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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“ H e’s going to kill Addie.” Mona paced in front of Jacob. She shook out her hands, her legs a motion of jerky movements.

“We won’t let that happen, right?”

He didn’t try to move. Blood continued to seep through his shirt. Eventually he’d grow lightheaded, and he wouldn’t be able to walk. It wasn’t going to take long for him to get to that point. Walking was pretty much out of the question when it would only slow down Mona.

He could get her killed.

Poison to her future, the way he’d been poison to everyone else.

“You need to go.” The words spilled from his mouth as a croak.

Mona spun around. “You mean we , right? But how do we get out of here?”

“We need Hank to come in.” Jacob already knew what he was going to suggest. So did she, given the shift in the expression on her face. Before she could argue, he said, “You hide behind the door. When he’s distracted, run out.”

It wasn’t a great plan, but what other choice did they have? He wasn’t going to survive this. But if he could make sure she did, then it counted for something. Addie would know he’d done everything—given everything—for her sister.

For her.

If he managed to take out Hank in the process—again, unlikely—maybe God would look on him with favor and for once Jacob would know he’d done good for someone else. That instead of being a force for ill in their life, he did something to their benefit.

“Where do I go?” she asked.

Jacob saw the scared girl inside the young woman in front of him. “I know it’s safer to stay together, but if you can get out, you might be able to find help. Or help will find you. Either way you must try. It’s the only way either of us has hope of being saved.”

Truth was, Jacob didn’t worry about himself surviving this.

He hadn’t seen the truth in Hank. All these years of friendship, and he’d allowed his own feelings to cloud his judgment when it came to the detective. He’d always thought Hank was hurt, and maybe jaded, because Jacob made quarterback instead of Hank. Because Addie had survived, and Becca hadn’t. Jacob had hit big with that book.

Instead, the truth was far darker.

Mona looked at his stomach, then up at his face. “I’ll go get help.” She bit her lip. “What do I do?”

“Get behind the door. Wait for Hank to?—”

The door flew open and bounced against the wall behind it. Hank stalked in and went right to Mona.

She backed up to the wall.

He put his hands on her throat, a low chuckle coming from him. “You’re going to distract me and run?”

The door was wide open. Jacob sat against the wall, unable to get up, let alone go. Mona struggled for breath.

“Hank! Don’t do this!” Jacob shifted and tried to stand. Pain tore through his abdomen. “Hank!”

Mona’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she went limp in Hank’s grasp. Jacob wasn’t sure whether she actually passed out or had decided to go ahead with the plan. But either way he was going to do this for her.

“Hank, she’s just a kid. Don’t kill her.”

Hank dropped her to the ground. Mona made no sound, though he saw her face when she landed. The expression of surprise.

Hank came to him.

Good. Mona needed to be able to get out of here.

“What happened to you?” Ivan Damen had to have killed something in him.

The cops had attributed her death to Damen, but in Jacob and Addie’s cabin, Jacob was instructed to kill Addie and then himself. He hadn’t, and for a long time, he’d believed it was because he wasn’t strong enough to do it.

He hadn’t been able to save her by letting her die. He’d selfishly made her suffer longer because he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let her go.

“Like there’s something wrong with me?” Hank lifted his brows, no remorse there.

“What did Ivan do to you?”

“Because I turned into him like he poisoned me or something?”

Jacob blinked. He’d always believed he was the poison. Damen had done the same to Hank, but Jacob worked through it. He worked the poison out as best he could and built a life. Maybe it would always lay dormant in him, but Hank hadn’t dealt with it.

“What did you do?”

“They deserved it.”

Jacob swallowed. “Who did you hurt?”

He was worried about Mona, who hadn’t moved yet. She could be biding her time, but he didn’t even see her shifting to look, assessing the situation. Maybe Hank had genuinely hurt her.

That meant Jacob had to stall until Addie showed up with all the cops in the county. He wasn’t going to think about how she’d know where to find them.

“Some people are just predisposed to evil. Isn’t that what Addie would say. All those behavioral studies, trying to understand perversion. As if it can be tracked or categorized.”

How much had Jacob missed? Before Damen and after him. It had nothing to do with Jacob’s effect on his life. It was all Hank and the choices he’d made. Jacob might have been distracted by his own deal, coping with his own trauma. He’d tried to make his life the best it could be.

Hank had done the opposite. “You want me to tell you it wasn’t your fault? That you didn’t mean to do any of it. Fine. You were poisoned. You’re sick.”

That had to be it. Something had broken in Hank. He’d succumbed to the darkness of Ivan Damen instead of running from it the way Jacob and Addie had. Which only made his heartbreak for his friend.

Hank had fought that demon for years, and there was nothing anyone could’ve done to stop it.

He’d given in to the darkness.

Hank’s lips shifted. “I knew exactly what I was doing with every single one of them.”

Jacob had never known his friend could be so calculating. He had to face the fact they’d really never been friends. He hadn’t known Hank at all, despite being in each other’s lives for years.

Hank had kept the truth from everyone.

There was nothing Jacob did to make Hank this way. He’d chosen it, but it had also been the influence of evil on him. Maybe Jacob kept Hank from doing worse. Jacob might never get an answer on that, but he wanted to hold that hope close anyway. The way he refused to let go of the dream of being rescued—like last time.

But this time it would be Addie doing the saving.

The idea he wasn’t poison poked up inside him like a flower growing through the sidewalk.

A little glimmer of hope from God that he was good. A new creation like that flower. Before, there had been only hardness and dry cement, now there was life.

That gift of God. Like having Addie back in his life, even under the circumstances. What was between them had never died. Maybe it was a forever kind of thing, and they’d messed it up for a while. But there was hope they could make something work.

That he wouldn’t be alone anymore.

That he’d find someone to face the sunrise with.

“And now I’ve got you and Addie here so I can finally finish what Damen started.”

Sickness roiled in him that had nothing to do with the fact his blood currently leaked all over the floor around him. “Were you the accomplice?”

Hank made a noise. Behind him, Mona shifted very slightly. “There was no accomplice,” he said.

“Then what were you doing all this time?”

“Learning. Growing my skills and making sure I had what it takes to do this right.”

Maybe he thought he was invincible now, better than anyone. Or maybe there was a niggle of doubt.

“Addie put it together. She knew the cases were connected, and she’ll figure out it was you.”

“And I’ll be waiting when she does.”

“I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

“You were going to kill her.” Hank sneered. “Now you think you can save her?”

No, but God can. And it had nothing to do with whether Jacob was good enough or not. He wanted to throw up, but he needed Hank to keep talking. “Tell me about them.”

“Looking for a confession?” Hank scoffed. “I guess it doesn’t matter since the cops will pin this on you like all the other deaths.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t arrest me a long time ago for a murder you committed.”

Hank grinned. “That would’ve been good.”

“The fingerprint.” He thought for a second that he’d already mentioned it, but his mind couldn’t think straight. “That was you?”

“Why else do you think I came to your house for breakfast? Because we’re friends?”

Jacob pressed his lips together. Come on, Mona. He needed Addie as well. But the person he should be crying out for was God. The one who had held him together all this time, the way He held the world together with the word of His power. God had seen him as good this whole time, a new creation.

Jacob should have seen it before now. He might have realized some other things and saved people from being hurt.

He winced. Poison again, the way he’d always seen himself. It might be something he would struggle with for the rest of his life.

But at least he knew now it wasn’t true.

“Addie isn’t coming.” Jacob needed to know what would happen next.

“She doesn’t know where we are.”

Hank said, “You think she won’t find you? Have more faith in your girlfriend.”

“Did you kill Becca?” If there was no accomplice and Damen hadn’t done it, maybe Hank had faced the same scenario as Jacob and Addie—and all the others taken—and made his choice. Ended the life of his girlfriend so she didn’t have to suffer.

Hank said nothing.

Jacob wanted to know, but he needed to persuade a man he didn’t know to trust him. Or comply with the distraction. Or give Hank the space and ammo to stab at Jacob with words instead of a knife.

“Ivan told me to kill Addie.”

Jacob stared down a killer and let go of his darkest secret.

“To end her suffering, and then my own. He gave me the knife like he did with all the others he took.”

That was Damen’s MO. Set up the scene, torture the victim until they were at their end, and give them a way out. Ivan had never directly killed anyone. At least not by his hand. Instead, he had his victims do it—while he watched.

“I would’ve done it, Hank. I understand what can push you to take a life. I wanted to end Addie’s suffering. So I didn’t have to see her in that much pain.”

Hank had always maintained that his scenario with Becca had been different. But what if that was simply, so he didn’t have to face what he’d done? So the cops wouldn’t think he was anything like Ivan Damen.

Had Hank been hiding that guilt and shame all this time?

“If you did kill Becca—” Jacob looked him in the eyes. “I’d understand because I went through what you did.”

“You think you’re anything like me?” Something dark drifted through Hank’s expression.

“What happened, Hank?”

“As if you’d get what that kind of pain is like.”

“Damen hurt you?”

Hank huffed out a breath. “He wasn’t the first.”

Jacob’s throat closed. He was about to speak when Mona scrambled up from the floor and raced for the door.

Hank roared and spun around.

Jacob swiped out with his leg and slammed it into Hank’s shin. Hank fell to the floor, still screaming with rage. The sound split the air—and Jacob’s eardrums.

Mona raced out into the night, screaming. Her arms and legs pumped as fast as Jacob had ever seen anyone, propelled by fear.

And then she was gone.

Hank got up. He swung his leg around.

Jacob raised both hands, but Hank’s boot slammed his head and palms. The blow ricocheted pain through his skull, and he cried out.

Jacob blinked, and Hank was over by the door. His former friend slammed the door shut. Still inside. Hank flicked a lock on the door, then spun around with a sneer on his face. “Now you die.”

Fear rushed over Jacob.

Mona is free.

But the two of them were right back in the past, smack-dab in the middle of the worst nightmare he’d ever had.

Jacob knew then there was no way he’d get out of this.

God, don’t let Addie get caught up in it. He couldn’t bear for her to be hurt.

That was his last thought.