Chapter 47
“You can’t keep doing shit like this! You can’t keep-”
Sitting in my cabin, I rewind the video of her. Watching her pace. Watching the moment, she must have seen the mural. The recognition on her face when she knew it was me.
I still don’t know why I did it. Onyx gave me that fucking look that I ignored. So I painted her beautiful face, my cock hard and dripping. Using my memory of her curves tangled in my sheets. All that long, dark hair flowing around her body. I should never have let her sleep in my bed or slept next to her. But she called to me. The need to feel her body close was a compulsion I fed.
After we buried Denise, Cam’s tracker showed her heading to Long Island. Riggs was able to find out she was in Long Island with Kingsley and her well-armed bodyguard. I felt calmer knowing she was hundreds of miles away from the shop, from me. I hated it, but I need her far away from me.
As to her question, I don’t have an answer for her. Why did I do it? Guilt? Worry? All the shit I shouldn’t feel, I shouldn’t acknowledge.
The dark desires I feel for her are always there, but there’s also an ease to it. I’m not a social butterfly, never have been,but her laughter, her teasing? All of it made me want more, and that was stupid, dangerous. I’m narrowing the bullseye. I seem to have already placed a square in the middle of her back.
Denise’s murder rocked me, and as much as I’d like to think it’s just happenstance that she was killed sporting long black hair, or that the tape manipulating her eyes to look more Asian was some racist coincidence, I’ve been around too long, seen too much shit go down to believe it. The thought of someone doing to Camryn what they did to Denise makes my blood run cold, as cold as fucking ice. I’ve lost the ability to be circumspect around her. The mural proves that. My obsession can’t be stopped, even when I know it’s deadly. The need to mark every part of her world as mine is too strong, even if I can only do it with ink.
To make matters worse, another dead body showed up at the clubhouse. Same MO. Mutilated, posed, body parts removed. The message was clear.Weare close.Weare here.
This time, it was one of our spies whom we had been working to infiltrate Los Mestizos from the inside. Baron was good. One of our best, and for so long, he had been our inside person to keep track of the Mestizos’s movements. How had his cover been blown? Riggs believes someone is working with the Mestizos from inside the Legion. Hadrian is my best guess.
But it wasn’t just Baron’s death that made the urgency to stay away from Camryn all the more critical. No. It was the message stabbed into Baron’s chest. A knife embedded through his heart, keeping a picture in place. An image of a dead owl hanging limply from the mouth of some sort of rabid-looking dog. A mongrel. A Mestizo.
El Jefe’s message was unmistakable.I’mvulnerable. For the first time since Ivory and Angel’s death, I’m afraid. More scared than I’ve ever been. Not for me. I’m already dead, but for her. For Camryn. They are getting bolder, and I don’t like it.
I light another cigarette and watch as Camryn walks away, pacing the parking lot. Her phone appears, and she calls someone, and not for the first time, I wish I could bug her phone. I need Riggs to gain access to her phone records.
She’s too far away for me to hear what she’s saying. Who is she calling? I watch as she goes back inside and then returns minutes later dressed in dark jeans and a black T-shirt. She climbs into an Uber, and I frown. Why isn’t she driving her car? I log into my computer and open the app to track her AirTag. I watch as it moves to an address I recognize. Kingsley’s place. I exhale, relieved that she’ll be protected for the night. The penthouse is well-protected by Kingsley’s security.
Heading to my barn, I pop a cherry candy. I need to finish my last kill. Getting those bastards made my cock harder. I touch the cut on my arm. This time, the guards were better prepared, equipped with hidden knives. I touch it and smile, thinking about the way I returned the favor and sliced his neck after his blade cut me. Processing their bodies will be fun. Those fuckers were transporting seventy-five women and children. They were in awful condition, starving. A few were already dead in the truck.
I close my eyes, remembering all our faces when we saw the dead bodies of the children who hadn’t survived the journey. Olivia’s anguished sobs that night are an awful memory. Scout had to escort her away to help her calm down before she could attend to the sick and injured. Anger makes my steps faster. Too many children. Too many innocent victims. It’s never-ending, the battle to save them just keeps going.
Pushing the barn doors wide, I step inside my space, inhaling the scents of rotting flesh, tanning liquid, and pine shavings that cover the floor to help absorb any bodily fluids. Hides are drying and ready for processing. My beetles should be done with the skulls of the last driver and the guard of the latest truckshipment. Then I’ll put them into the kiln before grinding them into sterile bone powder. The ash will be used for my ink and plant fertilizer. I walk over to the tank; their scurrying sounds make me smile. Greedy bastards. Thousands of my Dermestid beetles crawl around the two skulls and two pairs of hands. The skulls are 90% cleaned. The only spot of color is the gold tooth in one of the skulls. The other skulls exhibit a significant amount of tooth decay. Darkened, deformed teeth stare back at me. The hands need more time, but eventually, my pets will get every scrap of flesh, tendons, and cartilage.
Pulling on my gloves, I head to the two swatches of flesh hanging on the bar. They need another scraping. There’s still a layer of fat that needs to be removed.
The sound of wings flapping above me has me glancing up. I halt the scraping and catch the pair of owls above me, staring down, cautiously studying me with their rapacious eyes, tracking my every move. It’s nesting season for them. The barn came with the property when I first bought the land. An abandoned hunting barn used by men and women hunters. It had been filled with supplies in case they were caught in a storm. A shelter, but now it houses my killing tools. The means for me to process human flesh. I look up at the small opening of the roof where the owls enter and exit as they please. They are fairly protected in the barn against the larger horned owls in the forest.
Their eyes glow in the darkness, like the predators they are. I laugh as I drag my scraper along the skin of the first guard, removing the fatty tissue. It drops to the floor and its wings rustle above me. They can smell the meat. I pick up the blobby pieces of fat and toss them into the bucket next to me. The owls don’t need me to feed them; their food chain is the variety of rodents that may end up scavenging any discarded tissues I miss.
A whiny, barking howl makes me lift my head. The coyotes are circling the barn. They, too, smell the fresh entrails piled high in the buckets. Some steam still rises from them from being inside their host’s warm body. A bead of sweat trickles down my temple, and another moves down the middle of my back. The barn is hot from the kiln heating. I tear off my shirt and toss it aside. I stretch, enjoying the sensation of the warm air blowing over my perspiration.
The alarm goes off, and my body tenses up. I turn and drop my tools and walk to the monitors inside the bar. Someone just triggered the infrared alarm. Someone is on my land. Logging in, I check every camera. The night cameras show someone dressed in black walking through the roadside entrance of my property. It’s a road that I created. No one knows where it is, except Riggs, Onyx, and the other members of the Legion. That means someone knows shit they shouldn’t. I check the other camera’s feed. A black jeep is parked along the road. Seeing it, the wrath inside me spreads.
I collect my gun and my knife off the wall next to my other weapons, smiling as I test the sharpness of my favorite blade. I drag on my night goggles.
Got you, motherfucker.Already thirsty, hungry for another kill. It will mean more work, but the chase will be fun. I have to destroy each one, snuff them out like the rats they are.
Chapter 48
I slow Kingsley’s black jeep to the side of the road and open my phone, staring at the address Sophia texted me. I look through the windshield, not sure what I expect to see. Blinking arrows pointing, “Here is where Stone lives!” Stupid.
Making sure I’m off on the side, parallel to the road, I put it in park. It should be fine. I’m not blocking the road. It’s grossly expensive, and the last thing I need is to total it.
The sun is going to set in a few minutes, and I’m driving on a deserted road looking for the man who ate me out like a dream, took care of me when I was sick, and just drew a sensual portrait of me that robbed my breath. Yet, I’m here determined to find him. Determined to ask him what it means. It’s not just art. It’s not just sex. It’s more vibrant, more vivid, bursting with bright colors. I want him, and I’m not leaving until I find him.
Before leaving, I looked up the address on Zillow. All I could find was a listing for 80 acres of property purchased two years ago. But this is where my maps say the location is. I couldn’t find a driveway, or I may have missed the turn.
“Fuck.” I peer behind me out the rearview mirror. Desolate. No one is on this stretch of road. The sun is setting earlier,turning the sky a deep orange with tinges of pink. “Not smart, Camryn. You don’t even have a flashlight.” I look in the glove compartment. “Please tell me you have a flashlight in this monstrosity,” I grumble, searching. Nothing. A small first-aid kit is tucked in the corner, but other than her registration, there is nothing.
