Chapter 22: : Chapter 22

My neck aches, the muscles and tendons stretched for too long with the weight of my tipped-forward head. Nausea churns in my stomach and I groan.

I open my eyes but press them closed the instant my drug-addled brain processes my surroundings.

“No,” I whisper. Bile climbs my throat, but I manage to keep it down. “No.”

“It’s just a memory,” Jack had once said. “It’s not real anymore.”

I take a few deep breaths, letting them out in a thin stream of air between pursed lips.

He’s right. It’s just a memory.

I open my eyes again.

“It’s real,” I say.

My eyes brim with tears as they sweep across the empty living room of my childhood home.

I summon my wrists and ankles to strain against the zip ties binding me to a wooden chair near the center of the room, but it’s as though they’re on a delay, weakened by the chloroform. Deep breaths flood my chest as I try to clear the drug from my body. I whimper as I turn my gaze to the ceiling, away from the cream carpet that replaced the one that once absorbed blood and broken glass. It looks just the same as I remember it.

A buzzing pain thrums in my ears as my heart kicks into gear past the residual cloud of sedation.

“Let me fucking go,” I yell to the seemingly empty house, rattling the chair. My tongue feels too thick in my mouth, slurring the hard edges of my words. The plastic bruises my wrists as I pour all my dampened strength into twisting my arms in a futile attempt to free myself.

“I’m sorry about this, Isobel.”

Hayes enters the room from the kitchen. He looks apologetic. But also resolved. Whatever plan he’s put into motion, he’s determined to see it through.

“You fucking tased me. And drugged me. You aren’t nearly sorry enough.”

Breaths saw in my chest as Hayes slowly closes the distance between us, a bottle of water in his hand. He makes a point of cracking the sealed lid to show he hasn’t tampered with it. I loathe the thought of him holding it to my lips like a father would for a child, but I’m desperately thirsty. I down half the bottle, glaring at him the entire time.

“I know this seems excessive,” Hayes says as he wipes rogue droplets from my chin. “But trust me when I say that it’s for your own safety, and that of many others.”

“I do not feel safe at all right now, Mr. Hayes,” I seethe, pulling at my bonds until my skin burns. “You need to let me go.”

His gaze passes over my face with a patronizing look of sympathy. I can almost read his thoughts through his slate blue eyes. Poor girl, she doesn’t even know which way is up.

Hayes’s thick thumb sweeps across my cheek and I flinch away. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Isobel. This is the only way to flush him out.”

Blackness eats the edges of my vision and I close my eyes, trying to slow my breathing.

Focus. Stay right here.

When I open my eyes, I pin them to Hayes, the only thing here that might be able to keep me from slipping into the past. The darkness clears, but its presence hovers like the threat of a distant storm. “Flush who out, Mr. Hayes? The Silent Slayer? Good luck.”

“Jack is not the Silent Slayer,” Hayes says as he replaces the cap on the water bottle and turns away.

“No shit. I’ve been telling you that all along.”

“Jack is the Tri-City Phantom.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then my incredulous laugh fills the room. “This is madness, Mr. Hayes. What the fuck is the Tri-City Phantom? Jesus Christ. You just kidnapped a woman to catch a ghost?”

Hayes sets the bottle down on the floor and grabs a folding chair that leans against the wall, setting it up to sit in front of me. His attention snags on something on the floor beyond my left shoulder. I turn as much as I can and follow his gaze to a wide monitor and black box on the carpet, the screen displaying the feeds from nine different cameras, including the room we’re in.

When Hayes looks back to me, he rests his forearms on his knees and laces his fingers. “I realized what we got wrong when I reviewed the footage from one of the bars in downtown Ashgrove. The Scotsman. We’d been tracking a few potential suspects, all in the construction business. One was a handyman who frequented the downtown bars, and The Scotsman was his favorite.”

I swallow, the haze of chloroform lifting with every pulse of adrenaline that flows through the chambers of my heart. “So, what you’re saying is that you knew who you were after, and where he went, and you didn’t catch him. And then he killed my family, and nearly me in the process. And, shocker, none of that has anything to do with Jack. Is that correct?”

“Isobel—”

“Kyrie, for Christsakes—”

“You know nothing is that simple when it comes to the FBI, Kyrie. There are procedures to follow, potential alternative suspects to rule out. The profilers knew we were looking for a drifter, the type to not even stay in the same residence for more than a few days at a time. Someone paranoid about keeping a minimal footprint. But I was sure I knew who it was. Trevor Winters,” Hayes says, shaking his head as his gaze turns away across the living room, to the place where my parents’ bodies once lay lifeless on the floor. He seems lost in memory, his voice thin when he says, “Winters was the primary suspect. We received intel that a man fitting his description was booked to stay at the Treasure Motel. The FBI were going to raid it. I had convinced my boss that I had an alternative plan, to set a trap in his most likely hunting ground. He’d been seen at The Scotsman where the college students liked to go for cheap drinks, and I had the staff set up a trivia night there that evening with cheap drinks to attract the local kids. But Winters didn’t go to The Scotsman that night, and the team raided the hotel anyway.”

When Hayes focuses on me once more, there’s both remorse and conviction in his eyes. “I was positive the raid had scared him off,” he says. “It seemed obvious that we’d run the Silent Slayer out of town, that he’d changed his methods to remain hidden. I kept looking for a sign of him, anything that would tell me where he was. But it wasn’t until I came here that I understood what had eluded me all those years. The devil was in the details. Dr. Sorensen.”

Hayes pulls several black and white photos from his jacket inseam. It’s a grainy image of a man in line at the bar, a still shot taken from a video feed. Even with the poor resolution and the lack of color, I recognize Jack right away.

“September seventh, the same year that you were attacked,” Hayes says. He shows me another. Then another. Another. Jack is present in each one. “September thirteenth. September fourteenth. October fifth.”

Hayes presents me with the final photo. In this one, I see another familiar face in profile in the foreground, with Jack sitting a few tables away.

Trevor Winters. The Silent Slayer.

Don’t react. He’s watching. He wants confirmation that his theories are true.

Sweat mists my brow and the back of my neck. I curl and release my toes in my boots. I dig my nails into the worn wooden armrests.

These things you can touch are real. That man in the photo is dead. Jack gave you proof. His last remains are a treasure in your cabin.

The steel edge in my voice surprises even me when I say, “Get to the fucking point, Mr. Hayes.”

“After you aged out of foster care and changed your name, I kept tabs on you, just to make sure you were okay. But when disappearances started mounting up in the Tri-City college region, all of them men with seemingly little or no connection, their bodies never found, and all in a wide radius around you, I started believing that the elusive Slayer had surfaced. When I heard about the disappearance at the university, it was too close. I started looking into everyone connected to you. Imagine my surprise when I went back through every scrap of evidence I’d collected on the Slayer and found Jack Sorensen in the videos from The Scotsman.”

“What exactly is that supposed to prove? That Jack lived in the same city as I did and had a social life? I already knew that. It proves nothing. Besides, Jack was at West Paine University before I was.”

Hayes settles back in his chair as he shuffles the photos into the inner pocket of his jacket. “I thought at first that perhaps we’d been looking at a false profile for the Slayer all along. It made sense. Jack is a brilliant man. He could have been covering his tracks by splitting his MOs in Ashgrove—one to lure us away, maybe even placing the blame on a drifter, and one for the victims he really wanted to take. But the real explanation is far simpler, isn’t it. There were two serial killers.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“Jack killed Winters, the Silent Slayer. Once the threat to his territory was taken care of, he moved on. Perhaps he didn’t even realize you’d survived at first. But when you showed up at West Paine all those years later, it was an opportunity he couldn’t walk away from. And all the while, he’s been killing in the Tri-City area, keeping himself entertained until he gets whatever he wants from you.”

“That is a theory for which you have no proof. And now you’ve fucking abducted me and brought me here of all fucking places,” I say, shifting a wild glance over my surroundings before fixing my glare to Hayes. “What are you going to do with me when he doesn’t show up, hmm? Kill me in my childhood home?”

“I know this is hard for you right now, but Jack won’t be able to resist the symmetry. And there are no unnecessary hurdles this time. There’s no red tape. No one to doubt the evidence right in front of us. This time, my plan will not fail.”

My brows feel tight and pinched as I drop my head and press my eyes closed. I know the parts of my story with Jack that Hayes has gotten right. But I also know those he’s gotten wrong.

Jack doesn’t want to stay. To him, I’m not a piece of symmetry he can’t resist. I’m not a prize.

He said it himself: I’m an inconvenience.

Jack has cared as much as he’s able to, but only because I forced him. And that’s probably uncomfortable, even confusing for him. I’ve pushed Jack far beyond his boundaries. The only reason he’s truly stayed is because of the threats I made the night I killed Mason. And now, by giving him the evidence I held onto for so long, I’ve given Jack every reason to leave. Immediately.

I can only hope that he’s already seized his chance.

None of it changes the way I feel. I know I love Jack Sorensen. As much as it crushes my heart to admit it, I also know Jack will be better off if he takes the chance and runs.

And he’s smart enough to know it too.

“Jack will not come, Mr. Hayes,” I say, shaking my head. A tear slips down my cheek. “He won’t. He has no reason to anymore.”

“He will. You’ve studied predator behavior, Kyrie. You know better than anyone that humans are inherently not that different from beasts. Jack believes he’s at the top of the food chain, and to a man like him, you’re the prized prey in his territory. He will come to force me out of his domain and take back what he feels belongs to him, just like he did the Silent Slayer.”

“No.”

“He’s probably even told you as much, right? That you belong to him? You’re his?”

I can only shake my head, my lips trembling as I press them tight.

I’m not here to claim anyone but you, lille mejer.

My chin falls to my chest. Tears drop straight down from my open eyes as I blink at my lap. My heart is burning my bones with its furious beats.

“But he’s never told you he loves you, has he. Because he can’t. Jack is a master manipulator and he wants to keep you in his grip.”

“Stop,” I whisper. Even though I already know what he’s saying is true, it still hits my chest like a fiery arrow to hear it from the outside, not just in my own mind. It’s that easy for someone who barely knows me to see what I’ve grappled with for these last weeks. The evidence is that obvious.

Hayes’s hand lays on my shoulder, a hot brand that soaks through my shirt and into my skin. I try to shrug him off, but he doesn’t budge. “Let me go.”

“You’re the Slayer’s only survivor. Do you know how precious that makes you as a prize for someone like Jack?” Hayes leans down, trying to force me to meet his eyes. His hot breath spills over my face, flooding me with the scent of coffee and stale sandwiches. I want to vomit in my lap. “But you have to understand: you are nothing more than a trophy to Jack. He is extremely dangerous, Kyrie. We have to break you away and get you somewhere safe. And we can stop Jack together before he kills anyone else.”

My head lifts only far enough to pin Hayes with my furious, feral glare. “He’s not. Fucking. Coming.”

I twist my arms until they’re rubbed raw and bleeding, the plastic cutting into my wrists as I scream with rage, hoping someone will hear me. I scream until that cloud of darkness descends with a thunderous clap.

“Hush now, don’t scream, baby,” the Slayer whispers in my ear, his cheap cologne wafting through the room, “or I’ll cut out your mama’s tongue.”

I thrash in my chair, nearly toppling it over until Hayes steadies it in his grip. I’m vaguely aware of his presence, as though it’s behind a curtain upon which my worst nightmares are projected.

“Shh, shh. Quiet now, baby.”

I’m still writhing, still screaming, phantom pain tugging at the edges of my scars when a foreign sound slices through the images and cuts the room into abrupt silence.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

“He’s here,” Hayes says.

Something cold presses to my temple. I blink to clear the black haze, glancing up at Hayes where he stands to my left, the barrel of his Glock pistol trained on my head. The Taser is clutched in his other hand. My chest heaves with every breath as I follow the aim of the Taser toward the hallway leading to the lower-level rooms.

“Stop where you are. I have a gun aimed at her head and I will take the shot if I have to,” Hayes says to the dark hallway. There’s no sound, no motion. But I know Hayes must see Jack on the monitor.

Silence.

I glance up but he doesn’t look at me. Hayes hasn’t released the safety on his gun.

“Toss your weapons into the room,” Hayes orders.

“I’m unarmed. Let Dr. Roth go,” Jack replies from the dark. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

“Not good enough.”

“What do you want, I’ll give it to you.”

I shake my head as my breath catches in my throat. “No—”

“Quiet,” Hayes hisses, pressing the muzzle tight against my temple. He directs his voice to the hallway when he says, “A confession.”

There’s another moment of silence, and then Jack appears at the mouth of the corridor, his hands raised.

Jack glances between us. One look that explodes through my heart like shrapnel. The flash of a furrowed brow. The tic in his jaw as his molars press together. A tormented slash of silver in his eyes. He’s desperate.

“Let her go and I’ll show you.”

“No, Jack—”

“It’s all right, elskede,” he says, turning his gaze in my direction with a resigned smile that does nothing to reassure me. When he looks at Hayes, it’s with cold, polished determination in his eyes. “There’s a room. It has everything you want.”

“Where?”

“Let her go and I’ll tell you.”

A huff of a laugh puffs from Hayes’s chest. “Dr. Sorensen, the trouble with your kind—”

Hayes pulls the trigger on the Taser. The leads strike Jack in the chest, and he falls to the sound of crackling electricity and my desolate cry.

“—is that you think you hold all the cards, even when you’re empty-handed.”

Hayes approaches Jack and kills the power for the device. He holsters his Glock to withdraw cable ties from his suit jacket. He starts with Jack’s hands first, then his ankles before checking for weapons, pocketing his phone. Jack is still stunned from the shock when Hayes pulls the two leads from his chest and hauls him to a sitting position against the wall, but his eyes find mine like iron shards to a magnet.

“You were right,” I say as Hayes adjusts his Taser and holsters it at his belt. “You were right about Jack all along.”

Hayes glances over his shoulder at my tear-streaked face before shifting his attention to checking Jack’s cable ties.

My gaze slides to Jack’s when Hayes’s back is turned.

I drop my attention to my lap before Hayes faces me and let my shaking shoulders fall, defeated. “How did I not see it? How could I not know?”

Tears hit my thighs. Measured, steady footsteps approach until a pair of black boots stops in my peripheral vision. A heavy hand lays on my shoulder, and then Hayes crouches into view.

“It’s not your fault, Kyrie.”

I shake my head, pressing my eyes closed. “I’ve tried to be someone new, and I’m still the same girl, trapped in the same nightmare. I’m still Isobel.” When I raise my eyes to Hayes, my look is pleading. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”

Hayes’s smile is sorrowful. Pitying. He squeezes my shoulder before lifting his hand away, retrieving a knife from his belt. “It’s okay. We’ll get you the help that you need.”

I nod and sniffle.

Hayes slips the blade beneath the cable tie on my right ankle and cuts it free.

“Daddy used to have a saying,” I whisper as Hayes shuffles to my other ankle, slicing through the second plastic tie. My legs remain still. “He said that hunting isn’t a sport, because in a sport, both players should know they’re in the game.”

Hayes gives me a melancholy smile before shifting his attention to my left arm. The binds at my wrists are tight, the skin beneath raw and bleeding. I whimper and grip the armrests when he draws close with the blade.

“It’s okay. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Hayes shimmies the blade between the hard plastic and my bloodied skin, snipping the third cable tie. When it’s gone, he starts to shuffle in front of me to release the final bond.

“Mr. Hayes?” I ask, my voice frail and small.

He pauses and meets my eyes with a questioning look.

And then I crack my forehead against his nose with all the force I can manage.

Blood sprays from Hayes’s nostrils. He leans back with the impact of my blow, giving me enough space to raise my legs.

“You don’t know you’re in the game.”

I kick Hayes in the chest with both feet. The blade drops from his hand.

The chair is still strapped to my right arm as I dart to my feet. I grab the back of it with my free hand and wield it as a club, crashing it down on Hayes’s bloody, tear-streaked face as he instinctively grabs for his holstered gun.

Hayes is stunned just long enough for me to straddle his hips and pull the Glock free of the holster with my left hand, but the weight of a weapon is only a brief comfort in my palm.

He strikes my hand with his forearm. The momentum swings my arm outward, the gun flying from my grip to hit the wall several feet from Jack. I hit Hayes back with the section of the broken chair still attached to my hand and then I’m scrambling to my feet, running for the gun.

A searing jolt hits my back and I fall to the floor.

My nerves are on fire. Needling pain courses through my muscles. I vaguely register a sound behind me and the agony stops, but its echo hums beneath my skin like swarming insects.

I open my eyes and look across the fibers pressed to my face, the distance of the room blurry in the haze of pain. There’s commotion behind me. I reach to my back and pull one cord and then the other with a weak hand, freeing the Taser’s probes that are hooked into my skin.

Blackness pulses at the edges of my vision as I turn over.

“You are sloppy. An amateur. Unworthy.”

A phantom fire burns in my chest. Blood lands on my tongue with the rumble of every exhalation. Crimson stains and my father’s dark hair stick to the silver head of a hammer lying on the floor. My assailant struggles against the wire cutting into his throat as my angel of vengeance smiles next to his ear.

“This is my domain.”

“Kyrie—”

Jack’s voice is a line into the black depths of memory. The one thing I can grab onto.

“Get up, Kyrie. Run—”

The gritty sounds of a struggle greet me when I surface in the present.

The flame in my chest, the blood, the wire are all gone. There is no hammer, just a piece of broken, polished wood from the rungs of the chair lying next to my hand. What truly remains is Jack, his ankles and wrists still bound as he wrestles to keep his restricted grip on Hayes, the gun just beyond the agent’s reaching fingers.

A choking gasp passes Jack’s lips as Hayes nails him in the neck with his elbow. Jack’s hold on the agent slips, and Hayes seizes his chance to grab the gun on the floor.

I take up the splintered piece of wood as I rush for Hayes. But he already has the gun.

A click.

Jack kicks out at Hayes’s wrist as the agent swings the gun in an arc to aim it at his face. Time stops long enough to sear that image of Hayes into my mind. His gritted teeth. His bloodied skin. The wrath in his eyes.

A bang.

The gun wheels from Hayes’s hand as I lunge for him, taking us both to the floor.

And then I sink my jagged spear into the meat of his throat.

I loom above his face, my hair falling in a curtain around us as I stare down into his wide eyes. All that fear, that pain. Confusion. Epiphany.

“Shh now, Mr. Hayes,” I whisper, sinking my weight into the wood. The vibrations of his gurgling breaths travel into my palm, absorbing into every crease. “You let Trevor Winters take my family. You will not take my angel too.”

Pain radiates through my body as I rise to my unsteady feet. Hayes’s legs and arms slowly drag across the carpet, some last hope still clinging to nerves and muscles before it ebbs away. He stares up at me with a pleading look. It might be salvation he wants, or mercy.

I don’t give it another thought as I drive all my weight into my foot, smashing it down on the end of the pike.

My spear hits bone and slips between the vertebrae. Hayes’s limbs twitch as the wood splinters through his spinal cord, his eyes going dim and unseeing. He dies beneath the unrelenting pressure of my boot.

When I’m sure the last breath is gone, I lift my foot away and stand as straight as my battered body will allow. Ragged exhalations fill the silence like aftershocks of adrenaline in the quiet room. Jack is sitting on the floor, his forearms resting on his knees as breaths saw from his chest. His gaze seems trapped on Hayes as though he fears the dead man might attack once more. When he finally meets my eyes, Jack smiles, its essence so faint but so beautiful in its fleeting moment of relief.

I kick a switchblade toward him from where it’s fallen from Hayes’s pocket. He opens it and starts cutting away his bonds. “Congratulations, Jack, you’ve just won Thunderdome,” I say, trying to keep my voice light and teasing as I look down at him across my shoulder, resisting the urge to clamp my hand across my abdomen.

“You’re the one who killed him, I think the title is yours.”

Maybe, I want to say.

But only for a moment.

I turn away, taking a few steps into the living room. My childhood home. It feels like a shell now. I don’t try to imagine it as it once was when I stop in the middle of the room.

My fingertips are cold and numb. I know what it means.

Strained inhalations become pants. I try to breathe with my diaphragm to keep my shoulders from moving too much. I know Jack will see if they do. But the pain is starting to twist like fire in my flesh, demanding attention.

My hand presses to the hole in my shirt. It refuses to be hidden much longer.

I start listing to the side. The room sways. The edges warp and blur.

“Kyrie…?”

The note of concern and suspicion in that one word is a heavy weight in my heart, dragging it down like an anchor to the bottom of a lightless sea.

I swallow the ache, denying the tears that burn as they beg to be released. My gaze falls to the hand I press against my wound.

Dark blood seeps through my fingers.

“I didn’t know for sure that it was real. Not until I saw you. My angel of vengeance, come to save me for a second time,” I say, casting a smile over my shoulder, trying to hold onto every moment of gratitude I feel. Knowing what we had is real brings me joy. The tragedy is what it will mean for Jack.

This wasn’t what I hoped for when I vowed to make Jack suffer.

“Thank you, Jack. For giving me everything you could. Time just isn’t on our side,” I say as I turn to face him, my palm still clutched to my stomach. I can’t feel my fingers anymore. Jack’s eyes dart down to my hand and meet mine once more. I see panic and sorrow. Horror and grief.

My heart splinters into shards. It pounds as though trying to cut its way free to him.

“No, Kyrie—”

“I love you, always.”

Jack scrambles forward but can’t reach me before I fall.

The last thing I feel isn’t pain. It’s not the press of the cream carpet against my face. It’s not the despair in my heart or the deafening rush of pressure in my head.

It’s the touch of Jack’s cool hand on my cheek.

And then the world goes black, and I feel nothing at all.