“Bemyhero!” he roars. “Be here for me when you’re seventy years old. Be safe when my back is turned. Be brave enough to admit you can’t fix the world, but you could end it.” He takes my hand, latching on with a violence that stops my breath in my throat. “If you screw up and can’t come back to me,myworld ends. How don’t you understand that?”
“If I allow those girls to be transported to the next location, to move toward a lifetime of pain and suffering and unbearable trauma, and I donothing? That’s whenmyworld ends. You don’t want that version of me, Archer. When I become apathetic to the atrocities committed against innocent children, I won’t be me anymore. By then, you’ve just got a body to sleep next to at night.”
“Minka—”
“I killed Anthony Agosti.” I stare deep into his eyes, scorching everything we are with the drive I carry in my heart. “I injected enough morphine into his body to render him unconscious, carried him to hisbathtub, slit his wrists, and I made damn sure his autopsy would say exactly what I intended it to say, even if someone else performed it. Then I botched the tox samples right in front of Cordoza’s soldiers—theywatchedme do it, and had no clue—so when Doctor Raquel delivers those reports to my desk, they’ll say exactly what I want them to say.”
“You risk too much!”
“I would risk my life a thousand times over if the alternative is to let him hurt those girls.”
“With no care for what that loss would do tome? You think doing nothing is too high a price to pay? I say losing you is a price I’m not willing to consider! I thought we had a deal?” He grips my shoulder and shakes until my teeth rattle. “If you were hunting someone, you said you would come to me first. You promised.”
“I couldn’t come to you for this one.Obviously!You were standing right next to Cordoza when it was happening, and hestilltried to blame you for it.”
“So!? Cordoza doesn’t factor into my life plans, Minka!Youdo. Killing Agosti might’ve been fun, and sure, you’ve saved those seventeen girls. But you’re so fucking short-sighted on this, it’s terrifying. These buyers?” He snatches the folder, the pages whipping in the air. “They’re just gonna shop elsewhere. You put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound when you could’ve done this so fucking differently. You could’ve done it better if you’d just used your brain.”
“How?” I push onto my toes until we’re almost nose to nose. Eye to eye. “The supply has been cut off. How is that a bad thing?”
“If you’d shared your information instead of picking up a knife, the cops could’ve followed Agosti and the shipment. Then they could’ve bagged the buyers, too.”
“No, I?—”
“Killing him was stupid! It was impulsive. And now, despite having names and faces for these buyers, you don’t have them in cuffs. You don’t have confessions or proof of delivery. You don’t have shit! They’re gonna go underground and wait for the dust to settle, and a week from now, they’ll come up again, and they’ll find anewsupplier. Meanwhile, you’ve destroyed what could’ve been a massive operation that nabbedso manymore players. You thought too small, and you fucked it up.”
“Too small?” My heart hammers against my throat, blocking my airway and leaving a bitter taste on my tongue. “You think we didn’t consider everything?”
“Unless you plan to hunt every one of these men down and slice theirarteries too, then you’ve done nothing but piss off a bunch of rich old men who have a thing for little girls. You didn’t stop them, Minka. You inconvenienced them.”
My phone dings in my back pocket, the vibration rolling just under the surface of my skin. Anger beats in my veins like a drum. Hurt follows directly after.
Could he honestly think I would do nothing? After all this time, after all the arguments we’ve had. Does he truly think I’d leave those girls to their fate?
Shaking my head, I reach back and snag my phone, knowing by the sound of the ding exactly who is texting me. Sniffing, I clamp my lips shut and unlock the screen, then navigate to the chat I have with Soph, reading what she sent.
“What?” Archer snarls impatiently. “You got something more important to do than discussus?”
“Yeah.” I show him the picture of a man dead in his bathtub, his wrists sliced open. But he’s not Agosti. “We shared the details, Detective. And we’re allowing the law a chance to make this better. But when it fails—and it will—we’ll follow behind and clean up the mess you won’t.”
“You—” His eyes flare with panic. “Minka…”
“Two down. Eleven to go. We have a list, and we’ll hunt every damn one of them down till it’s done.” I lock my phone screen and meet his blistering stare. “If a man doesn’t want to die, he really shouldn’t find himself sexually attracted to children.”
“So we’re just saying the quiet bits out loud now?” Felix whistles under his breath, rocking his baby from side to side. “Aubs hinted at it that time at the bar, and there have been whispers. Micah had his theories, but he’s smart like that, ya know?”
I breathe through my nose and glance to my left, meeting Felix’s stare. It’s homicidal and playful. Amused and wary. He’s the boy who killed before he was old enough to know better, the protector who always ensured his family’s survival. His eyes flash with something bordering on madness and mischievousness, a mixture I haven’t seen since we first truly talked inside a warehouse downtown.
“Before knowing you and the ballerina, I would’ve laughed at the idea of a couple of women hunting these fuckers in the night. It’s cute. Sexy, even.”
“Felix—”
“Now?” He meets Archer’s hard stare. “She’s not wrong, dude. And she’s ballsy enough to get away with it. Who the fuck am I to tell her she can’t defend the innocent when the law won’t? Isn’t that exactly whywe’re pissed at the feds? For allowing bad things to happen to good kids who never deserved it?”
“You’re nobody!” Archer snarls. “And no one asked for your fucking opinion.” He grips my face and drags me closer, yanking me to the tips of my toes and stopping with his forehead just an inch from mine. “Someday, you’re gonna fuck up. Someone will get the better of you, and then I’ll burn the whole fucking world down to avenge what they took from me. I’ll stand in the flames andhopefor death, anything to get me into the afterlife, just so I can be by your side again. This is what you ask of me?”
I lick my bottom lip, flinching from the ache so potent in the back of my head, it has the power to put me on the ground.
“You would have me stand idly by while you put yourself at risk?”
