I’ve accepted this.
I look over at Sibby, the girl now having moved onto Miller. She could be a scapegoat.
If the Society gets word of a deranged girl killing these four men—a girl who’s killed before—they would chalk it up to the partial truth. Wrong place, wrong time. An unhinged girl who swears she can sense evil sniffed these men out and decided to murder them in cold blood.
She’s the perfect scapegoat, actually.
But the thought of using her—it doesn’t sit right with me.
She’s a lonely, fucked up girl who helped me carry out these murders. Doesn’t matter that she would’ve done it anyways had I not been there. Without her, I wouldn’t have gotten the information I did tonight. And I can’t let that go unrewarded.
So, I resign myself to protect Sibby. I’ll clean up the evidence, dispose of the bodies and do everything I can to infiltrate Savior’s before they relocate.
“Will they demolish?”
“Yes,” Mark answers quickly. I let out a slow breath and nod. By saving Sibby, I’m giving up the first lead I’ve truly had.
“I-If you let me go, I can get you in,” Mark barters desperately. “I’ll help you and you can do whatever you want. Just as long as you let me live.”
“The other three are already dead,” I say. “They’re going to relocate anyways.”
“Not if you pin everything on this girl. That’s what you planned, right? To let her take the fall for it?”
Sibby is still too blind with bloodlust to hear what Mark is saying, but I would’ve been honest about it anyway. Sibby and I never promised each other anything, and I’m pretty sure the girl still plans on killing me.
But she won’t succeed because despite what she thinks, it’s only her against me. And I’ve fought far too many bad guys to allow a little girl to take me out. Even if she is a little badass.
I refocus on Mark. “Do you know where they’d relocate?” I ask. Mark hesitates, sensing that he will no longer hold any leverage if he confesses. I dig the knife deeper into his dick to drive home my point.
I’ll know if he’s lying.
“No,” he admits, his lip trembling. “They wouldn’t tell us until afterwards.”
I nod my head, lift my hand, and plunge the blade deep into his pelvis. His screams do little to abate the pit of dread and anger churning in my stomach.
Chapter 32
The Shadow
S ibby took the fall for the murders.
After chopping the bodies into pieces and loading them in the trunk, we sat on the hood of my Mustang, where I was once again reminded just how broken this doll actually is. Sounds like her father was a piece of shit.
Can’t help but muse over the fact that she has a reason to end up the way she did and I… don’t.
Just as I was getting into my car, the cops pulled up. Sibby refused to get in, insisting that she needed to stay with her henchmen. Men who don’t actually fucking exist.
And I didn’t have time to stay and argue. I had chopped up pieces of body parts in my trunk and needed to not only get away from the police but dispose of the evidence without getting caught.
So, I left. The police chased me for five miles before I lost them. I have backup license plates on hand, so once I got to a safe area, I changed my plates and clothing, burnt the evidence, and drove home.
There are one hundred and sixty-two people in Seattle with the same make and model, but they’ll never be able to pin anything on me even if they magically narrowed it down to me.
In the end, the police pinned the murders on a mentally unstable girl and an unknown accomplice. I figured the Society would look into the crime and find an unknown accomplice suspicious. Enough to up and move.
But after looking into Sibby myself, I found that she was born into a fucked-up cult and wanted for the murder of her father.
Her father rivaled Jim Jones, spouting about being God’s disciple and tricking hundreds of people into believing in his word.
He was a rich man who came from old money. He spent his riches on building a compound for his followers, confining them to a stretch of land for the rest of their lives. That’s where Sibby was born and raised, up until she committed a heinous crime and fled.
There are reports of Sibby’s mother committing suicide via poison, and it seems that’s what led to the broken doll finally snapping. She snuck into her father’s bedroom at night with a knife and stabbed him to death.
One hundred and fifty-three times to be precise. Rage was a factor. Sibby made it clear that she is perfectly capable of stabbing a man past her body’s physical limits if angry enough. Robert was proof of that.