Chapter 1: Gwen - Hunter or Hunted

You’ve gotta be shitting me.

That’s what the look in Sebastian’s eyes said. Wide, crinkling slightly at the edges. His mouth hung open, then clamped shut a time or two. A moment ago, his shoulders were curled inward. Now they were broader, yet somehow still limp at his sides with disappointment.

“I know,” I said. “Showing up at your door and asking you to help me kill a man is insane. It sounds insane. But it’s not. It’s really not when you think about it. Not when you think about the fact that we were standing over two dead bodies a couple of hours ago. Bodies of people that we killed. But they were bad people. The worst of the worst. David sold Junie once, Sebastian. He sold her. God only knows what happened when those monsters had her. And Jason, he killed Lizzie’s mom. That little girl wants a mom so badly, and she’ll never have one, because of him. Because he couldn’t just let her go. Because he was just like all the others. Just like Evan. It’s the same story. Time and time again, it’s the same God damn story, and I can’t just keep watching it. I can’t ignore what happens to innocent women all around the world every single day just because I’m in a better situation now. Delilah was only eighteen. She was a kid. She was a kid, and she’s dead, because of him. And I⁠—”

“Okay. Okay, hang on.” Sebastian reached out with gentle hands. Placing them on each of my shoulders, sliding up and down my upper arms, he nodded to the sofa. “Let’s sit down, alright?”

My words had come out in one breath, a vice grip wrapped around my lungs as I tried to pull in the next. If I didn’t calm down soon, the darkness that blurred the edges of my vision would swallow me whole.

Sitting wasn’t a bad idea.

I let him lead me to the leather Chesterfield beneath the bay window. That fuzziness faded, and breaths came easier.

Sebastian sat beside me, hazel eyes scanning my face. He moved his hand from my shoulder to the back of my palm. Heat from his touch radiated through my knuckles.

When I began twisting my wrist so our fingers met, he jumped. He started to pull away.

I caught it before he could get far. His wide eyes softened as I threaded my fingers through his.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know that was a mouthful.”

He pulled in a deep breath. Didn’t let it out. He gave a quick, short nod.

But nothing else.

“Say something,” I whispered. “Please. Say something.”

Holding my hand a little tighter, his mouth fell open, and there came that breath he had pulled in. It took a few more heartbeats before words accompanied it. “You want to kill again.”

Why did he have to say it like that? Like I was some bloodthirsty animal.

“I want my friend back.”

His eyes softened.

“But I can’t get her back, because he killed her.” My voice cracked. “I want it to stop. I want to live in a different world. That’s just it though. Wanting something is meaningless if we do nothing to get it.”

“Okay…” Expression still kind, he squinted slightly. “And to make the world a better place, you want to… murder someone.”

“Murdering men the world would be better off without, yeah.”

He opened and shut his mouth a few more times. His squint deepened. “Delilah, whoever hurt her, he’s not even a drop in the ocean, Gwen. There are thousands, maybe millions—hell, billions—of more men like him.”

Of all people, did he think this was news to me?

“Right.”

“Are you going to kill all of them too?”

“If I can get my hands on them, sure.”

He snorted.

“Okay, maybe a bit too ambitious, but you know what I mean.” Shifting to better face him, I lifted one leg under the other. “You’ve been through it. You feel the same way I do about all this.”

He wet his lips, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I do.”

“Then why are you looking at me like I’m crazy?”

“Maybe because you just showed up at my door and asked me to help you murder someone, Gwen.” He blinked hard at me. “Barely got a hello first.”

“Hello.” The bitter irony had my cheeks turning red and my lips twitching at the corners. “See? You got a hello and a smile. Now let’s talk about killing this guy.”

A joyless laugh parted his lips. He tugged his hand from mine and rubbed his eyes between his thumb and forefinger.

“You gave me a half-hour monologue about why you felt justified in killing Jason,” I said. “And you know what? I agree. I get why you did it. It was the right thing to do, and the world is a better place for it.”

“It’s, uh…” He stared ahead for a moment, voice distant. Eventually, he looked my way. “You understand the weight of what you’re saying, don’t you? You understand how dangerous this is.”

“We got away with it before,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean we would again.”

“Theoretically. But last time, I wasn’t prepared. Instinct kicked in, and I did what I had to do to survive. And I still got away with it.”

“You wouldn’t have if I hadn’t covered your ass.”

“Which is why I asked for your help.”

“God damn it, Gwen.” He stared at me with brows furrowed so deep, I wasn’t sure we were making eye contact anymore. “Why are you talking about this so casually? Why does this sound like a good idea to you?”

“It was a fine idea when you did it,” I said. “Simone and Junie are safe because I did it. But Delilah is dead, and she wouldn’t have been if I’d⁠—”

“What we did wasn’t the same.” He waved a finger between the two of us. “You said a second ago that instinct kicked in, and you did what you had to. You’re talking about premeditating this, Gwen. You’re talking about planning to take a man’s life⁠—”

“Not an innocent man’s life,” I snapped. “Don’t patronize me, Sebastian. I know what I’m asking. I know it’s a lot. I know that it’s something you’re good at, and something I need to learn to be good at, because I’m going to do it.”

The frown he gave me was just as patronizing as his last words. “How do you know that?”

“Well, because if you refuse to help me, I’m gonna figure it out,” I said. “The hardest part was moving the body, but I’ve got money saved up. I can buy a bigger car. If I get a van, I can probably fit a wheelbarrow in the back. That’d make the hardest part a lot easier. There’s also the ranch. If I talk to Rhiannon, she’ll give me a job at the meatpacking plant, and I can incinerate the body. It won’t be easy, but if you won’t help me, I’m going to⁠—”

“I wasn’t asking how you were going to do it,” he said. “I was asking how you know this is the guy that killed Delilah.”

Chest tightening, I clenched my teeth. “How did you know it was Jason?”

“I told you. He practically confessed⁠—”

“Practically. He didn’t flat out say that he killed Sarah, did he?”

“No, but with everything considered, I knew⁠—”

“With everything considered, I know Evan killed Delilah.”

“You’re probably right,” he said. “But what if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong,” I said. “When a young girl is killed, everyone knows it was the boyfriend. It’s always the boyfriend.”

“But do you think you’ll be able to live with the doubt?” Sebastian’s voice was just a little bit softer now, eyes narrowed. Not with anger, but scrutiny. “What if, in two years, someone confesses? What if you were wrong, Gwen? Will you be able to live with yourself?”

Yes.

“Even if he didn’t kill her, he was twenty-five years old when he started screwing her. She was fifteen.” Sebastian winced, but I kept going. “When I first met her, she had a purple ring the size of an apple around her eye. The girl couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, and that grown man had a lovely habit of slamming her head through walls, Sebastian. So yeah. Even if I’m wrong, and he didn’t kill her, I can live with knowing he’s not out in the world anymore.”

He went back to rubbing his eyes between his thumb and forefinger. “At the bare minimum, this is a huge ask. At the worst, it’s insane. This is bat shit crazy.”

“Why is it crazy when I want to do it, but it’s rational and heroic when you do it?” I asked.

“When did I claim to be a hero?”

“Maybe you didn’t use that word, but you were describing one earlier,” I said. “You definitely acted like it was a rational decision. Like there was right, and there was wrong, and you did what was right to correct a wrong.”

“I did it to protect Lizzie.”

“And I’m doing it to protect the next Delilah,” I said. “Because there will be another. Some young girl is going to fall for his sweet talking, and she’s going to wind up in the same situation, and she might not have Rhiannon’s Ranch to fall back on. She might not have somewhere to run.”

The frown at the edges of his lips fell farther. His eyes were big in the middle, brows creased in the center. Like he was the big, smart man who had figured it all out, and I was the silly, unstable little girl.

My boiling blood had every inch of my skin red hot.

“Sarah was my sister, Gwen. Lizzie is my niece.”

“Delilah was my friend, Sebastian.”

“You guys only knew each other a few months.”

The moment those words left his lips, my eyes stung. A hollow heat burned in the center of my chest, brighter and more volatile than the flush that’d overtaken my entire body. Like a black hole opened behind my rib cage, slowly collapsing the rest of my burning body into its empty abyss.

Realizing he had just kicked his foot straight into his mouth, he shook his head. “I know you loved her, and I understand how badly this hurts⁠—”

“No, you really don’t.” I stood. “You don’t understand any of this.”

“I do understand⁠—”

“No. You don’t.”

He couldn’t. Not really.

He’d warned me about that pedestal, and here I was again. Propping him up on it.

He could talk about how bad his father had been. He’d say that he, too, had lived through the terror of a man’s violence.

But he’d outgrown it.

One day, he’d stood before his father, and they were the same size. One day, his father had realized he wouldn’t win if he raised a fist.

No, he wouldn’t be like his father, or David, or Troy, but the fury inside me now was something he hadn’t felt in decades. As he aged, he assimilated into the power structure that had once made his life a living hell. He had felt this fury, but when it stopped directly impacting him, he’d accepted it. There were bad men out there, and that sucked, but he didn’t have to face it directly anymore. So it was what it was.

Sebastian never sent his location to his best friend before a date, just in case. He never walked through a parking lot with his keys between his fingers. He never did a once-over of himself in the mirror and decided to change his shirt, not because it wasn’t flattering, but because it was too flattering. Because if he wore it in public, and someone hurt him, people would say he was asking for it.

No one ever taught him to scratch as hard as he could, as fast as he could, to get his attacker’s DNA under his fingernails so that the police could find whoever did it when they autopsied his body.

I would never invalidate the abuse he’d endured throughout his childhood. His father had been a piece of shit, and if he were still alive, he would be on my list.

But that was just it.

Sebastian had killed Jason to avenge his sister. He’d said last night that it was because the world was a better place without Jason in it, but only because his world was better without Jason in it.

His sister mattered. His niece mattered. But not someone else’s sister, or niece, or mother.

He didn’t understand the collective rage and heartache of sisterhood, because the boogeyman only stared at him in the mirror now. None of this would ever affect him again.

“You know what?” I took a step toward the door. “It’s fine. Forget I asked.”

He stood too. “I didn’t mean it like that, alright? Can we just sit and talk about that? Can we talk about⁠—”

“What—my grief?” I took another step back, snorting. “I only knew her a few months. What right do I have to grieve?”

His shoulders sank. “That came out wrong. I wasn’t saying⁠—”

“No, I know exactly what you’re saying.” I crossed my arms against my chest. “I’m too emotional to do something like this. You killed a man in a blind rage with your bare hands, but I’m the irrational, emotional one, right? I list my reasons, half a dozen of them, but because it was just a silly little friendship, I shouldn’t be so angry. I should be able to accept that this happened to Delilah, that she will never get justice, that Evan is going to go on to destroy another young woman’s life, because this is just how life goes. It would be okay for me to think this way if it were my sister he killed, but not my friend. We were just a couple of silly girls, doing our hair and makeup together for a while. It sucks she’s not around anymore, but too bad, so sad, right?”

He lifted both hands to his face to rub his eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to get you to think⁠—”

“Right, because I don’t think. I’m too emotional, too irrational.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. I shuttered it. “You’re a hypocrite. You don’t want to help me, fine. Don’t help me. But don’t pretend you understand.”

“I’m not saying that you’re too emotional, or that you’re irrational,” he said. “I’m just saying that you can’t act surprised when someone’s a little resistant to help you intentionally murder another human being, Gwen.”

“Sure, if I showed up at a pacifist’s door, this reaction would make sense to me.” My phone buzzed again. Annoyed, I yanked it out of my pocket at lightning speed. Simone lit up the screen. To Sebastian, I said, “But I saw the body of a man whose jaw you had ripped off. You can say no, but you can’t play the altruistic, holier-than-thou card with me, Sebastian.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but I clicked the green button and held it to my ear. “What’s up, Simone?”

“She was just here.” Simone’s voice trembled. “Angela. David’s mom. She was just here. She ambushed me at the salon, and, and—Holy shit, I can’t breathe.”