Page 31 of Phobia
I could only guess what else he’d taken from him. “How are you keeping them alive?”
I didn’t expect him to indulge me, but without meeting my eyes, he did.
“It’s just the one,” he said, before glancing at Roberts. “He didn’t make it, and…” he looked down at himself, smiling a little, “well, we’ll say the other two didn’t fair all that well tonight, either.”
But that meant there was still one remaining.
There was no way in hell he was going to get away with this.
You didn’t just kill people in a small town and hope for the best, but he sure as fuck had picked the right person to help him.
Which meant it was only a matter of time before this shit ended up on my doorstep. “So, then?”
Rhys took a reluctant breath before tugging Increase’s breeches down over the length of his glossy legs, revealing his how. A catheter ran from his wax-covered cock, secured with a piece of duct tape to his leg. The drainage tube fed into a collection bag further down his leg.
My stomach bottomed out when I stared at the dead space below his cock. He’d castrated him.
“He screamed,” Rhys offered, following my line of sight. “But not as much as she did when they took her forcefully, I’m sure.” His jaw turned to stone at his own observation. He tugged the figure’s pants back up; the waistband slapping against the dull wax. Lifting the sleeve of his doublet up, the flexible tube protruded through another opening.
I hadn’t been able to tell there was an IV in his hand because of the gloves. The pouch covertly tucked out of sight.
Rhys Wagner was fucking diabolical and psychotic, and I couldn’t decide if it impressed me or not.
“Whose guts do you have all over you, Picasso?”
His stance widened, an irritated sigh escaping him. “You’re chattier than I recall.” Yeah, it came with being married to a motormouth. “And I think you mean Pollock.”
Yeah, same shit. All artists were equal in nature—self-obsessed, perfectionist egomaniacs. Only thing that differentiated Rhys from them was the evidence that he was also a raging lunatic with a blood lust. “If I have to potentially clean up one of Vince’s messes, I need the facts.”
“Then the facts are as you see them.” He kicked his chin toward the figures. “I did to them what you would have done and I intend to do what youhavedone.” I tensed at his word choice.
We weren’t the same. I didn’t care how he wanted to position it.
“You’re that fucking arrogant that you display your kills?” He really was a modern-day version of Ed Gein. They were borderline pieces of furniture with a pulse—orhadbeen in Roberts’ case.
“Display my kills,” he pondered thoughtfully, examining invisible dirt under his fingernails with a cold, clinical calculation. “They’re not displays.” Those flinty eyes had the effect of a serrated blade slicing through me. “And they’re not all dead. They’re a promise to her.” He rolled his neck back and forth. “A gift.”
A gift.
I wasn’t sure how responsive Josie would be to his version of gift giving. She struck me as the type who’d be happier with a book and content with being left the fuck alone, not dragged into whatever slasher film he was the villain in.
“Death is the only way any of us reclaim what we lost.” He tipped his head back, his profile softening as he took in the ceiling. “That’s why we do the things we do, Adam. We can’t afford to hesitate. That’s how we rewrite the narrative of who and what we are. And if I have to trap her here until I break her down and reshape her into who I know she is,” he pulled in a deep, satisfying breath, “then I will.”
Yep, totally fucking unhinged. But not entirely wrong, not that I’d ever tell him that.
“Go home,” he advised, turning on his heel, declaring the conversation over by walking away. “I have something to take care of.”His firm footfalls halted, his profile easy as he met my eyes over his shoulder. “This town owes us for its atrocities. We’re exterminating the problems they’ve allowed to go unpunished because they had the right last names.” As he crossed the gallery’s entrance, he called out, his timber echoing, “And for fuck’s sake, go out through the front doors.”
***
I slammed Katrina’s car door closed behind me, letting my head fall back against my seat. My thumb ran along the teeth in the car key, my attention fixed straight ahead. I’d left through the front door like he’d asked, but I couldn’t help but study the empty box office Josie had hidden behind all night.
Revenge. Rhys and I weren’t that different.
Only I had done it for myself, for my parents—he’d done it all for her. And if I was right about who I thought I saw looking back at me behind the wax, her sister and what remained of her friends’ numbers were up.
My phone pulsed in the cup holder where I’d deposited it, and I braced myself for the berating Katrina was going to give me.
But it wasn’t her name on my phone. Irritation heated my body, and I jammed my finger against the answer button.
