Page 76 of Peak Cruelty

I didn’t mean to read it.But once I did, I didn’t stop.

It’s not a journal.Not at first glance.No dates or feelings or long-winded observations about clouds.Just names.Ages.Scrawled notes in the margins—doctor visits, diagnoses, question marks.The kind of list you only keep if you’re tracking something—or someone.

It reads like a list made by someone trying to stop a train with one hand.

I flip another page.Then another.

Behind me, the mattress shifts.

I freeze.

He doesn’t say anything.Not yet.But I can feel it—the air thinning.That unmistakable weight of being watched.

And just like that, I’m caught.

I tilt the puzzle box his way, letting a few pieces fall out.One slips between my knees, another bounces off my sock.

“You know this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when you said ‘stay put.’”

He doesn’t take the bait.Just crosses the room and plucks the black notebook from beside me.Frayed at the edges, as though it’s been carried for miles and meant to stay hidden.

“I was looking for the puzzle,” I say.“It was there.”

He freezes.Just for a second.Long enough to tell me everything I need to know.

“You read it.”

“Ilookedat it.There’s a difference.”

“What bullshit.”He scrubs a hand down his face, then lets it drop.“You went through my things.”

I match his tone.Calm.Flat.“You abducted me and locked me in a house.Let’s not pretend we’re in some kind of moral gridlock here.”

He shifts his weight like the argument’s physical.But he doesn’t swing back.Doesn’t bother.

“I thought it was a journal,” I say, turning a puzzle piece over in my hand.“Or some kind of revenge fantasy.You know.Normal guy stuff.But this?—”

The pages, thelistsflash through my mind like photographs.Names.Ages.Schools.Doctor appointments.Disorders in scribbled margins.Crossed-out lines and question marks like someone trying to play God and losing sleep over it.

“This is real,” I say.“It’s not just my sister…”

He nods once.

“How many of them?—”

“Too many.”

He sinks down beside the wall, the motion more gravity than choice, arms resting on his knees.The kind of collapse that looks practiced.As though he does this sometimes.As though it’s the only posture where the guilt doesn’t win.

“You think I want this?”he asks.“You think I don’t know it’s fucked?”

“I think,” I say, “you’re trying to save kids.And that’s not the part that’s fucked.”

He exhales through his nose, humorless.“You know what the worst part is?It’s not just that I can’t stop them all.It’s knowing that some of them—some of the women I’ve tracked—they’ll keep going.Because I got distracted.Or waited too long.Or picked the wrong person.”

Rain needles the window hard enough to make the glass rattle.

The silence between us stretches.Thick and ugly.

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