I looked around. “Looks like a shitty cosplay dungeon to me.”
Annoyance flashed on his face in the moment before he recovered. “Life is what you make it, Maeve.”
The sound of my name in his mouth was like a discordant note. All wrong.
“They’re going to come for me, you know.” I was aiming for bored but I heard the note of desperation in my own voice.
“Maybe, but you’ll be long gone by then.” I barely had time to register the fear that rose in my body before he spoke again. “I’m glad you’re here now though. I have questions.”
“What kind of questions?” I wasn’t much interested in his questions, but anything that kept him talking bought me time, bought the Butchers time to find me.
“Let’s start with why the fuck you’d do this to yourself,” he said.
“Youdruggedme, kidnappedme.” I touched my neck, remembering the way he’d held his knife to my throat in the second Hunt. The cut had healed, but with Ethan Todd standing in front of me, the memory was visceral.
“You’ve been stalking me.” He paced my cell, like walking might help him puzzle it out. “And the thing is, I don’t get it. You must have known you were putting a target on your back.”
“My sister is dead because of you.”
“Your sister is dead because of her psycho boyfriend,” Todd said. “And probably because she was like every other dumb bitch who makes us crazy.”
I launched myself at him without thinking and we both went down hard on the stone floor. I didn’t recognize the screams I hurled his way as my own, didn’t even register what I was saying as I clawed and scratched at his face while he tried to pin me to the floor.
He was stronger than he looked and his fist landed like a sledgehammer to my jaw.
I stopped fighting, white light exploding behind my eyelids as I fought to stay conscious.
He was sitting on my chest, like Meathead had done in the tunnels, his hands pinning my wrists to the stone floor.
“Want me to get the drugs, boss?” Meathead asked, still standing a few feet away.
“A bit late for that, don’t you think?” Todd snapped.
Meathead took a step back, and I struggled to get air into my lungs as Todd stared down at me with a strange light in his eyes that should have been anger or hatred but looked more like glee.
Helikedthis. He got off on it.
“See? You’re proving my point.” He was a little out of breath too. “You do crazy, dumb shit and then you blame us when we’ve had enough.”
“Don’t you dare talk about my sister. You didn’t know her.”
He barked out a laugh. “If you know one bitch, you know them all. Point is, I never met your fucking sister, and from what I read, the guy who killed her is in prison. Which brings me back to the question of why you’d put a target on your back to come after me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” You had to love someone — really love someone — to understand why I needed justice for June.
Men like Ethan Todd weren’t capable of that kind of love.
“What I understand is that because of you, I’m stuck here in this fucking cold when I could be at my beach house soaking up the sun.” He loosened his hold on my wrists. “If you try to come at me again, I’ll knock you the fuck out.”
My ears were still ringing from the last blow, so when he stood, I scooted back to the wall to regroup.
No need to be stupid.
He ran a hand through his hair, like he was exasperated with the situation. “Listen, you came for me, so I came for you. You’re in my world now.”
“Not for long,” I said.
“I thought you were smarter than that.” He bent down, got in my face. The urge to lash out was overwhelming, and I fought to stay in control. If I went after him again, he’d make good on his promise to hit me. Meathead might get involved, and between the two of them, I’d definitely be overpowered. I needed to be smart. Patient. “No one is coming for you.”
