Page 164 of Stone: The Precursor

“Is she alive?”

Yes. For now.I press Camryn closer to my chest, desperate, wanting to give her my strength. I give her a slight nod, because I can’t voice that I have no idea if Camryn will stay that way. I have no clue what her injuries are. I don’t know what he did to her before I got into that room. He could have hurt her internally. I know well how brutal sexual assaults can be.

“I’m Cara.”

The name registers.

“When she wakes will you tell her that I’m wishing her the best?”

I nod, hoping that she will be okay. Cara hurries to rejoin the long line of women following Onyx. I watch her go, thinking about what Camryn said. She is just a child, yet her eyes look older. The result of her captivity with a monster. Walking out, I don’t look at the other dead bodies littered around the large yard. Clean, efficient kills. I spot Scout helping the women in the same van that Camryn, Kamilah, and Jacinda were transported in. Onyx walks toward me.

“Is he dead?”

“No. Last bedroom. He’s bound. I need him delivered.” The look exchanged between us doesn’t need words. He knows. He understands. Without another word, Onyx walks back inside. Riggs speaks in my earpiece.

“You have her?”

I look down at Camryn. “I have her.” I lean my forehead against hers, imagining I can smell her subtle honeysuckle scent in her sweat-matted hair. A flashback of me washing it the first time hits me in the chest. The way she leaned on my body, allowing me to clean her up. The way she looked up at me on her knees. My heart beats harder thinking I won’t get that again if she…

“Any sign of the others?”

Riggs’s voice pulls me from the precipice I’m mentally standing on. I clear my throat to rid myself of the burning sensation. “No. They’re not here.”

Riggs’s curse is vicious. ‘They must be headed to the other two locations.”

“I need to get Camryn to the hospital. Now.”

“How bad?”

“Now, Riggs.”

“A private ambulance is already on its way. Estimated three minutes out.”

“Who?”

“Her brother.”

Of course, Jace Park would have access to a private ambulance service. I close my eyes, knowing I will have to face her brother with his almost dead sister in my arms. I hold onto the most important thing in my world, praying for the first time in years to a God that may have abandoned me.

Hours later,I close the barn doors slowly, softly, and turn, breathing in the smells. The beautiful effluvium of damp, of chemicals, of El Jefe’s blood mixed with the fresher scent of fear. His scent.

I take out my cherry candy, opening the small tin slowly, relishing the ritual. Popping it into my mouth, I suck vigorously, the tart, sour flavor coats my tongue, bringing me back to every kill I’ve ever done. The cherry scent combines with the foul, with the rawness of carnage. It makes my brain buzz with excitement, and I turn to visually feast on my prize.

My rage bubbles to the surface at the sight of him slumped, naked, hanging from my carcass pulley.The cattle hoist I had installed is usually used to lift cattle for assassination and bloodletting, but it works just as well for other kinds of monstrous things as well. I typically prefer to kill in the forest, disembowel, and torture among the fetid and foul smells of the other carcasses in my graveyard, but he deserved my full attention. He deserves a slower pace, and I deserve to savor this because I can’t let go of the way she looked in his arms, hurt and scared, but still fierce.

Thoughts jumble together when I remember what happened hours ago. I was resting Camryn on the gurney and being pushed out of the way as the private EMTs who arrived minutes after Riggs disconnected from me began working on her. When Jace and Sophia raced up behind the ambulance, running toward me, I was shocked to see tears on my friend’s face. Sophia was also crying when she spotted Camryn wrapped in the bloody sheet, pale and unresponsive.

“Is she…?” Jace demanded.

I shook my head as one EMT started taking her vitals while the other wheeled her into the back of the ambulance.

My fingers clench when I recall their rapid-fire communication.

“Blood pressure 59/40 mm Hg.”

“Low body temperature.”

“Rapid pulse.”