Page 7 of Watch Me Burn
“East Coast. Florida to Maine.”
“Our East Coast list is long.” Cade takes out his phone, and his thumbs move across the screen. “There are lots of abusers in New England. Good call. I’ll get started on a priority list today.”
Death rolls off his tongue like quarterly reports—clean, organized, and stripped of emotion.
“Are you going to be able to tear yourself away from the doctor for the trips?”
I give him a look cold enough to frost glass. “Let me worry about my time with Luna. Just be prepared to assist.”
Cade and I are both licensed pilots. When we have a target outside Colorado, he flies my plane while I handle the hunting and capture. The kills themselves and the disposal—those always happen here. On familiar ground where we control every variable.
“We need to talk about Caleb Hunter.”
“Dr. Foster’s ex? What about him?”
“He showed up at her house last night, before our dinner. Grabbed her arm and threatened her.” Rage kicks through my system like adrenaline. My hand curls into a fist on the desk. “I threw him out, but he’s a problem that needs solving.”
“How?”
“Permanently.”
“Damien.” Cade leans forward, his voice taking on that lecturing quality I hate. “We don’t kill innocents. Animal abusers. Child predators, when we come across them. The genuine monsters of the world. That’s our code. That’s what separates us from common murderers.”
“He’s an asshole who threatened Luna.”
“We can’t kill him just because he’s a shitty person.”
Cade is right, but the visceral need to eliminate any threat to her drowns out the logical part of my brain.
“He threatened her. He is a threat to her. Therefore, he’s forfeited his right to breathe.”
“Then we watch him.” Cade leans back in the chair.
“You weren’t able to find him two months ago. You said he was a ghost with no digital footprint for over a year.”
“But now he’s shown his face. I’ll backtrack. You should have called me last night. I could’ve gotten a jump on it. What kind of vehicle does he drive?”
“I didn’t notice. Check the exterior cameras and get the plate. Track him. I want eyes on him twenty-four seven until I decide what I want to do with him.”
My eyes drift back to the screen behind Cade’s head. Luna and Maren have finished eating but are still at the table talking. Something Maren says makes Luna throw back her head and laugh, and my chest tightens again. Her friend can be a little much sometimes, but the joy she brings to Luna’s life is priceless.
Luna’s fingers drift to her mouth as she speaks, and my lips pulse with the echo of hers, a phantom sensation that won't quit. I can still taste the sweetness clinging to her tongue, along with the small catch in her breath when I pulled her closer and she melted against me.
That kiss didn’t just change everything. It obliterated me, stripping away every lie I’d told myself, then rebuilt me from the wreckage.
My father’s voice echoes in my head. Weakness, attachment, and vulnerability. All the things he beat out of me by the time I was ten. I’ve spent years building walls no one could scale, convinced that part of me had been burned away with everything else in the wasteland of my childhood, long before I understood what it was.
Love.
I roll the word around in my mind like broken glass, cutting myself on its edges. What pulses inside my chest defies every clinical definition I know. It’s not possession, though I want to own every breath Luna takes. It’s not obsession, though she consumes every waking thought. It’s something that gnaws at my bones, a fever that burns without breaking.
The realization explodes inside my skull and leaves me bleeding and raw. She’s pulled me under her spell, and I’m suffocating on the sweetness of it, and I’m fucking drowning in her. There’s no surface to break through, and no air to breathe that isn’t her.
“You seem more distracted than usual today.”
Cade's voice pulls me back. My head jerks, and my gaze snaps to his face. But he’s not looking at me. His eyes are locked on the screen.
On Maren.
