He backs up until he hits the wall. The duffel drops. His hands come up.
"This doesn't have to?—"
I hit him. Not with the gun. With my fist. Bare knuckles against his jaw, and the crack of bone against bone is the most satisfying sound I've heard in my entire life.
He staggers. Doesn't go down. He's bigger than me, thicker, built for this.
But he wasn't expecting it from me. Nobody ever expects it from the quiet one.
I hit him again. His nose this time.
I feel it break under my knuckles. The wet crunch of cartilage collapsing, blood spraying across his shirt and my hand and the concrete wall behind him. He goes to his knees.
"You came to my fucking home," I say. My voice hasn't changed. Still quiet. Still even. The same voice I use to tell my daughters good night. "You took photographs of my children at school. You sat at my kitchen table. You sent men to hurt the woman I love, and terrorize my daughters."
I grab him by the collar and pull him up.
He's bleeding from his nose and mouth and his eyes are wide. Not with pain, but with the sudden, devastating understanding that the quiet man with the coin and the spreadsheets and the neatly packed lunches is going to kill him, and there's nothing he can do about it.
"You put your hands on a thirteen-year-old girl," I say. "Mythirteen-year-old girl. She has bruises on her arm, and she's going to carry those bruises for weeks, and she's going to carry the memory of them for the rest of her life."
I shove him against the wall.
His head hits the concrete and he groans, and I pull the knife from my belt. The one I've carried since I was eighteen, the one my grandfather carried, the one that's been in an Adkins hand for as long as the coin has.
"This is for Sadie Jo," I say.
The blade goes into his thigh. Deep. He screams.
A high, broken sound that echoes off the basement walls and I hold the knife there and twist, and the scream goes higher. Blood runs down his leg and pools on the concrete floor.
"This is for Wrenleigh." I pull the blade out and drive it into his other thigh. Same depth. Same twist.
He tries to grab my hand and I slam his head against the wall again and his arms drop.
"This is for Leah."
The blade goes across his face. Cheek to cheek, through the nose, opening him up in a line that mirrors the scar I carry through my eyebrow and Leah carries through her forehead.
He'll never be found, but if he were, they'd see that line and know somebody marked him on purpose.
He's crying now. Begging.
Blood running from his face and his legs, pooling on the floor, his hands slipping in it as he tries to push himself up.
I crouch down. Eye level.
Close enough that he can see every shade of blue and gray in my eyes, the same way Leah described them, the same eyes my daughter inherited.
"And this is for thinking you could come to my town, threaten my family, and walk away."
I draw the knife across his throat. Not fast. Deliberate.
The way I do everything. I feel the resistance of skin and muscle and then the release as the blade finds the artery, and the blood comes in a pulse that matches his heartbeat, slowing, slowing, slowing.
I watch him die.
I owe him that much. Not mercy, not compassion. The attention. The same attention I give everything.
