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.