CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

He sat beside his creation; a behemoth of steel and glass that dominated the cavernous space. The steady drip of water echoed off the walls like a metronome counting down the final moments of a life. His life"s work, this monstrous device, hummed with potential energy. A cycle, endless and unforgiving as the river that had shaped his town – and now, his vengeance.

Some might call him a monster. A vigilante. A killer. But they didn"t understand. Couldn"t understand. This wasn"t about revenge, not really. It was about balance. About setting things right in a world gone so terribly wrong.

He rose to his feet, moved over to a workbench and ran his fingers over the implements laid out with surgical precision. Zip ties. Duct tape. Enough sedatives to take down a city. The tools of his new trade.

Once, he had built things. Homes, schools, bridges. Now he built only this – a machine of retribution, a monument to justice long delayed but finally delivered.

The irony wasn"t lost on him. Using the very skills that had once been meant to create, now turned to destruction. But wasn"t that always the way? The most devastating weapons were often those designed for peace.

A sudden memory hit him like a punch to the temple. He was a child again, no more than nine or ten, splashing in the shallows of the same river where he'd dumped Ayers not a few hours ago. The summer sun beat down, the water cool against his skin. Paradise, until it wasn"t.

One misstep. That was all it took. His foot sank into the muddy bottom, trapped as surely as if it had been set in concrete. Panic bloomed in his chest as he lost his balance, toppling face-first into the current.

Water rushed into his nose, his mouth, his lungs. He thrashed wildly, fingers clawing at nothing, lungs burning for air they couldn"t reach. The world narrowed to a pinpoint of agony, every cell in his body screaming for oxygen. His vision began to darken at the edges, the fight slowly leaving his limbs.

In that moment, suspended between life and death, he understood true terror. The absolute certainty that this was it, that his short life would end here, in the murky depths of a river that had always seemed so benign.

Then, salvation. A hand gripping his arm, hauling him to the surface. Air, sweet and painful, filling his abused lungs. He coughed and retched, expelling river water as his rescuer pounded his back.

He shook his head, banishing the memory. That was then. This was now. And now, just a few feet away, another man was about to experience that same exquisite agony.

The builder"s muffled cries reached his ears. Desperate pleas for mercy bubbling up through the rising water. He didn"t bother to respond. What was there to say? The man had sealed his own fate the moment he agreed to work on that damned dam. He was in a watery grave of his own making now. No one was coming to help him.

He couldn"t bring himself to feel sorry for the builder. Not after everything that had happened. Not after watching his town wither and die, its lifeblood diverted to feed the insatiable greed of men in faraway offices.

His mind drifted to the others. Toledo had been almost laughably easy. A spiked drink at a fundraiser, a helping hand to the ‘inebriated' councilman, guiding him to a waiting car. The man had been unconscious before they"d even left the parking lot.

The engineer, Ayers, had required only slightly more effort. He"d waited outside Ayers" office, watching the windows for signs of movement. When Ayers finally emerged, bleary-eyed and exhausted from another late night, it took little effort to approach him under the guise of a concerned colleague. One quick jab with a syringe full of sedative, and another domino fell.

And now the builder. The man who had poured the concrete, who had shaped the very instrument of their town"s destruction with his own hands. He"d put up more of a fight than the others, trying to crawl to freedom, trying to power through the inebriation.

But in the end, they all fell. They all paid.

It all came back to the dam. That monstrosity of concrete and steel that had reshaped the landscape and doomed a community. The same project he had been offered a part in, all those years ago. The job he had turned down, taking what he thought was the moral high ground.

If only he had known then what he knew now. That his refusal would change nothing, that they would find someone else to do the work. Someone with fewer scruples, someone who didn"t care about the consequences.

Maybe if he had taken the job, he could have sabotaged it from within. Could have prevented this slow-motion disaster that had unfolded over the past year.

But that was the past. This was the present. And in the present, justice was being served, one life at a time.

The builder"s struggles were growing weaker now. It wouldn"t be long. And when it was over, when the last bubble of air escaped those greedy lungs, the cycle would begin anew.

The next name on his list was already chosen. The next trap is already set. It was a constant cycle, repeating ad infinitum, like the endless flow of a river. One life extinguished, another taken. A balance restored, however briefly, before the wheel turned again.

He checked his watch. Almost time. The builder would be gone soon, joining Toledo and Ayers in whatever afterlife awaited men who sold their souls for profit. And then – well, the list was long, but he was patient.

He"d waited this long. He could wait a little longer.

As he sat in the growing silence, broken only by the steady drip of water, he allowed his mind to wander. To the future, to the past. To the moment everything had changed.

It hadn"t been sudden. That was the cruel irony of it all. If the dam had burst, if it had been a catastrophic failure that wiped the town off the map in one fell swoop, perhaps it would have been easier to bear. A tragedy, yes, but a swift one. Clean, in its own way.

But this? This slow, inexorable decline? It was torture of the most exquisite kind.

First, it was just the river. Lower than usual, they said. Nothing to worry about. Just a dry spell. It"ll pick up again next season.

But it didn"t.

The crops began to fail. Livestock grew thin and sickly. Wells ran dry. And all the while, that damned dam stood like a monument to progress, holding back the lifeblood of the community.

He remembered the town meetings. The angry voices, the desperate pleas. Surely something could be done? Surely someone would listen?

But no one did. Or if they did, they didn"t care. The water kept flowing to Bristol, to the golf courses and the artificial lakes and the immaculate lawns of the wealthy. And Liberty Grove withered on the vine.

Farms foreclosed. Businesses shuttered. People left, seeking opportunity elsewhere. Those who stayed grew harder, more desperate with each passing day.

And through it all, the men responsible – men like Toledo, like Ayers, like the builder currently drawing his last, watery breaths – they prospered. They celebrated their ‘visionary project' and patted themselves on the back for a job well done.

Well. They weren"t celebrating now.

They had brought this upon themselves, he thought. They had damned a river, and in doing so, had damned themselves.

Now, it was time for them to reap what they had sown.

The water would rise. Justice would be served.