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Then I look at him. Really look at him. The trembling hands. The waxy skin. The way he’s already folding inward. The way a building looks just before it comes crashing down. His body is already doing it. Has been doing it. Six months, maybe less.

If I use the blade, I give him an ending.

But it’s not mine to give anymore. Something already claimed it before I walked through the door.

I let go of my handle, taking a step away from him.

“You’re dying, Trent,” I say, my voice like ice cracking. “Good. That means I don’t have to do it myself.”

He opens his mouth, maybe to thank me, maybe to beg, but I don’t give him the chance.

“I hope it’s slow,” I continue. “I hope it hurts. Every day. I hope the pain wakes you up in the night and makes you scream. I hope you rot from the inside, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left of you but regret.”

His face goes pale.

“I’ve killed men for less,” I whisper. “Wolfe. Kerr. Levi. You’re the only one I’ve walked away from. And not because you don’t deserve it.”

My fingers tap once, twice, against my thigh. The old rhythm again.

“I’m leaving you alive because death would be a gift.”

He closes his eyes. Whether it’s relief or shame, I can’t tell. I don’t care.

I turn back to the door, my boots echoing in the stillness.

“Pray, Trent,” I call without turning. “Pray that the pain keeps coming.”

And then I’m gone, the hallway swallowing me whole, the cold clinging to my skin like a second judgment.

CHAPTER

FORTY-SEVEN

The road stretches out before me, a narrow ribbon of frost-laced asphalt winding through the trees. Patches of old leaves cling to the edges, half-buried beneath a delicate crust of early snow. The headlights cut through a thin veil of mist, catching ice crystals suspended in the air like dust in a sunbeam. The trees, once gold and copper, are now skeletal, their bare branches coated in silver. It’s the season’s turning point, when fall gives way to winter without asking permission. I keep the heater low. I don’t want warmth to distract me from what I’m thinking.

What if I stop hunting?

Turn the truck around. Drive back to town and care for the man who never cared for me a day in his life. Let the past go and start to live for today. My father won’t live forever. Once the breath finally leaves his lungs, I can pack up my car and leave here. Maybe I’ve said what needed saying. Maybe I’ve already balanced the scales.

But the thoughts are cheap.

Because I’ve seen what balance really looks like, how it bleeds, how it begs. I know what it feels like when justice stops being a concept and becomes something warm and wet in your hands. I know because I’ve done it. And once you cross that line, there’s no such thing as going back.

The way Dennis’s voice tore when I finally ripped the cloth away, how he begged and prayed while the life leaked out of him. I can still hear the rasp. Wolfe fought until his throat was shredded. The pigs learned something new that day. The sound of it is a lesson I can’t unhear. Kerr was quiet when the light left him. I held his head until the shaking stopped. That memory is less noise and more a clean, terrible stillness.

Those men were a kind of wrong that could not be spoken into right.

But the question lingers. Why haven’t I been caught yet? I know I’ve pushed the lines. I know I’m more confident than I should be. I’ve committed more crime in a year than most serial killers do in years. Why? Then something flickers, maybe there’s grace in it all. Maybe God is pulling a hand back. Maybe He’s the one who keeps the timing straight. After all, I hear he’s a merciful God. Maybe this is his way of showing me mercy now when He couldn’t when I was an innocent child. It’s the gentlest lie I will not let myself believe for long. If any God is listening, He has a long list of omissions to answer for.

Still, fear nags. What if the pattern is visible? The news stations are already reporting on missing men. What if the same thread ties those deaths together in a way someone smarter than me will see? Like Mrs. Wolfe’s PI. Maybe these second thoughts, the notes, strange men, and cars idling outside my father’s house are warnings. Meant for me to see. Nothing more. That part is clear.

Practicality grounds me again. I go through the checklist in my head like prayer: clean up, camouflage, alibi. The shed, the pigs, the freezers, my nights at the clinic, all the pieces. I live on three hundred acres of silence. No neighbors. No hikers. Just wind and wild and a private gravel road. The shed out back smells like oil and rust, but it’s where the work happens. Clean. Quick. Controlled. I haven’t been sloppy. Not since the first time, the hardest time.

Jonah is still out there. That was my mistake. I let sentiment masquerade as strategy and called it mercy. It wasn’t.

The road curls around another mountain, the trees leaning inward like congregation members bowing their heads. The frost on the branches gleams. I think of the box I found in the cellar, the photos, Cindy’s empty eyes. No, what I’m doing is what should be done. What needs to be done. There’s no reason why I should be questioning myself. I’m doing what all those kids were too weak to do. I’m taking back their power. If there’s a voice that says stop, I bury it under the rational things: the plan, the method, the inevitability. If there’s a voice that calls this vengeance, I let it speak and answer with the same cold arithmetic that has carried me this far.

Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. The cabin’s dark silhouette waits. The frost bites deeper. I slow the truck at the last crest and let the engine tick. My hands are steady on the wheel now. Doubt is a constant companion; it never goes away. I start down the drive. Up ahead, a plume of smoke rises, faint but unmistakable, curling upward against the starless sky.