lets out a shriek that could shatter glass.
“WHAT THE FUCK, MICAH!” He attempts to kick it back, but his aim is off and it whiffs sideways, sending it flying toward Holden.
Holden, operating on pure reflex, bats it away with the back of his hand. “Oh, hell no—”
It sails back toward Milo, who grabs Eli, attempting to jerk him into the line of fire.
“I’m not your cock blocker, Milo!” Eli dives to the side like he’s avoiding a grenade, hitting the wet sand at a skid. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
The limp dick misses both of them and slaps into one of the jetty’s pillars, landing with a wet plop in the sand near Knox’s feet. Knox looks down at it, looks up at us, and I swear I can see him sighing behind that mask.
“You’re all children,” he rumbles, and kicks it back toward the body. He’s nothing if not a tidy motherfucker.
I turn back to the woman, who’s still going at Brock’s corpse like she’s trying to excavate his soul through his abdominal cavity.
There’s beauty in it—the way she moves, the complete focus, the utter commitment to making sure he never hurts anyone again.
She’s covered in blood and sand and righteous fury.
I think I’m in love.
Eli gets to his feet and approaches her, pulling off his mask and edging closer with his hands up. “Hey—hey, it’s okay. He’s done. You’re safe.”
She’s not hearing him. Blood’s everywhere now—splattered across her chest, dripping from her chin, turning the sand into a muddy slurry under Brock’s body.
She stabs one last time, deep into his gut, and twists hard, like she’s carving out the last bit of evil.
Brock goes limp, finally, his choking gasps fading to nothing, just the drip-drip of blood hitting the ground.
The moment she stops, I make a move, grabbing her from behind.
I wrap my arms around hers, pinning her knife hand, and pulling her back.
She fights me—thrashing, kicking, raging—and she’s stronger than she looks, all adrenaline and anger so fucking raw it almost burns to touch.
The knife slips, swinging wildly up to catch my forearm, a hot sting I’ll deal with later.
“Stop,” I murmur, close to her ear, trying to keep my voice steady. “Calm, baby girl. It’s over. He’s done. You’re okay. Hey—you’re okay.”
She keeps fighting. Elbows, heels, teeth—she tries to bite my arm and I let her, because fuck it, she’s earned the right to bite someone. But I don’t let go. I hold on, solid and steady, the way you hold someone who’s drowning—not to restrain them but to keep them from going under.
“You’re okay,” I say again. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
Somewhere in the middle of the third or fourth okay, she stops.
It’s like someone pulled her plug. She goes limp in my arms, knife slipping from her fingers into the sand, and her whole body shudders hard enough to shake us both.
I lower us both to the ground, tearing off my mask so I can take a decent breath.
She’s deadweight against my chest, her head lolling back against my shoulder, her eyes open but seeing nothing.
Blood streaks her hands, her neck, the ruined pink dress.
It smears across my arms where I’m holding her. It’s fucking everywhere.
Above us, Brock swings.
For a long moment, nobody says anything.
“Well, fuck.” Milo pulls off his mask and dumps it on the sand, staring up at Brock like the corpse personally inconvenienced him. “The suicide note is useless now.”
He pulls the folded paper from his pocket and brandishes it as evidence.
“No one’s going to believe he hanged himself and then went stab-happy on his own junk. Do you know how long it took me to fake this fuckwad’s handwriting?”
“Milo,” Eli says, warning threaded through every syllable.
“What? The loops on his g’s were a nightmare.
Effort happened. My best work. And now—” He gestures at the mess.
“Now it’s arts and crafts for nothing. Well, not nothing.
That was a show and I loved watching it.
But fuck, if I’d known we were playing pin-the-knife-in-the-rapist, I’d have saved some time and brought throwing darts instead. ”
Knox stays silent. He crouches to pick up the knife, wiping the blade on his thigh in one practiced stroke. He’s halfway to sliding it back into his boot when Eli holds out a hand.
Knox pauses. Looks at him. Looks at the knife.
Hands it over.
Eli folds it shut and drops it into his jacket pocket without a word. Knox watches him do it, then straightens, mask still on, expression unreadable behind the smooth bone of it.
Holden lets out a low whistle as he circles the body, mask pushed up over his hair.
“I am fucking buzzing. That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Shut the fuck up, Holden,” Eli snaps, his voice low and tight, like he’s two seconds from losing it.
Tension rolls off him, his eyes flicking to the girl, then back to me holding her.
This was supposed to go clean. Now we’ve got a dead rapist, a ruined suicide note, and a shaking woman covered in blood.
Holden chuckles, unfazed. “Don’t yuck my yum, Eli. Girl’s got some serious rage. Look at that—clean through the balls. If that’s how she handles a knife, imagine what else she can do. That right there is the woman of my dreams.”
The girl stirs in my arms, a small sound escaping her throat—not a word, just a whimper that cuts through the bluster around us.
Her eyes are starting to focus, darting from face to face, and her body tenses again, like she’s realizing she’s surrounded.
I loosen my grip a little, just enough to let her know I’m not the threat here.
“Eli,” I say quietly. “We need to—”
“I know.” He crouches down in front of her, his face pale in the moonlight, hazel eyes shadowed. “Hey. Look at me. Can you hear me? You’re safe now. We got him. He’s not hurting anyone anymore.”
She doesn’t respond, just stares at him, then at the body swinging above us, blood still dripping in slow, rhythmic streams. Her breathing hitches, and I can feel the moment reality slams into her—the blood on her hands, the knife she dropped, the five strangers who watched her turn a man into a pincushion.
Knox folds his arms over his massive chest, still the only one with his mask on. Milo crumples the note and stuffs it back in his pocket. Holden watches the body swing, a dark grin still playing on his lips.
And me? I hold her because I’ve been where she is—shaking, bloody, broken—and I know what comes next. The way the world tilts and never quite rights itself.
The surf crashes. The rope holding Brock creaks. Nobody says another word.