And that was a problem.
FOUR
Novak
My safe place,or at least one of them, was a run-down industrial block off a half-dead stretch of road, with roll-up doors rusted in place and windows filmed with grime. The building had been a sweatshop. Then storage. Then nothing. Now it was one more secure location in a city full of shadows, and the second time I’d used it this week. If I was thinking clearly, then the risk of such a close repeat was obvious, but I’d killed the man from the club for being a threat to Caleb, and my newest resident, staring at me with wide, wet eyes, was as much a job for Caleb.
Everything right now was formyCaleb.
He’d been mine to protect the first time I saw him. I wanted him close. I wanted him contained. I wanted a room with one door, no windows, no vectors I hadn’t cleared, where no one could reach him, and nothing could hurt him.
Not optional. Not negotiable.
I reduced risk. I removed threats.
“GHHA!” my prisoner shouted around the cloth in his mouth before finally managing to spit it out.
“Help! Help!” he yelled, the sound tearing out of him, high and useless.
I stepped in, the knife already at his throat, the edge resting enough to break skin if he moved. “Enough,” I said.
He stopped. Instantly. The sound cut off as if I’d severed it. What came after was smaller—breath hitching, a broken whimper he couldn’t control even if he tried.
He’d been sweating since the moment he’d come back to consciousness. Some men sweated because they were scared. Some because they were guilty. According to Caleb and the Cave team, he was both.
“No,” he whispered, voice cracking on the word. “Why are you doing this?—”
“You know why,” I said.
My voice didn’t rise. I didn’t need it to. Volume was for men who wanted to be heard. I wanted him to understand he wasn’t in charge of anything that happened in this room.
I flicked the knife once, testing the balance, then drove it into the meat of his naked pale thigh—high enough to miss the femoral, angled inward so it hurt without ending him.
This man was Reverend Neil Langston, forty-five, high church on paper, predator in practice. He screamed. Spit flew from his mouth. Curses followed it, wild and useless. He bucked against the restraints, and I stepped back out of range automatically. Head turned so his spit hit my sleeve, not my face. Weight balanced on the balls of my feet in case he tipped the bolted chair, which hadn’t happened yet, but maybe today would be different. He might be strong enough to rock it free, crack his head open, and I’d get to see inside him, but that wasn’t for today.
Note: bolts holding. Wrists already reddening, some blood there—circulation okay. Good.
“Do you remember why you’re here now?”
“You’ve got the wrong person! I’m a man of God!”
“Ethan Cole, thirteen. Marcus Velez, fourteen. Tyler Bishop, fifteen. Aaron Kline, thirteen. Jamie Rourke, fourteen.”
Victims.
And now, survivors, but only thanks to the Cave’s work.
Thanks to Caleb.
My prisoner shook his head fast enough that his cheeks wobbled. He went through all the stages of denial—everything I’d heard from others, from I don’t know them, to it wasn’t my fault. Then the final one…
“I’m not like the rest,” he said, and the lie came out reflexively. “I didn’t hurt any kids. I swear.”
“Caleb said you did, and Caleb doesn’t lie.”
He shouts, and I cut him again—shallower this time, the type of slice that burns more than ends; I’ve tested how to set pain where it does the most work.
I stood still and let the silence sit. I’d learned early that most people couldn’t stand silence. They filled it with whatever they were trying to hide.
