Chapter 42

Chapter Forty-Two

Feenix Blaylock

T he ambulance lights are flashing off the water, but all I see is blood. Her blood. All I hear is her ragged breathing. All that flashes in my mind is her violated, naked, and suspended from the ceiling, rivers of red below her.

Rage consumes me. Pure rage so white hot that, before I know it, I’m shoving past Noll and marching back out of the boathouse. The next second, I’m standing over Nathan’s body, gun poised to shoot him straight in the head. He may be dead, but he isn’t dead to my standards.

He hasn’t paid nearly enough yet.

The cops outside have cleared away, but not before leaving crime scene tape everywhere. They wouldn’t see if I obliterated his face. That’s a memory I want etched into my mind: his face completely gone. A mess of flesh.

My heartbeat roars in my ears. He did this. He put her through this, and he’s going to pay because it’ll be likely that he took her life. My life. My reason for being, for breathing. Without her, I’m that dark man I’d become. I’m nothing with her dead. But him? I’ll make his body pay for it in this life, and when I’m old and dead? I’ll make him pay for it then too, by holding his face in the fires of hell.

Just before I nearly pull the trigger, a hand lands on my shoulder. My gun begins to shake, and for the first time, the agony I feel inside cracks across my face. “Let me do it,” I demand low and deep.

“It wouldn’t solve anything,” Noll whispers. “If it would, if I had known what he’d done to her, I would have let you kill him. Hell, I would have killed him myself. But right now? He’s dead. There is no more he can pay for besides taking your job.”

“My job might be the only thing I have left, but my job can go to fucking hell. It was my position here that –”

He squeezes my shoulder. “If you hadn’t been here, if you hadn’t been undercover, you never would have found her. You never would have fallen for her. And you sure as shit wouldn’t have saved her. No one would have.”

I grind my teeth, but I keep my gun poised for Nathan’s skull. “She may already be dead. You don’t know if I saved jack shit.”

Grabbing my shoulder tighter, he turns me with all of his strength. My gun lowers a bit as I take in his features, open and honest as always. “The only way you’ll know that is if you go to the hospital, Feenix. Don’t let her be another Megan. Don’t let her be another victim of this business. Be there for her, even if she takes her last breath. Be by her side. Get the fuck out of here, and tell her what she means to you, just in case it might be too late later.”

My gun lowers to my side as his words take a punch to my gut. Reality comes crashing back and, with it, the reminder that Charlie has no idea how I feel about her. No idea because I couldn’t drop my wall long enough to tell her a damn thing.

“You both deserve to have this talk,” Noll whispers before letting me go. “I don’t know if you’ll be too late. No one but God knows that. But if you stay here, if you shoot up a corpse, you’ll be rotting in jail, and you’ll never get to tell her anything.”

A stream of curses leaves my lips, but I don’t look down at Nathan’s body for fear that I might actually follow through. Instead, I give Noll the gun and stride past him and off the dock. As soon as my feet hit land, I’m running.