Page 104 of The Ashes of Summer

And in that exact second the restraint around my wrist finally lets go.

"You think you've won, don't you?" I keep my voice quiet. "Still think you'd ever have a chance after she saw me drop you like a sack of shit on my driveway?"

Kurt smirks and steps closer.

That's it. Come on.

Closer.

The smug fucking smile stretches wider as he leans down to whisper something clever⁠—

And I move.

I get both arms around his skull and take him down onto the concrete with my whole weight behind it. Something in his chest goes on impact—a wet crunch under his ribs—and the scream that comes out of him is the best sound I've heard all night.

And I want to take my time.

God, I want to take my time with him. I want hours. I want to work through this piece of shit slow enough that he understands every single thing he handed her, and I want him conscious for all of it.

But she's out there in the dark and Jackson's already gone looking, and every second I spend on this floor is a second he's closer to her.

So Kurt Moore gets off light.

The first one breaks his nose flat. The second opens his cheek to the bone. He gets a hand up between us, some useless flapping thing, and I catch it by the wrist and pin it to the concrete⁠—

And I know these hands.

I've seen them before. On her. In the Dogwood, on the dancefloor, one on her waist and one in her hair while she swayed against him and smiled like the world was a safe place. I stood in that bar and hated these hands for wanting her, and I never once understood what they'd already fucking done to her.

He was in this house tonight. He knew exactly what Jackson was going to do to her and he stood in the fucking corridor and let it happen.

"These the hands you put on her?"

He makes a noise. It isn't a word.

I take the wrist in both hands and break it across the edge of the concrete, and whatever's in there gives all at once, and the sound he makes goes up into a register I've never heard out of a grown man.

That's for the dancefloor.

"You sang to her." I've got his jaw now, hauling his face up so he has to look at me out of the one eye still working. "You let her believe there was one safe thing left in that whole town. And then you went back to him and told him what she was wearing."

He's trying to say something. Blood keeps getting in the way of it.

"Don't. You don't get to."

My fist comes down on his mouth and his teeth go. I feel them break under my knuckles, feel two of them open my hand on the way through, and I don't stop. I hit him until the sounds stop being anything at all, until his ruined hands quit trying to come up, until there's nothing under me doing anything but bleeding.

He's still breathing. Shallow. Wet. Bubbling through what's left of his face.

Not enough.

I get up—my legs don't feel like mine—and bring my boot down on his throat.

Once. The cartilage goes like a bundle of dry sticks.

Twice.

"Boss." Carter's hand lands on my shoulder. "He's dead."