Chapter 38: Gwen - Hunter or Hunted

“Ialready had the rope in my hand,” Evan said. I still sat in front of him on the chair, maintaining a perfect poker face. “And I was—I was just so mad. All those things she said. About me, about Ava… About our baby—I just lost it.”

Finally looking away, I stood.

“Why’d you change her shoes?” Sebastian asked.

“She, uh—” A sob quaked through him. “She threw up. While I was… When I…”

“When you were strangling her.” Heart in my throat, I did my damnedest not to picture it, but I couldn’t stop the mental image. “You loosened the rope for a second, she puked, it landed on her shoes, all over the ground, and you knew you were screwed. She’d go to the cops if you let her go, and you’d get attempted murder. So you decided. Kill her, clean up the mess, and change her shoes so it looked clean. Like she hung herself.”

He sobbed.

“Who covered for you?” I headed for the workbench as I spoke. “You clocked into work the next day, and you wouldn’t have had time to with all the driving.”

“I work construction,” he made out between weeps, finding partial composure. “I got in late, but I was alone at the site, so I filled out my time sheet like I always do.”

“So no one else took part in the cover up,” I said under my breath, eyeing the weapons on the tabletop. “Good.”

“I wish I could take it back.” He spoke hardly above a whisper, tears staining red-streaked paths down his cheeks. His swollen lips quivered, snot pouring from his nose like a faucet. “I would do anything to take it back. I swear I would.”

As if he hadn’t had the opportunity to stop when she was puking.

“But you can’t.” My voice stayed as steady as it had been since he awoke. So steady, so calm, I almost didn’t recognize it as my own. Compared to where I’d been when Delilah—or Allie—died, it was hard to believe that I was even the same person.

He only sobbed in response.

I’d heard all I needed to.

My sneakers squeaked against the concrete as I made it to the workbench. Sebastian and I had discussed all of our options, and we hadn’t landed definitively on any of them. He’d insisted we could make them all work, regardless of which one I wanted, so he had laid them out in preparation for me.

A metal baseball bat. A knife the length of my forearm—a machete, maybe. And a rope.

I grabbed the rope.

When I turned around with it in my hand, Evan screamed. Not a sob, not a cry, but a pathetic, almost heart-wrenching scream. The kind I’d only heard before in horror movies.

And maybe leaving my own lips a time or two.

Sebastian stood from his seat on the floor. Rubbing a hand against his jaw, he hooked a thumb in a gesture toward the door. He had faced Evan head-on throughout his entire confession. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to see this. I didn’t either.

I gave Sebastian a nod and waited for the metal door to clink shut behind him.

Evan kept screaming, pleading, as I walked around the room.

When I stood behind him, rope held out between my two tightened fists, I expected to feel something. Anger for my dead friend. Grief, at the thought of her life cut short. Shame, for what I had already done and what I was about to do.

But I felt nothing.

Just like the night I’d killed David.

No thoughts passed through my mind, no anxiety trembled my fingers, no chill went up my spine.

I felt nothing.

Not until I lifted the rope and tucked it beneath his chin.

Then my stomach roiled. He flailed and tossed, and I pulled tighter, and I swore, through that thin line of nylon, I could feel his heartbeat. With each yank of his head, each jump of his arms, each kick of his feet—all still tied in place to the wooden chair—my heart pounded so hard against my ribs, I was certain it would break a few of them.

The moment I locked that rope in place, his breathing ceased.

I hated this man. I loathed him with every fiber of my being, yet bile burned up my throat, and it took holding my breath to keep my hands in place. Vomit stung my tongue and the back of my throat, flooding my mouth with the visceral disgust I had felt for months. Anytime I thought of him, thought of what he did, I recognized the feeling that welled in my body as hatred and repulsion.

Even still—hating him the way I did, knowing exactly how awful this man was—this act, this intimate violence, repulsed me as much as allowing him to continue to live would. I hated doing this as much as I hated him, and I only continued because I knew the world would be better once his heart stopped beating.

But he had done this to the woman he’d claimed to love.

He had wrapped a rope around her throat from behind, squeezed with all his might, and felt the life leave her body.

This did not take seconds. The clock behind me must’ve ticked a hundred times, and he was still twitching.

I hated him, and if I didn’t, I would’ve stopped by now.

He’d had the time to stop.

Even one second was too long in an act like this. The knife would’ve been quicker—maybe that’s what I should’ve chosen—but he needed to feel what she had felt.

Yet I knew he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

He ended Delilah’s life. The man she’d loved ended her life.

Evan could never feel what she had in her final moments, because I doubted he ever loved anything. Truly loved anything. He didn’t love her the way she loved him, or the way that I had loved Troy, who had done just the same to me.

He told me he loved me later that night. He told me he was sorry. That he would take it back, that he wished it had never happened.

Then he did it again.

Not a quick slap, not a fist to the face in a moment of fury, but an intimate act of violence.

Men like this—like Evan, like Troy, like David—they didn’t love. No one could do this to someone they loved. I could barely do it to someone I loathed.

But I did.

Eventually, he went still.

That wrenching in my stomach intensified.

I ran out the metal door and failed to hear it clink shut behind me over the drumming of my heart in my ears.

* * *

Kneading my fingers into the muddy grass, I heaved in shaking breaths. Anything Sebastian and I had eaten on our road trip steamed in the cool spring wind. Light brightened the sky now, but I could hardly make it out through the black tunnels that overtook my line of sight.

When I finally sat up, sweating and shaking, a familiar face formed before me, framed by the pink and yellow glow of sunrise. That was all I could make out really. Sebastian’s vague outline and the warm glow of the spring sunrise.

He held out a water bottle.

I took it, spun off the lid, chugged, and prayed it wouldn’t come back up.

He lowered himself to the grass beside me. I half expected him to put a hand on my back, or over mine, or to tuck some vomit-drenched hair behind my ear. He didn’t. He just sat beside me.

Eventually, just as the tunnel vision lessened and I could make out the entirety of the sunrise on the horizon, he said, “How do you feel?”

“Like I should’ve brought a ginger ale,” I said.

A sound left him. I couldn’t call it a laugh, not quite a snort either. I breathed for a moment. Only then did I notice the birds chirping in the treetops. Sebastian’s voice almost harmonized with them when he said, “I meant emotionally. How are you feeling?”

Honestly?

“Lighter.” My shoulder blades rounded down the back of my spine farther than they had in months. Maybe years. “Relieved. Not happy, but relieved it’s over. He won’t hurt anyone else.”

Gazing into the patch of trees ahead, Sebastian gave a short nod.

“What about you?” I asked. “How do you feel?”

“The same, mostly,” he said. “Maybe a little happy, if I’m being honest. Not because of what we did, but because of what she said to him. Before he killed her.” His jaw ticked. “I wish I would’ve been more controlled when I killed Jason. I wish I knew exactly what blow Sarah landed. But I killed him too quick. I’ll never know what her last words were.”

It was me reaching out this time. My fingers found his. He jolted at my touch, then softened into it. As his fingers intertwined with mine, he managed a smile for me. It was short, sad, but enough.

Sebastian cleared his throat. “We should go put something in our stomachs. Let Honey out. Then I’ll take care of him.”

“And I’ll start sanitizing.” I wrapped my arms around his and rested my head on his shoulder. “But in a minute, alright?”

He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Whenever you’re ready.”