“Laura Collins has one employee in her little death factory. Just a teenage girl who knows nothing about what goes on behind closed doors,” Talon adds, still flipping his knife. “She leaves at eight. We wait until then.”
“That’s in fifteen minutes,” I mutter, checking the clock. “How do you guys plan on ambushing Laura with all these people around?”
The street is still bustling—parents walking with their kids, couples on evening strolls, customers filtering in and out of the shop. From what I’ve gathered, the guys plan to inject Laura with Nathaniel’s custom-made tetrodotoxin and drag her to her own house. But drugging her and getting her there without raising suspicion? I’d love to know what galaxy-brain plan they’ve cooked up.
“We could wait until she gets home herself, sure,” Talon murmurs, casually twirling his knife. If I did that back in the day, I’d cut up my fingers. “But that wouldn’t scare her nearly as much as getting paralyzed in some alleyway, now would it?”
Nathaniel leans back against the seat, watching the shop’s entrance with hooded eyes. “The woman’s predictable. Closes up, locks the doors, exits through the back. If we don’t want to make a mess, that’s where we take her.”
I frown. “Are there no cameras there? How are you gonna get her to the car?”
I glance toward the alley behind the building. It’s dimly lit, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely unwatched. Even a single security camera could make things complicated.
“Talon will cut the feed before we move in. I’ll grab her,” Cassian says.
“You’ll grab her?” I raise a brow.
Cassian is not the stealthiest guy in the group. He’s all brute force and simmering violence. If Cassian’s trying to sneak upon someone, they’re going to hear him three blocks away and instinctively dial 911 before even seeing him.
Nathaniel smirks. “He has a way of being… persuasive.”
Cassian cracks his knuckles, his gaze locked on the shop’s entrance. “She’ll go quietly.”
And there’s something in his tone that makes my spine prickle. Ah, soviolence. Their grand plan is to act like a bunch of amateur robbers.
Got it.
I exhale, turning back toward the shop. The teenage girl behind the counter hands a bag of sweets to a customer, flashing a polite, oblivious smile. She has no idea her boss is a serial killer. No idea that in fifteen minutes, said boss will be removed from the equation like an expired coupon.
I should feel satisfied. Or uneasy. Maybe both.
The problem with justice is that it’s messy. The guilty have families. Some have kids who love them. Some have spouses who will mourn them. Some are rich enough to get candlelight vigils and public outcry, while others will disappear without a trace, their names forgotten before the week is over.
Same goes for the victims. Some children are mourned like saints. Others are statistics. Some parents get news headlines, documentaries, nationwide searches. Others just… sit in silence, grieving alone, knowing the world won’t care as much as they do.
No amount of retribution can truly balance the scale. No matter how poetic, no matter how perfect the irony, nothing brings the dead back. Nothing erases grief. All you really do is add another body to the pile and hope the moral math somehow works itself out.
And yet… doing nothing seems like a crime in itself.
I glance at Nathaniel, at the way his eyes gleam with something unreadable, and then at Cassian, who looks like he’s about three seconds away from turning into a cyborg. Talon, foronce, is eerily quiet, watching the shop with his knife balanced between his fingers like he’s waiting for the curtain to fall.
They don’t care about balance. Not really. They care about theact—the slow, methodical process of taking apart a life in retribution.
Inside the shop, the teenage girl checks the time, gives a polite nod to her last customer, and starts wiping down the counter before leaving the owner alone.
I guess that calls it.
Nathaniel leans forward. “Talon, you’re up.”
With a grin, Talon slips out of the car, vanishing into the night like a ghost.
I exhale slowly.
One way or another, by the end of the night, the Candy Maker will be no more.
I don’t need to see Talon to know what follows is his doing. The back alley’s single security light flickers—once, twice—before plunging into darkness. Classic horror movie move. Subtle? No. Effective? Absolutely.
Cassian doesn’t wait for confirmation. He steps out of the car without a word. I barely track him before he disappears too. I really don’t know how he’s doing it, but the guy really does blend in. A six-foot-two ninja warrior.
