The Babysitter Read online

  Nothing felt the same.

  She had touched everywhere in the house.

  She had touched places in me that I didn't know existed.

  She'd softened ragged edges, stitched back together things that had been torn to tatters.

  In such a short amount of time.

  I couldn't help but wonder what else, if given the time, she could have shown to me about myself.

  It was on the fifth day after she left when someone - other than Miller who daily, and in explicit detail, told me what a shit I was - reached out.

  Not Finn.

  Or even Gunner, ever a fan of reaching out to rub salt in bleeding wounds.

  No.

  It was the boss man himself.

  "I'm in town," he informed me, not one for pleasantries.

  "You coming in?"

  "Fuck no," he said, sounding like he was laughing at the very idea. And, well, the image of him trekking through the woods for hours in one of those suits he was so fond of was pretty fucking funny. "You're going to come out and meet me for coffee. There's a place down the street from the hotel. Has outside seating. Meet me there this afternoon."

  There was no room for debating, for me coming up with excuses for why I wasn't going to do that. Without, of course, admitting that this was the worst possible time for me to have to come out of the woods, to have to face the world, when I was already feeling something. Something new. Something terrifying.

  Vulnerable.

  I couldn't say anything.

  Because he had already hung up.

  I didn't have to go. It wasn't like he was going to come in and drag me out. Or fire me even.

  But for some reason, I found myself grabbing my wallet and keys, making the dogs stay to keep the animals safe.

  And I took off at a jog, cutting the usual time in half.

  And by the time I was in the truck and driving out toward civilization, I realized I was starting to breathe easier, like a part of me was craving this, like I was searching out connection with someone else.

  Which, well, was completely asinine.

  But it was what it seemed like as the trees became nothing but an image in the rearview as I broke into society for the first time in since that day I drove Meadow to the hospital.

  It felt like ages ago.

  Yet way too soon.

  I parked the truck, making my way down the street, hearing the blare of radios, the honks of horns, the chattering of one-sided phone conversations.

  Normally, my shoulders would hunch up, trying to block off the assault.

  But just this once, it didn't seem to bother me as much as I made my way toward where Quin was sitting, two coffees across from him where he was somehow sitting alone at the cafe even though the weather was nice and the coffee shop was packed. Knowing him, he'd thrown money at it.

  And we were about to have a clandestine meeting like a couple of fucking mobsters.

  "What are you doing here?" I asked, sitting down, taking the coffee between my hands.

  "We found him," he told me, gaze unwavering.

  "Found who?"

  "The guy who hurt Meadow."

  Even her fucking name hurt.

  It took actual work not to rub at the sore sensation in my chest.

  "Who is it?" I demanded, realizing my voice was too loud when someone who was walking past jolted and shrieked softly. Lowering my voice, I went on. "Some low life gang banger?"

  To that, Quin snorted. "He's a stockbroker."

  "A stockbroker," I repeated, the words not quite sinking in because they made no sense.

  "I know, right? It explains the cocaine, and nothing else. I mean, who the fuck deals in cocaine these days? It's all heroin and meth. The only people who can afford cocaine are stockbrokers and businessmen."

  "I don't understand," I admitted, brows furrowing. "She had no man in her life. How did she come across some stockbroker on her way to get coffee who would want to hurt her?"

  "That's the question, isn't it?" he asked, tipping up his coffee.

  "How did you find him?"

  "Nia. I figured she had given up on the case. Turns out, she's fucking obsessive about shit. She can't be clueless. She's got to figure it out. So, apparently, she was working on hacking all the cameras both up where Meadow's last memories were then all around the Pine Barrens down in the area where she was found. She found two matching cars, matching plates. Then she hacked into the fucking DMV to get a name. I think she needs a raise," he added, shaking his head.

  "Criminal history?"

  "Nope. Nothing. Fucking model citizen. On the books at least."

  "Does he have blue eyes?" I asked, voice a little distant.

  "What?"

  "Does he have blue eyes? Meadow mumbled about blue eyes."

  Quin leaned down, reaching into a briefcase for a file folder, passing it toward me. I was pretty sure now we didn't seem like mobsters to the people who were clearly eyeing us from inside the coffee shop. Nope. We seemed like a spy and a handler.

  I flipped open the file folder, finding a picture stuck to the front of the file.

  Ice blue eyes.

  Dead too.

  I'd seen those eyes many times in my life. In the eyes of sociopaths, in psychopaths, in people who lacked empathy, who didn't know the meaning of right and wrong.

  They were the eyes of a monster wearing the skin of a man.

  This was the man who'd drugged her, who'd beaten her, assaulted her, tried to cut her open.

  Rage for me wasn't a hot thing.

  The military had beaten that out of me.

  Hot was too unpredictable, it made you act on impulse, get sloppy, make mistakes, go overboard.

  We were trained, instead, to take the rage and douse it in ice, make it cold. Doing that allowed you to view the situation, think of all the possible ways it could go. Finding the ways to make it have the outcome we wanted, then give us what we needed to execute the plan.

  "You could call Bellamy," Quin told me, knowing me well enough to know what was happening.

  When it came to getting out of the service with most of your sanity intact, Quin took the cake. Followed maybe by Lincoln. They had a little darkness. And they had drowned it in other things. Acceptable things. In Quin's case, before he met his woman, it had been work. Nonstop. Day and night, weekends, never taking vacations. For Lincoln, it was women and cars.

  They managed to exist without having to run away, or by becoming obsessive about something or another.

  And they had, as a whole, left that other life behind them. And had no interest in revisiting.

  While Quin could - and would - take a life again should he need to, he didn't opt into it. He didn't choose it.

  Which was why he had needed Bellamy on the team - someone to do the dirtiest of dirty work.

  He couldn't quite wrap his head around considering planning to kill someone.

  But the man who had hurt his woman had been dead before he had even met Aven.

  Had she been in his life, shared the darkness, the pain with him, and that man was still alive? Yeah, make no fucking doubt about it; he'd have killed him in cold blood too.

  "Don't need Bellamy."

  "Ranger," Quin started, sighing out his breath. "Just think on it for a minute."

  "Would you sit on this for a minute?" I shot back eyes accusing.

  "Probably not, but we are not the same men. We're not in the same place."

  "You think I'm too fucked up to do this and come back from it."

  He didn't deny it.

  He sat on it for a second, weighing his response.

  "You'd come back from it. You've come back from worse."

  "But?"

  "But I don't know if you'd be the same."

  "Meadow will never be the same," I shot back, teeth clenched so tight that my jaw ached.

  "That's true," he agreed, waiting, knowing I wasn't done.

  "And for that, he needs to pay."

  "I don't disagr
ee. I'm just not sure it has to be you who makes him pay."

  "Tell you what, Quin. When you fall asleep with a woman you give a shit about, and she wakes you up in the middle of the night screaming in her sleep for someone to get off of her, then you can talk to me. Then you can tell me it's not healthy to want to grab that bastard, bathe the fucking forest floor in his blood, and show him there is still some mother fucking justice in the world. Until then, keep your opinions and judgements to yourself."

  Quin was the boss for a reason.

  Because he was unshakable.

  Because he stayed calm in the face of everything. Which was the number one ingredient necessary for making a high-class crisis manager. A fixer. He had to take everything on the chin without even wincing. He had to keep his pulse slow in high-pressure situations. And he couldn't flinch when someone lashed out at him.

  "Well," he said, taking a breath, slowly getting to his feet, his hand fastening the middle button on his suit jacket. "Alright," he said, nodding, reaching down for his suitcase.

  "Alright?" I asked, brows furrowing.

  "Yeah, alright. Just make it clean. Don't want anything tracing back."

  "This is me you're talking to," I reminded him.

  "Still. Rage makes you stupid. I would prefer it if you acted smart. If you need Finn, give him a call. I'll give him a heads up just in case."

  "Appreciate it."

  "And Ranger?"

  "Yeah?" I asked, turning to find him watching me with an odd, thoughtful look.

  "It won't help."

  "What won't help?"

  "Making him pay. There will be a certain sense of justice in it, sure. But it won't help."

  "Help what?"

  "That feeling in your chest," he told me before turning and walking away.

  It was a movie dramatic fucking exit, leaving me sitting there with a lukewarm coffee and a file folder full of more information than I needed about the bastard. So much information, in fact, that Nia had somehow found high school records and his most recent physical results.

  I owed her one.

  I didn't know what she liked. Maybe, if Miller ever stopped hating my ass, I could ask her. Or Finn. Then send her a shitton of it. Because without her, his name would never be known. He would be left to walk free. And men like him, who had sick cravings, who got away with it, they didn't stop. They kept going, kept perfecting it. The next time, there would be no hesitation marks on the belly. The knife would plunge, pierce, kill.

  Because of her, a monster would be taken out. And the world would be better for it.

  Mentally, I weighed the options.

  Going back to the woods, shoring up the animals for me to head out of town for a day or so. I'd done it before.

  Or leave them for the better part of just this one day, drive upstate, grab that mother fucker out of his bed, bring him back down with me, and get this done while the rage was fresh.

  And, well, you can imagine which way I leaned.

  The idea that the bastard got to breathe easy for even one more night didn't exactly sit well with me.

  I finished my coffee.

  I discarded the file in a recycling bin behind an office supply store, lost amongst a million other copies of various printed projects, never to be seen again.

  I hopped into my truck, drove it to the outskirts of town, slipped fake plates over my real ones, got on a hat and shades, and started my drive.

  He lived at the kind of place I had expected. A neighborhood of soulless mini-mansions, manicured lawns, ornamental shrubbery, big spotlights cemented into the lawns to shine on the fronts of the houses at night just in case you almost missed the grandeur of it all.

  Men who lived all alone in places like this were just like the men who owned a car that could go zero to sixty in three-point-two seconds and boasted a top speed of two-forty when all they used it for was driving back and forth to the office at forty miles per hour.

  It was all about the external validation, needing everyone else to know how wealthy they were and, therefore, how much better they were.

  This was the kind of man who checked the time just so you saw the Rolex on his wrist.

  Vincent Westcourt lived at number seven Colts Wood Drive - a cold stone-front two-story house with a built-in pool out back, a pair of lion ceramic lawn ornaments flanking the driveway, and a giant crystal chandelier in the window.

  I took a pathetic sort of pleasure in the fact that two of the bulbs had burned out.

  A man like Vincent Westcourt likely had to hire someone to change them out, didn't know where the ladder was, let alone had the balls to get up on it.

  The ADT plaque in the yard was probably a fake. Even if it was real, it would hardly stop me. I'd dealt with higher levels of security before. Sure, it had been a while, but I could do it.

  My truck was parked down the street at a house with all the blinds drawn, their mailbox overflowing. People in neighborhoods like this always had people over doing tasks - taking care of the lawn, the sprinkler systems, the pools. It wouldn't be out of place for a busted up truck like mine to be there to handle something when the owners were out of town. I would head back down and get it once I got Vincent unconscious.

  Then we would be taking a little road trip.

  I needed to get him somewhere that no one could hear him scream.

  Luckily, I knew just the place.

  It didn't take that long.

  Just after seven, the sun still battling to stay up in the sky.

  He'd clicked the garage door button before he even pulled in the drive, letting me sneak into the dark depths unseen, waiting.

  The door closed with a loud grumble.

  It was only a beat or two before the door opened, slammed closed.

  From there, it was all of, say, five seconds before his head met the wall with a sickening thud, sending his body crumbling to the ground.

  Unconsciousness was a tricky thing. Because brains were unpredictable. Some people could take a massive blow and only be out for a couple minutes. Others took a baby tap and were out for an hour. There was no way to tell. So if your plan involved illegally transporting them in the backseat floor of your cab for several long hours, well, there wasn't much of a margin for error.

  Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out the bottle and the syringe, smiling a bit to myself as I stuck it, sucked up the liquid, tapped out the air.

  Funny thing about owning large animals like donkeys, sometimes you found yourself in possession of things like horse tranquilizers. Legally.

  Of course they never assumed you'd use them to subdue a human being.

  But what they didn't know wouldn't offend their delicate sensibilities.

  I wasn't entirely sure on the dose, and felt a stab of concern as I dragged the body into the trunk of his car just in case, worried that he might just drift away peacefully in his sleep before I got to have some fun with him.

  Luckily, by the time I returned with my truck, transferring his body into the backseat, he was still breathing.

  As the drive dragged on, nothing but the sound of the world whooshing by, the shift started to happen.

  It was old, familiar.

  Dark.

  Hollow.

  Anything that made me remotely human slipped away, replaced by this cold-blooded, hardened creature. One who felt not only satisfaction about what he had to do, but actual glee.

  It was a chilling thing to feel the anticipation coursing through my veins, making the hair prickle up on my arms, the back of my neck.

  By the time my truck broke into the Pine Barrens, my fingers were itching to close around the knife in my duffle bag.

  It was pitch black when I couldn't drive anymore, had to pull my truck over.

  Had I planned for this, I'd have had a wheelbarrow.

  Unconscious bodies were heavy. Especially those of full-grown men. It didn't matter how strong you are, after a mile or two, your arms would get wobbly, you'd be sweating through your cl
othes, huffing hard under the weight.

  Carrying someone over long distances was a recipe for disaster.

  Luckily, though, my truck came equipped with many things. Flashlights, batteries, water, food, blankets, various tools, rope, scissors, and, best of all, a tarp. Mostly, it served to protect the truck bed when it was loaded down with food and supplies if a rainstorm hit, but it would also serve well as a makeshift structure if I found myself needing to camp out somewhere. And, best of all, dragging a body took a fuckuva lot less effort than carrying one.

  I put it flat, slapped his body down on it, grabbed a few more of the supplies, tucking them into pockets, then making my way through the woods.

  I lived deep.

  Deeper than almost anyone would travel.

  But, as a whole, my life was quiet in a literal way. No one would hear me even if they were in the woods for some reason.

  But screams carried.

  It was how I'd first heard Meadow.

  It was how I heard the other women.

  Or even some of the parties when someone was tripping out of control.

  And the screams Vincent Westcourt was about to be making as soon as he rose from his beauty rest? Yeah, they were going to carry. I was going to see to it.

  Grabbing the edges of the tarp, I started our trek further inward, head up, watching the stars, a low whistle coming out from between my lips - some old cadence chant - as we went.

  It wasn't until I was a good two hours from my home that my friend was starting to stir. And, well, we were deep enough.

  Even if he did scream, even if someone did hear, even if they decided to come in, they wouldn't find their way to the spot until long after the fun was done, until I had already cleaned up my mess.

  Finn might have been the professional at it.

  But I was pretty damn good myself.

  Especially in a place like this where there was no one to oversee, where carpets didn't need to be replaced, drywall didn't need to be changed out, everything didn't need to be bleached away.

  Grabbing the rope, I wrapped his wrists, taking pride in a skill I hadn't lost. Finished, I tossed the long end over a low hanging tree branch, jumping up to grab it off the other side, then pulling.

  Up up up.