I had to center myself. As I told the former sheriff, it really didn’t matter. It still landed me in this room. Nothing and no one could change that.
I picked up the vial and the syringe. “Do you know what a Gila Monster is, Sheriff?”
The mask was back over his face as he shook his head.
“Desert lizards,” I said as I filled the barrel with the sickly yellow liquid. “Let’s just say they’ve got a face only a mother could love. Nasty claws and sharp fangs. But their real threat is their venom. From the research I did, I’m told it feels like lava is running through your veins. Horrible, but not fatal. At least, not generally. Not to a healthy man, and you, my dear Sheriff, are far from healthy.”
I picked up the tubing of his IV, running my fingers along it until I reached the cannula. Carefully, I inserted the needle. “I hope it’s as painful as experts claim it is,” I told the dying man before I pushed my thumb down on the plunger.
Chapter Seventy-One
Mal
As soon asI learned about an abandoned fishery burning on the Taku Inlet and a headless body being discovered by the fire department, I had known. The news helicopter only showed a white sheet where the body lay outside the inferno, but there was no doubt in my mind whose body it was and where she was taking the head.
The past three days have been a living hell. And not just because I came home from the police station to find all her things had been taken from my house. The anger I’d been feeling since I pulled up that fucking email was stoked into rage by an entire bottle of bourbon. Then came days of brooding while nursing a hangover worse than anything I’d ever experienced in my twenties.
Holly Marteen was my little owl. My little owl was Holly Marteen.
The betrayal of that fact cut to the quick and the alcohol certainly did not make my thoughts rational. She’d played me. She’d used me. How the fuck hadI, Shawn Mallory, the asshole, the man who never brought emotion into a contract, been the one to fall? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. My entire life hadbeen turned upside down by the very woman I’d been chasing for months.
And I’d been blind to it. So fucking blind.
She wore a fuckingmask!The damn contacts and those wigs… She was hiding right in front of me, and I’d let her. I was now suspended and was likely facing a demotion, pending a review.
And for what? Some sex? I was never short sex. Maybe a bit conceited, but not an inaccurate statement. What I was generally short on was time, not available or willing partners. So how had I been so easily manipulated? I knew for a fact that she’d stalked her victims, perhaps for years, prior to abducting them. That became apparent when I’d learned the evidence against Kaylee Collins had been anonymously delivered.
Had she stalked me too? She had to have, to become the perfect submissive for me. The submissive even I hadn’t realized I’d been searching for.
The police were chasing their tails looking for the woman known as Phoebe Snetsinger, and I was doing jackshit to help them. And not just because no one had believed me when I’d claimed Holly Marteen was alive two weeks ago. They wanted to claim I was crying wolf, so fuck them.
Iwould be the one to find her.Iwould be the one to bring her to justice.
I broke several speed limits as I made my way to Douglas Island. I knew this case better than anyone because I’d been the only one to learn about Holly Marteen. To care that her attack was the real crime. Emmet Renfrew was dead. The man who’d orchestrated her gang rape was dead. I knew where she was going.
I had no doubt that she’d saved Emmet Renfrew for last. At least, last on her abduction list. Which meant that Roman Fitzwilliamwasdead and his body just hadn’t been discoveredyet. She would not kill Renfrew until she was ready. A guillotine? She’d literally chopped the head off of the snake.
I wondered why she allowed the principal and the sheriff to live this long—until I realized she wanted them to see everything. She wanted them to know what and who was coming for them, even if no one believed them.Theywould know. It was twisted and morbid, and I couldn’t exactly fault her for it.
Rushing into the hospice facility, I was surprised to find the front doors still open this time of night. There was no one at the reception desk, but that might be because it was after visiting hours.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and my hand went to my hip on instinct. Only to remember that I no longer had a service weapon or a badge. I could hear voices, but they were echoing from the hall opposite where I needed to go. I hurried down the hall towards the former sheriff’s room, recalling the way from when Mira and I had visited several weeks ago.
It had been Sheriff Renfrew who had given me most of what I know about Holly Marteen. He’d been holding onto the evidence—tainted evidence now—for fifteen years. The guilt of what he’d done must have been eating away at him long before the cancer had.
I stopped halfway down the hall. I had to put my hand out to balance myself as comprehension dawned on me. For the past three days, I’d been trying to fit what I knew about my little owl and what I knew about Holly Marteen into a single person, to figure out her motivations and her manipulations. Maybe my brain had been blocking this realization because of the pain it was going to cause me, or perhaps my anger had been clouding my judgement until this moment.
I’d watched the old cellphone video of Holly Marteen’s attack. I’dwatchedHolly Marteen’s gang rape. I’d watchedmy little owl’sgang rape.
Turning, I vomited right there in the hallway of the hospice facility with my hand still on the wall for balance. I hacked and gagged, my stomach wrenching at more than just the measly excuse for dinner I’d eaten earlier.
My entire soul rebelled, finally merging the two inside my head and heart. Holly, my wounded little owl. I’d been so furious at her betrayal that I really hadn’t pieced it together until this moment. Alcohol and lack of food certainly hadn’t helped.
My little owl had told me about her attack, and I knew now that she was talking about Emmet. He’d been the one to touch her hair, the one she’d said ‘no’ to when he’d showed her a modicum of attention. It hadn’t taken place at a club or while she’d been an adult. She’d alluded to some details, and I’d filled in the rest, but now I understood.
All her limits now made perfect sense. No bondage, not being taken from behind, needing to feel safe to orgasm, even the fact that she could take pain but didn’t like it. Jesus Christ, the images from that video had been seared into my mind’s eye when I’d watched it from an investigative standpoint. But to know that she would grow up to be the woman I would fall in love with?
My stomach seized again, more bile splattering onto the carpeting and wall. Hadn’t I told my little owl that I wished her attacker was right in front of me so I could end him myself for what he’d done to her? Those hadn’t been empty words. How could I fault her for being strong enough to get her own justice?
