so I could exit, his gray shirt covered in blood.
“You hurt?” He didn’t look injured, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t.
“No.” He looked down at himself quickly. “Not mine.” His attention was then on my injured leg. “You good?”
“Yeah. Clean exit. Addy patched me up.” I looked toward the house, then the barn, noticing the dead Reapers that had been on the ground before I left weren’t here anymore. “Where are the bodies?”
“In there.” He pointed toward the barn before giving me his back and walking toward the large doors. “Come on. Someone’s waitin’ for you.”
Apprehension coursed through my veins, not because I was hesitant on whether I wanted to kill Dutch, but because I wasn’t sure ending him would dissolve the fury burning me up inside.
As soon as I entered, I saw Stone and Ford standing off to the right, thankful the both of them were okay. But when I got closer, I noticed that half of the VP’s white shirt was painted red.
He saw me looking and the bastard smirked. “Lucky shot one of ’em got.” He lifted the material and I saw a small hole in his side, the blood trickling out slowly. I was about to ask him how he wasn’t clutching his side, but then remembered the lucky bastard didn’t feel pain.
“You tell your wife about that?” I gestured up and down the side of him.
“Not yet.” The faintest smirk danced across his face before his expression hardened, He stepped aside and jerked his chin to the other side of the barn. “Let’s get to work.” His words were casual, like we weren’t here to torture and kill another human being.
Scratch that, referring to Dutch as such was an insult to humanity. The man was an animal. No, even that reference was an insult to that species.
He was garbage, through and through.
A waste of cells and skin.
I followed him and the others behind the van, stopping in my tracks when everything came into view. There was a pile of dead Reapers in the corner, six to be exact.
Ford answered my unspoken question. “There’s four more in the house and two in the woods, about fifty yards out.”
I couldn’t think of a response, my only focus now on the bloodied man tied to one of the posts. The same man I shot when I entered the room where the women were being kept. Had I obtained the information then as to who he was, I would’ve put a bullet in his brain before leaving. Although, part of me was thankful things turned out as they had, because now I could exact a slow and painful justice for Zoe.
“Dutch,” I said, simply verifying his identity from the description Zoe gave me of the man who cut her. Marek nodded, adding another level of confirmation.
The Reaper’s arms were tied behind his back, his feet free, his body limp and his head hanging forward. Blood coated his tan shirt near his right shoulder, and when I glanced down his body, there was red painting his left leg, both places where I’d shot him.
My feet propelled me forward until I was directly in front of him. His skin was pale, no doubt from blood loss, and at first I thought he was unconscious, but when he made a noise, then spit at my feet, a glob of red hitting the tip of my brown boot, I knew he was awake.
Too bad for him.
Dutch raised his head and locked eyes with me. A shiver raced down my back, and it was then I realized I was looking into the face of true evil. His eyes were black, the smirk lifting the corners of his mouth an indication I was surely going to hear some shit I didn’t want to.
“I can see why you like that redhead.” He fell into a coughing fit before continuing, his features contorting in pain when he tried to move his injured arm. “She’s a sweet fuck.” I watched his lips move with the words, but it took my brain several seconds to register what he’d said.
His head snapped to the side from the brute force of my hit. A string of bloody spit hung from his lip, his body convulsing with another bout of coughing. Between the air he sucked into his lungs, he laughed, the sound sinister, bolstering my anger to morph into an emotion more powerful than rage.
“Keep talkin’ and he’s gonna draw this out for as long as possible.” Stone stepped forward and