But it certainly does give me some ideas…

I lean in close and grin at the leathery skin and hollow eyes of the woman in the armchair. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Mama Mead.”

With a wink, I firm my grip on my knife and leave the room, heading across the hall to the staircase that leads to the second floor.

The creaking steps are muffled by thunder and rain. It seems impossible that the house could be so devoid of human sounds after the brutal killing that just took place, but the only things I can hear are my heart and the storm.

When I arrive on the landing of the second story, the rain grows louder, the scent of it washing away the stench of the main floor. I wait for a moment, watching, listening. But nothing comes. No clues emerge about Harvey’s whereabouts as I pause before the mouth of a corridor.

I start inching forward.

First, I arrive at a bedroom filled with boxes. Magazines. Newspapers. Yellowed manuals for cars and tractors. Taking a turn in the room yields no worthwhile insights.

I re-enter the hallway and head to the next room, a bathroom with a cracked pedestal sink and a shower curtain clinging to the interior of a clawfoot tub, its formerly white plastic speckled in black mold. There’s no blood on the floor. No tracks. No unusual smells or sounds.

The next room I enter is the primary bedroom. Of all the rooms I’ve seen, this is the cleanest, though it would be a stretch to call it pristine. The window is filmed with dust and grime but it isn’t broken. The bed is a simple wrought iron frame, the sheets rumpled, a few clothes strewn across its surface and the floor. I check the room, but there’s no Harvey Mead here, so I don’t linger, deciding to go through his meager belongings once he’s dead.

I leave the room.

The next bedroom is across the hall. The sound of rain pelting metal containers dampens my footsteps as I step inside the small room. A hole in the ceiling gapes at the sky, cutting through the shattered beams of the attic. Lightning flashes overhead. Rain falls into the house to fill a series of metal pots and ceramic containers jammed against one another on a sheet of clear plastic that covers the floor. Surrounding the edge of the hole are bones that dangle from strings of wet yarn like wind chimes. Vertebrae twist and knock together in the breeze, rivulets of water streaming from their bleached bodies and wings.

I watch for a moment, pondering the psychopathy of the man who strung them here before I exit the room to head to the last door on the opposite side of the hall at the very end of the corridor.

This door is shut. I stand next to it for a long moment with my ear pressed to the wood, my blade clutched tight in my hand. No sound comes from within. No sound comes from downstairs either, though I’m not sure I’d be able to hear anything from the lower floor unless it was a confrontation. The thunder rages. The rain drives against the roof in wavering curtains.

A pang of worry fills my chest for Rowan. Maybe it’s best that I haven’t heard him, but I also haven’t heard sounds of Harvey’s suffering, and that lodges like a thorn deep beneath my skin. At this rate, I don’t care who wins. I just want Harvey dead.

I shake out my wrists to let the excitement and tension and fear slide from my limbs, and then I grip the handle of the door and push it open.

“What the fuck…”

This is not what I expected.

Three monitors sit on a desk piled with papers and strewn with pencils. The screens display the feeds from eighteen cameras. The barn. The workshop. The back door. The kitchen. A darkened room where I can’t make out any features. A brightly lit room where a dismembered body lies piled on a plastic-covered table, blood and flesh dripping onto the tile floor.

I see Rowan, entering the living room.

And then I see Harvey, stalking down the hall toward him.

The blood drains from my limbs. Ice infuses my skin.

“Rowan,” I whisper.

I yell his name as I run from the room…

…straight into Harvey Mead’s boot.

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14

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SHATTERED

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SLOANE

Water pelts my throbbing face. Nausea swirls in my stomach. Blood coats my tongue. The world spins around me. Rolling. I’m rolling down a steep hill. Rolling and falling.

I land with a shattering crunch on my left shoulder, the wind vacating my lungs through a silent scream. I gasp for air that won’t come. My chest seizes. Rain and flashes of light blind me as I blink at the sky, the first winded breaths finally drawing into my panicked lungs.

A set of boots land nearby with a heavy thump, approaching to stop next to my head. Rain washes congealed blood from the black leather. I open my mouth to groan Rowan’s name when a hand twists into my hair and tugs me from the comforting scent of earth and wet grass.

I come face-to-face with Harvey Mead.

Rivulets of water cascade from his bald head to drip from his brow and fall across his expressionless face. He stares right into me. I glare back into the abyss of his dark eyes.

And then I spit in his fuck-ugly face.

Harvey doesn’t wipe my saliva away. He holds me steady, letting the rain carry the bloodied streaks down his pockmarked skin. A slow grin pulls his lips back to reveal decaying teeth in a smile that’s unnervingly disconnected from the rest of his apathetic mask.

He drops me but keeps his hold of my hair as he drags my weakened body around the side of the house. My head throbs. My face pulses. Tears sting my eyes with every tug on my hair, the pain in my shoulder radiating up my neck and into my limp arm. My feet scrabble on the grass and mud and debris, but I can’t get any footing with the way he keeps my head down low. I scratch at him and hit his leg with my good hand but he’s far too large to feel any impact from my futile fight.

We stop at a set of cellar doors. Harvey unlocks a rusted padlock and pulls the chain through the handles before opening one door and tossing me inside.

I hit the dirt with a grunt, my first breath filled with the scent of shit and piss and fear.

The contents of my stomach spill across the floor.

It isn’t until I’ve stopped retching that it registers that I’m not alone. Someone is sobbing in the dark.

“Adam,” a woman says through desolate cries. “He killed Adam. I h-heard it. He k-killed him.”

She keeps her distance, repeating her words in a desperate chant that seeps into every crack and crevice of my chest. Brother or lover or friend, whoever this Adam was, she loved him. And I know what it’s like to bear witness to the suffering of someone you love. I understand her grief and powerlessness better than most.

“Yes. He killed Adam,” I reply through strained, panting breaths as I pull my phone from my back pocket. It buzzes in my hand with a message, but I turn on the flashlight first, aiming it toward the floor between me and the naked woman crouched against the wall as she recoils from the light. “And I promise you, Adam will be the last person Harvey Mead ever kills.”

I’m not sure if that gives her any reassurance or closure. Maybe one day it will, but right now her loss is too fresh and the wound too deep. Her quiet sobs continue as I turn my attention to the screen when a text message comes in.

Sloane

SLOANE

ANSWER ME

WHERE ARE YOU?!

The dots of another incoming message start flashing as I type out a reply.