I check on Diamond one more time. Still sleeping. Good. I ease the bedroom door closed and move through the house in the dark, every sense sharpened.
Eight years in prison taught me a lot of things. How to read a room. How to sense danger before it arrives. How to become the thing that other predators fear.
Poor idiot has no idea what he's walking into.
I slip out the side door, circle around toward the cliffs. The moon is half-full, enough light to see by, the ocean crashing against the rocks below. I move along the property line like a ghost, making no sound.
He's ahead of me. Maybe fifty yards. Picking his way along the narrow path between the cliff edge and the house, moving slowly, carefully, like he thinks he's being stealthy. Amateur. His footsteps scrape against the loose gravel, his breathing too loud over the sound of the waves. He's carrying a backpack, and something else. Something that glints in the moonlight.
A knife. A kitchen knife.
Of course.
I close the distance. Forty yards. Thirty. He's so focused on the house, on the windows, on whatever sick fantasy is playing in his head, that he doesn't hear me coming over the crash of the surf.
Twenty yards.
I could give him a chance to surrender, to run, to face justice through proper channels.
I don't.
This man has been stalking Diamond for months. Sent her death threats. Photographed her through windows while she changed. Left notes promising to make her scream. He came here tonight with a knife, and I know exactly what he planned to do with it.
Some threats you don't neutralize through proper channels.
Some threats you end.
Ten yards.
He stops. Turns. And for one second, I see his face in the moonlight—pale, ordinary, the kind of face you'd pass on the street without noticing. That's the thing about monsters. They don't look like monsters.
"Who?"
I hit him before he finishes the word.
My fist connects with his jaw and he staggers, drops his knife. I'm on him before he can recover, driving him to the ground, my knee in his chest.
"You shouldn't have come here," I say.
He's struggling, gasping, trying to throw me off. He's not weak, he’s in decent shape, probably works out, but he's never fought anyone who actually wanted to hurt him. His movements are panicked, sloppy.
Mine are not.
"Please!" He's wheezing now, my weight crushing the air from his lungs. "I just wanted to talk to her."
"You wanted to kill her."
"No! I love her. I've always loved her. She doesn't understand."
"She understands perfectly." I pull my knife. Let him see it. Watch his eyes go wide with terror. "And so do I."
"Wait! Please, I'll leave. I'll never come back!"
"You're right about one of those things."
I don't drag it out.
One clean motion. The blade across his throat. Not deep enough to be quick, but deep enough to be fatal. I want him to know what's happening. I want him to feel the life draining out of him and know exactly why.
