I can’t believe those are the same hands that wielded those bolt cutters just … just how long ago, exactly?
“When did you do this?” I whisper.
“Last night. While you were asleep,” he replies.
My mouth falls open. I understand now why he booked that morning show for me—it seemed to come out of nowhere, but I’m sure he pulled the strings behind the scenes.
“Was Randall in Burbank?”
“Close by.” Cole nods.
I’m pulled back to the screen by a fresh round of cursing and screaming from Randall. He was only able to hobble back into position for a moment before falling over again. This time he loses his left thumb.
“Fuck,” I cry, covering my face with my hands. “How long does this go on?”
Cole checks the time ticking away on the video.
“Looks like twenty-two more minutes.”
“Oh my god.”
I don’t think I can watch this.
“Did you kill him?” I ask Cole.
“Of course I did.”
My heart races, the underarms of my shirt soaked in cold sweat. I can’t believe I’m watching this. I can’t believe I’m participating.
I had come to terms with the idea that Shaw had to die, but this is something else entirely. Randall wasn’t a threat to me. This is nothing but revenge.
More screams. Another finger gone.
“Why did you do this?” I ask Cole.
“I told you,” Cole says, his black eyes fixed on mine. “I need to prepare you. You think you know what it means to set yourself against another person. To lure them, to hunt them, to overpower them, and take their life. But you don’t know. You don’t know how they’ll beg and plead. How they’ll do anything to survive. How they’ll stick a knife in your eye the moment you lose focus, the moment you even think about offering mercy.”
Randall is begging and pleading. He alternates between cursing at Cole, thrashing around, trying to escape his bonds, then sobbing and sniveling, offering money, secrets, anything and everything he can think of to save himself.
“What do you want?” he howls. “What do you want?”
The Cole on the screen looks down at Randall: an avenging angel, dark and pitiless.
“I want you to give Mara her childhood back.”
“FUCK Mara!” Randall snarls. “Fuck that little bitch and fuck her mother and fuck YOU! She deserved everything she got. I hope she fucking rots in hell!”
“Wrong answer,” the Cole on the screen says.
What follows is a bloodbath.
I stare and stare, all feeling draining from my body. All emotion, too. I become strangely calm, my head floating above my shoulders, my body a block of ice below.
I watch Cole murder Randall slowly, brutally, with obvious pleasure.
I watch my vengeance unfold in front of me.
When it’s finished, Randall is nothing but meat on the floor. Those heavy hands can’t hurt anyone anymore.
I feel hollow inside, all the anger, all the pain, all the resentment scooped out of me.
It’s over now. Truly over.
I close the laptop screen and turn to face Cole. I can’t tell if he’s a monster or my savior. He looks the same as always: stark, beautiful, serene.
“Did it feel good to do that?” I ask him.
“Yes. It was deeply satisfying.”
“Why? I already won. I’m happy now. I moved on.”
Cole raises one black slash of an eyebrow. “There’s no moving on. I learned that with my father. If Randall died of old age, the anger wouldn’t die with him. You have to kill it. I killed it for you.”
I don’t know how I feel.
Or perhaps I feel everything at once.
It’s wrong, so incredibly wrong.
And yet … it also feels like justice.
I wanted Randall dead. Now he is. He made me suffer. And he suffered in return.
Cole plucks the flash drive out of the laptop and holds it out to me once more.
“You put your life in my hands once, the night you came to my studio. Now I’ll bet mine. Here’s the tape. You won’t turn it in. You know this was right.”
He pushes the flash drive into my hands, forcing me to close my fingers around it.
I could leave the house, and carry this directly to Officer Hawks.
But just as I knew Cole wouldn’t hurt me, he knows exactly what I’m going to do.
I walk into the kitchen and drop the drive down the garbage disposal.
The next morning, I wake up alone in the bed.
Cole is giving me space to process what happened.