Page 114 of Torched Spades

Jesus Christ.

“You need to go,” I tell him while reaching for the phone and dragging it to my ear. I don’t know who the hell I’m going to call. It sure as hell isn’t the police.

“Promise me you won’t see him again.” He jerks the receiver out of my hand, then jabs it toward me. “Don’t let him turn you into collateral damage.”

“You already did that when you sold your soul to the Devil,Police Chief Reese,” I hiss, knocking the phone out of my face. Stalking forward, I force him to stumble back through the doorway when his words click.“You said you made a few calls. Who did you call?”

He doesn’t answer, but the guilty look on his face tells me all I need to know. He called the man, who I know with every fiber of my being, owns him. The man who killed my mother and tore our family apart.

The man with the rose and dagger tattoo.

A man, in my heart of hearts, I know has a web of connections reaching to every hub and syndicate across the country.

“Oh, God...” I slap my hand over my mouth. “What have you done?”

“Think of me what you will, but I’d never intentionally hurt you, Becca,” he insists, and the sad thing is, I think he truly believes it.

“You just did.” I slam the door in his face, fire boiling in my veins.I need to think. I need to move.Spinning around, I pace from the door to the barely lit window with tears streaming down my face.

I pace and pace and pace until I find myself standing in front of two black and white paintings. Two glass-covered stains of the soul that were supposed to keep all the bad contained. Instead, they leaked out and poisoned everything. Two decades of silence failed me.

A lifetime of banished color and muted walls failed me.

A lifetime of caging my sins and hanging them as penance failed me.

Letting out a tortured cry, I rip the dancing veiled woman off the wall and slam it as hard as I can on the corner of my desk. As glass shatters all around me, I sling it across the room and reach for the two-faced man. With rage bubbling into every hope-filled crevice, I repeat the motion, destroying the painting as tiny shards of glass slice into my skin.

When it’s over, I stand in the middle of a graveyard of freed sin and desire and vanity and shatter on top of it.

He lied to me.

I repeat the words in my head until I hear them on my lips. Softly at first and then so loud that I’m almost screaming.

“Heliedto me!”

But did he really?an inner voice whispers.He confessed to being an arsonist and a criminal. He described the gratification of his compulsion. He admitted to being forced to serve an atonement for his sins.

I freeze.

And he said he didn’t have a choice in revealing all three.

“I don't think you understood me before, so let me be clear. The deal is off. I'm releasing you as a patient.”

“No, I don't think you understand me, Doc. You don't have a choice, and neither do I.”

My mind spins as I think back to when Johnny first walked into my office. I only accept new patients by referral, so I knew his coming to me was no accident.

Then the thing that’s been nagging at me for weeks… The piece that wouldn’t snap into place no matter how hard I shoved, finally clicks.

My gaze snaps to where Johnny’s file balances on the corner of my desk. Before I can change my mind, I lunge for it, words blurring as I flip through neatly typed pages, searching frantically until I come to the last page of his intake form.

Then...nothing.

The initial referral line is blank.

How can that be?How did Meredith not flag that? How did I not notice? I close my eyes, determined to think of who could’ve bypassed such a strict protocol.

It couldn’t have been Owen Holmes. A probation officer wouldn’t have that authority. It had to be someone with an exorbitant level of power.