Chapter 9

Photographs and files lay at my feet, encircling me. I twirl, looking at each one meticulously. Detective Clark hadn't given them up easily. I dab at the blood on the bridge of my nose where she'd struck me with her gun.

Gazing up, my eyes land on the now unconscious detective who's tied up and slumped against the wall by the front door.

She's lucky to be alive.

After Lyla didn't come home, and her location had been turned off on her phone, I'd nearly lost my fucking mind. I broke into the scene after the cops cleared out, but there wasn't much left to gain from it.

Finally, a flash of blue drags my eye to a photograph with the man in question on it. The photo is of the outside of the house, and he likely didn't think about how thorough the police were being. That, or he was so cocky that he didn't care if he got caught on film. I look him over as Detective Clark grumbles back into consciousness and shifts around against the wall.

Perfect timing.

I grab the picture and rush towards her, earning me a loud shriek from the detective.

Crouching, I lift it in front of her face. "Who is this?"

She's shaking, and blood is leaking down her face from a fresh wound I'd created when I knocked her out with her weapon.

"I—" she stammers.

I snarl, lowering the photo some to look at her. "He has something that belongs to me, and if you don't tell me where he is, you know what happens to you next."

She knows who I am; she knew it the moment I took her out of my trunk and carried her inside the house from the garage.

She begged for the Butcher to let her go. She pleaded with me that she wasn't my type. She promised she'd never speak to her associates at the police department. Morals go out the window when your life is in danger.

I lift the photo, snarling at her again.

She looks good and hard, motivated by her wish to stay alive.

"He said his name was Kage Davis, but who knows if that was an alias? He's a volunteer. I handle all the crime scene volunteers' paperwork for the department. In a town like this, sometimes we run only because of our volunteers."

I'd taken Julieanne Clark because I had a hunch she'd be the type to speak to the man I was looking for. At the very least, I thought maybe she'd be astute enough, observant enough, to have noticed him on the scene. Never had I imagined she was the one who allowed him so close to my stupid girl.

Half of my brain reminds me I'm to blame, too. I set this plan into motion and sent Lyla into what looked like a carefully laid trap.

I'd been so arrogant. I was so quick to think I was the object of the killer's attention, but it had been Lyla all along. Or did he take her to draw me out?

Standing, I pace and rub at my temples.

"What could he have of yours?" Detective Clark pipes up, making me want to end her before it's time. I might have a use for her. I need to remain calm.

But I can't. Lyla has become my entire fucking world. And now it's crumbling.

I can't function.

Julieanne will die for her role in all this—by my hand or Lyla's. It will make me a liar, but that's the least of my worries.

"He has my fucking heart." I don't know why I answer. I feel vulnerable without Lyla. Exposed in a way I've never known before. While I was busy maintaining that I was in control and trying to keep her at arm's length, it seemed she was already rooted in my soul and growing out of control.

Like poison ivy, fed and not maintained.

"Your heart? He took your wife?" Julieanne is doing what cops do best in this circumstance: trying to connect with me. So that it'll humanize her to me; she doesn't understand that I, myself, am not human.

"Agent Black. He took Agent Black," I say. She's going to die anyhow. Having someone understand what I'm going through won"t hurt anything.

She gasps, working out what I mean and sitting straighter on the wall.

"She's your… You were investigating who was copycatting you?"

Smart girl.

I've met many an officer who was no sharper than a dull butter knife. It had gotten them killed faster. I can't stand ignorance.

"And you think he," her eyes flick down toward the photo I'd let slip from my hand to where it had fallen on the floor, "did it?"

I nod. "Something in him was different when I saw him the other night. He's like me. Like us."

Julieanne swallows. "Like Agent Black?"

I smile, menace oozing into my features. "Yes. She's like me. I'd even feign to say she's worse than me. Being new to the game and all, she has much less control than I do."

She works it out in her head how she'd been so close to a killer and hadn't known. That's the part that unnerves them the most. We move through the world, near them, with them. Their lives are always in danger, and they never know it.

Not everyone has the good sense to know when a predator is near. I"m certain it used to be innate in humans. But the longer we've existed, the more we've developed away from our baser instincts, the more it's faded.

Few of us can sense it now.

"Help me catch him, and I'll never speak of you being in Crows Hollow," Julieanne begs.

I let out a deep laugh. "You're tied up, Detective. I don't think you have an angle from which to bargain."

"I know that. It's just this case…"

I smile, crouching in front of her again and setting her on edge. She sits even straighter. "This case could boost your career for the rest of your life."

She nods, fear dancing in her eyes at my proximity.

"But so could catching Kage and the Butcher," I add. "Do you think me stupid, Detective?"

She swallows over the sure lump in her throat, and I cock my head and watch her little heart patter so hard that her throat moves in time with the beats.

"I'm true to my word. I'll help you, and you help me."

It can't hurt her to think she's in my good graces until the end. It would make her more pliable and easier to work with.

I stand, motioning for her to do the same. After removing her cuffs, I re-cuff her hands in front of her body.

"I need access to the databases. We need to find what we can on this Kage Davis."

She nods and looks towards the laptop I already have open on the table.

"My IP is masked. You can use mine, and it will not be traced back to either of us. They'll know you logged in, of course, but you'll be able to report it as an illegal activity when you're safely back at work," I tell her, coaching her.

She only nods, reaching the dining room table and sitting down. Once she's got the database up, I watch her log in, standing over the back of her chair like a looming presence, one that'll end her in a heartbeat if she sends up a flare for help.

She does as she's asked, searching for Kage Davis in the system.

"He's only been pulled over once in his life, seat belt ticket," she reads off his small footprint in the database.

"It looks like his parents are listed here… Let's see…" She closes the database and opens a search engine, looking up the names she'd found. "His parents were well-known doctors from two counties away. His father was a neurosurgeon. It looks like he didn't follow in their footsteps. He went to school to become a doctor. He dropped out, though."

"Explains the precision with which he took their tongues off," I mutter.

"And their nails," she adds.

I hadn't known he'd been taking their nails off, but then again, my stupid girl hadn't come home to me.

I rub my chest with my hand absently. The ache is gnawing at me like a hungry beast.

"It looks like they both died in a car crash a few years back, leaving all they had to their son. There's a mansion close to here that's listed. We could go there and…"

I lift my gun and knock Julieanne over the back of her head, and she slumps forward. Lifting her off the chair and over my shoulder, I carry her down into the basement and tie her to the boiler.

I don't have time for a tag-a-long, and I don't have the nerves to deal with her, either. I haven't killed her yet, so for now, my word is intact.

I have to find Lyla. I'm going to lose my fucking mind without her.

There's a saying that you never know what you have until it's gone, and I'm living fucking proof of that right now.

And anyone who gets in my goddamn way is going to end up in the same grave as Detective Clark because I don't have time to be the Butcher who only kills those who deserve it.

No. I'm a cold-blooded killer who's missing the one piece of his soul that makes him even a speck of human. And without her, I'm a monster.