Page 87

It hurts me to think of how long she must have listened to those noises. Alone in this cold house after the person who should have loved her most, abandoned her instead.

I hate to think of her curled in a ball, trembling while the man who had terrorised my sweet girl clawed at the lid of his coffin.

But she triumphed.

The planks and paint and bricks show he never stood a chance of getting free.

My beautiful, freckled angel held her nerve until the noises stopped and her exhausted and terrified brain let go of the memories. Only revisiting them in her subconscious when the dark silence of this abandoned place was broken by the sneaky scratching of little rodent paws.

After feeling her tremble with fear, I swear I’ll never let anything scare her that way again.

I take out my phone and calculate the time difference between here and Thailand. My uncle arrived in Bangkok today and it’s five hours earlier there. He’s probably still awake.

I place the call.

* * *

“There’sno need to come inside. You can wait in the car, and I’ll be back as soon as its done.”

“I want to see.” Francesca stares at me, her large eyes pleading. “Unless I’ll be in your way?”

“You’re not big enough to get in anyone’s way.” I lean across the seat, cupping her neck to pull her into a kiss, the pliancy of her lips encouraging me to stay, claiming her hot, wet mouth until my head is spinning.

Inside the building, I flood the place with lights, and help dress her in a white hazmat suit, the fabric bunching on her wrists and ankles, face nearly disappearing beneath the hood.

When I don my own, I cup her cheek. “Now sit back and let me take care of this for you.”

She takes a seat, hands clenched so tightly in her lap, her knuckles must be aching. I walk back outside to collect the body, lifting the deadweight over my shoulder. He’s twice Francesca’s size and a surge of white-hot anger fires through me.

Even if I resurrected him to die at my hand ten times over it would never be enough.

Inside, I slump the corpse on a large table, the pattern for different cuts of meat ingrained in the easy-clean surface. I’ve disposed of body’s in the past, big men and small. The job has ranged from disgusting through to revolting, turning even my hardened stomach.

What it’s never been is satisfying.

The first slice of the saw releases a deep store of vengeance that runs through my soul. It’s Francesca’s tormentor, yes, but it’s also mine. The people who hurt me before I grew large enough to defend myself. The ones who loved me just long enough to tear out my heart.

I take a break when he’s quartered, wiping my goggles against my overalls, glancing over at my girl, capturing her aura of calm in my mental photo album, proud beyond belief that I’m the one able to fix her problem.

We might appear mismatched, but inside, where it counts, we’re even, sharing one heart, one mind, one soul.

With renewed energy, I obliterate the man who tortured Francesca like she was a grown enemy instead of a vulnerable child, sawing, mincing, grinding his bones until every cell in his body is unrecognisable sludge mixing with the runoff from the regular butchering, gone like he was never here.

And Francesca watches every second. Wincing sometimes, flinching at the noise, but her gaze never deviates until there’s nothing left to see.

Tomorrow, I’ll destroy the freezer itself, turning it to scrap metal I can dump at half a dozen locations across the city. After an exterminator goes through the house this weekend, there’ll be nothing left inside to fear.

She can have her home back. Her life back.

And you’ve just destroyed the only thing guaranteed to hold her here.

I frown at the unexpected thought, so alien it’s like it originated outside my brain.

Sure, Francesca has been worried about the body, fearing the police investigation that would inevitably follow its discovery, but it’s ridiculous to think there’s nothing else to keep her here.

Her schooling is important, and she accepted the place at Westlake long before the freezer gained its occupant. She could easily have followed in her mother’s footsteps, disappearing into obscurity, but chose to stay.

I’ve become important to her, too. I know I have.