When I asked the ME what the man wanted from me, his forced, vacant denial stirred a primal response from somewhere deep down and dark. I’m 6’3” and have had a shit ton of guys try to provoke a fight out of me, and I always walked away. Before that moment, I’d never hit another person.
I dropped the morgue doctor to the floor in one punch.
By the time I went after the man in the suit, he vanished just as quickly as he appeared, a fucking ghost. I’d almost convinced myself he was a stress-induced hallucination…if not for the medical examiner. I expected him to press charges, but he excused my behavior as grief.
That right there proved to me that something was fucking amiss.
He wanted to make it go away.
That’s when I started hearing the voice. I guess it’d been there the whole time, some part of my psyche, never given the chance to be heard before then.
The day I buried Jules, I also buried Luke. He disappeared from his career. From his relationships. Luke had no family. There was one missing persons’ report sent out, and then he was forgotten.
For the past three years, I’ve lived and breathed retribution.
I had a touch of artistic talent once. In my spare time, I still dabbled. Blown glass, welding, drawing. I resurrected that neglected part of my existence and drew the face of the man in the suit. From every angle, every sharp feature, and then I used my skills to search his face on the dark web.
The modern world is covered in cameras. They are everywhere. Home security videos, bank footage, retail stores. Even coffee shops, and everywhere in-between. All that video footage is stored in the cloud. Gaining access to all this stored footage is a practice in the black arts of security networking.
I found my ghost. Christian Lazier got a hit on a security camera walking into a bank in Costa Rica. He was real. I dredged the bowels of the Internet and scoured every connection to him, until I’d built a profile on my first devil. Then I stalked him. I followed him to a bar in upper Washington, where I discovered a network of other devils who liked to prey on underage girls.
I tortured Lazier for a week before I finally got a second name.
It became a game of warped dominoes. Knock one down, and the next topples. And the next.
Lazier, along with five other devils, had raped, mutilated, and beaten my little sister to death. I collected all the names. But somewhere along the way, taking revenge on the five bastards who tortured my sister wasn’t enough.
The hunger grew.
There was something bigger at work.
I hunted for a long three years, adding to my collection. Until I hit a wall.
I throw Myer’s corpse over my shoulder and haul him to a gurney. I cover his vile corpse with a sheet, then I search for a white coat and scrub hat. It’s a lot easier breaking in than it will be breaking back out…with a body.
Before this point, I’d have taken extensive measures to plan this carefully, efficiently. But the fact that Keller put a bullet in Myer’s head proves they’re closing in, they’re cleaning up.
Make it go away.
One crowned devil at the top of the food chain is eradicating all the vermin, and I’m on that list. Time is limited. They’ll find me in the same way I found them, no matter how far below the radar I keep myself buried.
I could leave Myer here, buy myself more time. But he doesn’t deserve a proper burial. I need to send a message.
As I head down the hall, face mask in place, I feel a sense of relief. It’s so foreign I almost don’t recognize the emotion. One way or another, this is almost over.
At first, Makenna was an inconvenience, a problematic burden to be dealt with. Her arrival at the warehouse was just bad luck.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
She was a gift from the devil herself.
There’s a coin in my pocket that’s itching to be flipped, a fifty-fifty chance the person I’ve been hunting all these years is just a stone’s throw away from the sound.
Makenna hasn’t realized why she was sent to Myer’s building yet. But I know—I know exactly how to force the devil out of hiding.
13
Watchdog