Cellar Door

Remembering the whole truth of that night will only cause more hurt. I can feel it creeping over me now. With every flash, every glimpse into the past, another layer of misery blankets me, and I’m tunneling.

“I say we’re about even.”

His arms still anchored around me, I bury my head against his chest, unable to look at him. “That doesn’t make sense.” He didn’t answer my question.

“You barged into that alley, some fierce, raving force, and I should’ve gotten rid of you. But I hadn’t seen anything so beautiful in a long time. All the vile and ugly things surrounding me…and then there you were, all drenched and broken, and beautiful. You stole my breath, made me pause…just long enough. I never question my next move.”

I slow my breathing, trying not to move. My heart beats fiercely in my chest, and I’m scared that he can hear it, or feel my racing pulse—that he’ll mistake what I’m feeling.

“So I say we’re even,” he says. “You got inside my head, you infected me. You make me think about another life, when I buried that life already. It’s painful.”

I swallow. “I cause you pain.” Good.

He finally looks down, his hand smoothing my hair away from my face. “Your beauty is a cruelty.”

This moment is fragile, and I could break it if I push too hard…but there’s a tenuous thread I can tug to unravel the truth. I look past the scars and the cold blue eyes of the man who tore my world apart. We are not even. “Where are his ashes, Luke?”

He holds me a few seconds longer in silence. Then, with deft movements, lifts me off him so he can stand. He heads toward the door. Only stopping long enough to say, “All around you. Bone and ash in every layer of concrete I’ve lain in this cellar. All my devils and demons, Mak. They’re all around you. Even him. Right here, a part of this cellar.”

16

Wicked Pain

Luke

Makenna hasn’

t moved for two days. I think I broke her.

I’ve had to force her to eat. Spooning soup and soggy crackers into her mouth like a sick patient. She is sick. Denial is a form of sickness, and hers has made her catatonic. She’s made a choice to wither in this cellar rather than accept the truth.

Royce Hudson can never save her.

Resurrecting his bones won’t change her outcome. The life she knew, her life as a detective, is over. As soon as she leaves this cellar and steps back into the world, as soon as she returns to her apartment, they’ll know.

And this time, they’ll make sure to finish the job promptly, efficiently.

That was the plan, of course. Use Makenna as bait. Draw them out.

Only now, it’d be like placing a helpless lamb amid a circle of wolves.

I lean against the cellar wall, watching her. I moved my cot in here from the outside chamber. I slept on the floor, listening out for her on the other side of the cellar door. At some point during the night, she must have moved. Because the papers that were scattered across the floor are now tacked to the board, and where she ran out of room, she taped them to the wall with strips from her bandage.

So I keep watching her, to see what she does next. Before that moment in the alley, I would’ve sacrificed the lamb without a second thought. A casualty for the greater good. Blood has to spill, people have to pay.

Innocent women get caught in the crossfire.

That’s exactly the kind of logic the people I’ve spent three years hunting tout.

It’s a hard truth to swallow. How much greater good is my vengeance doing? I take out one, another pops up. Like bad guy whack-a-mole. The only way to save anyone, to protect innocent lives from further damage, is to chop off the head.

So what do I do with Makenna now? Leave her here to fester in misery? While I face down the head snake? I’ve thought about this. Long and hard. Wanting to do just that. But what happens if I fail. When I don’t return.

She’ll become just another ghost in this cellar.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” I ask her, not expecting a response, but I keep trying.

I’ve taken her upstairs to the bathroom twice a day. I’ve taken her today once already. At least she’s responsive enough to tend to her needs, clean herself. I’m not sure I’m built for that; I don’t want to test the theory.