going to want to waste time if he thought her life was hanging in the balance.
Terror choked her and her body began to shake.
Her mouth opened as she started to sob.
Tears flowed ... as her blood soon would.
Nights ago, in those woods, by that motel, Veck had been prepared to take this piece of shit Kroner out.
Granted, it hadn't been for society's benefit - although he'd been prepared to maintain that it was. And after the opportunity had come and gone, he'd been relieved that he hadn't done it.
Now? He had the only justification that mattered: his Reilly didn't care that she thought he'd tampered with evidence or that she wouldn't have anything to do with him after this.
Saving her life was enough.
The brunette was right; such a simple trade.
Veck focused on his victim. As Kroner hung from the cave's ceiling, his mouth was moving, and given the tears that were pouring out of his eyes, he was no doubt begging for mercy, the killer reduced to begging for everything he hadn't granted his prey.
Christ, he was so fucking pathetic, that hospital gown marked with blood as if he'd been pulled headfirst down the slope, his skin so white it had slipped into snow territory, his face all distorted from swelling.
Veck had a passing urge to put the dagger away and punch the guy until the motherfucker had a coronary. The man's victims had had to go slowly ... had been conscious as he'd taken his godforsaken bits and pieces from them ... it seemed like karma to have him know on an up-close-and-personal level what it felt like to be out of control, in pain, and at the mercy of another.
But Reilly's life was at stake.
Veck craned his arm up higher over his shoulder and angled the glass dagger's point at Kroner's chest. One vicious stab was all it was going to take, and fuck knew that Veck had the strength to get the job done -
Just as the weapon reached the apex of the arc, in the second before he was going to put all his upper-body power into the downward thrust, one of the weapon's facets caught the candlelight and shot a beam onto Kroner's face.
Veck frowned as he got a clear picture of those ratlike features: Kroner had closed his eyes and turned his face to the side, his frail body trembling as he braced himself for death.
"What's the matter," the brunette barked. "Do it - and you'll have her."
This is not my life to take, Veck thought with a sudden, inexplicable conviction.
"Do it!"
This is ... not my life to take.
His father ... Kroner himself ... men like that ... they thought that all lives, all people, all things, were theirs for the taking, and it was just a case of whim-based design who they decided to choose, who became the next notch on their belt. And the trophies were about keeping a slice of this moment now, when they had all the power, when they were in control, when they were God - because like an orgasm, this pleasure point was fleeting, and the memory wasn't a patch on the actual experience.
Which was why they did it again and again.
And as for him? On some level, this was the perfect beginning, the stripe of poison ivy itching on his arm that, if he scratched it, would bloom and take over his entire body.
This is not my life to take.
"Just fucking do it!" the brunette demanded.
Veck shifted his eyes over to the woman. Her black stare called out to him even more than her words did, offering him a temptation that went beyond this cave, this split second, this on-the-verge -
"Reilly or him," she hissed. "Pick now."
Veck's arm began to tremble, his rock-hard muscles poised to strike and unable to bear the dead-space tension between decision and action.
"I don't believe you," Veck heard himself say.
"What."
Veck slowly lowered the weapon to his side. In a hoarse, cracking voice, he said, "I don't trust you. And I'm not ..." He had to clear his throat. "I'm not going to kill him."
Bails was already dead, and there were no other sounds in the cave. And this woman ... whatever she was ... was a liar: Reilly had been alive at some point - it had absolutely been her on the phone - but there was no one else who was breathing in this damp hellhole with them, and given how weak she had sounded, it was doubtful she could