Lawe's Justice

*CHAPTER 2*

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

Some would say he was insane, and some would be no less than completely accurate.

He was insane.

Staring down at the helpless, terrified research technician before him, Gideon acknowledged that fact with a sense of aching, bitter regret.

His sanity had been stripped from him with each day, with each injection, each slice of the scalpel against his flesh as Phillip Brandenmore’s monsters conducted their experiments on him.

So many years. So many broken bones, so many demonic experiments.

So many times he had prayed for death and death hadn’t come. Insanity had come instead. Insanity, and the overwhelming thirst for the blood of his enemies first, then for the blood of those who had betrayed him when they should have allowed him to die.

Crouching down to the floor where he had stretched his victim out spread-eagle, Gideon tilted his head and stared at the panic in the research tech’s wide hazel eyes.

Gideon had injected him with the same drug that had been used to paralyze the victims in the Council and Brandenmore labs.

The same drug that had been used on him.

Scott Connelly had been a particularly sadistic bastard to the research subjects he had been assigned to. The evil that had existed inside him had gotten off on ensuring his charges felt as much pain as possible.

And they had felt pain. An agonizing, horrible pain that could never be forgotten.

All but one. Only one of those innocent victims had been spared his cruelty, his insanity. The one Gideon considered his ultimate prey.

Vengeance for the night death had been ready to receive him with gentle, comforting arms, only to be torn from them. To be given blood that had tainted his own, that had created a fever inside him he couldn’t endure. A feral rage he couldn’t exist within.

Gideon tensed at the memory, still so clear and vivid, the agony of so many years ripping through his senses and causing an involuntary growl to pass his lips.

His muscles bunched as if preparing to move in for the kill and he felt his mouth water for the taste of blood.

An enemy’s blood.

A primal snarl rumbled in his chest, scraping his throat as he bared the sharpened canines at the sides of his mouth.

He was rewarded with a whimper of terror, and panic. The fear scented the air around him but did nothing to ease the primal violence swirling inside him.

Control was hard won. It was won only because it was now his turn to inflict the pain. His victim awaited him. The scent of his terror wafting through the room. Though it was an addictive aroma, it did little to appease the rage building inside him.

Gideon twirled the scalpel between his fingers as he rested his arms on his upper legs, his wrists lying over the edge of his knees as he watched the former research technician. He barely felt the rasp of his denim jeans against the underside of his arms where the sleeves of the white shirt he wore were folded back. Normally, the thin white scars that lay over that flesh didn’t tolerate the rasp of clothing well. But this time, he barely felt it.

Blood would spray, he thought as he contemplated his victim. It would stain the shirt and jeans, but stealing more clothes wouldn’t be a problem.

“Gideon, please,” Scott wheezed from his position, flat on his back, naked to the chill of the air conditioning that Gideon had set at its lowest setting.

Any sensation that touched the flesh or the organs would be amplified because of the drug. Reactions to each sensation would be purer, stronger, allowing the scientists to better predict how each wound affected the body.

The bastard couldn’t even shiver, though his teeth did chatter on occasion. That sound was another sign of success, of hard-won vengeance, and helped to restrain the animal prowling beneath the flesh.

“Please what?” Gideon rasped.

The sound of his own voice never failed to enrage him.

How many times had it been broken from his screams of pain?

How many times had he begged, pleaded, and cried for mercy?

He was a Prime, a primal male Breed. His pride was as intense as his natural strength and inborn animalistic abilities. To be driven by such agony, such horrific torture to beg, to shed tears and plead for death, had broken that pride to its core and all but destroyed it.

Even in the labs he had been created within there hadn’t been such horrific pain that the Breeds were driven to beg unless the scientists intended death to be the final conclusion to that experiment.

The scientists that had created the Breeds in the Denali Labs in Alaska had prided themselves on the strength and power that filled their creations. They’d had no desire to bow the shoulders of their Breeds by damaging them to such an extent.

The scientists, research assistants and techs, the soldiers to the janitors in the lower depths of Brandenmore Research, had found great pleasure in doing just that. In turning their Breed victims into whimpering animals that begged for mercy.

And Scott had taken more pleasure than most in torturing the two Breeds held in what Gideon suspected was the pits of hell.

“Beg me,” Gideon whispered to the research assistant. “Shed tears, Scott, and plead for mercy from the monster you helped to create.”

The horror intensified in the man’s eyes as his lips trembled with the knowledge of what was coming. His gaze centered on the scalpel and Gideon couldn’t help but smile.

“Shall I tell you what it feels like?” he asked, lowering his voice until it sounded gentle, reassuring. It was nothing less than horrifying to his victim.

Because he remembered. Sweet God, he remembered the agony, every day, every second of his life.

His abdomen tightened with the scalding sensations of the scalpel slicing into it as the remembrance tore through his senses.

He snarled in fury, causing Connelly to cry out in horror. His eyes widened, the certainty of death flashing in his gaze.

“Please, Gideon . . .” Scott choked on his own tears, gagging for a second as he fought for breath. “Please don’t do this. Just kill me. Just kill me now.”

Gideon knew what Scott felt in that moment. The way the stomach clenched and spasmed, recoiling in terror as he fought not to vomit. The struggle not to beg, because begging didn’t help.

Yet the terror had a mind of its own after a certain point, and the words spilled from the lips anyway.

“It feels like hell has descended to your guts,” Gideon told him with relish. “The agony begins with the first cut, and you believe it can get no worse.” He leaned close, reaching out with the scalpel to draw the tip along the graying curls that covered his victim’s chest. “But it can get worse, Scott. So much worse. And when the cold air meets the warmth of your insides, then you’ll swear a hundred scalpels are biting into your organs, tearing them apart with jagged steel and ripping your mind out along with it.”

“Please, Gideon!” Scott screamed hoarsely, the tears beginning to fall, the fear rising inside him with an acrid scent Gideon inhaled with heady satisfaction.

That scent was becoming addictive. Like a drug he couldn’t resist. Now he knew, he knew why Coyotes thirsted for blood. For its coppery sweet scent and the feel of it gliding like wet silk over the hands.

“Please,” Gideon repeated the plea. “Please, Scott. Scream for me in mindless pain. Please feel what I felt. Please beg as I begged. God, please, let me watch you die as you watched me each time you stopped my heart.”

Then Gideon chuckled and glanced down at the stream of wetness flowing from the man’s flaccid cock.

Scott was pissing himself.

The poor little coward.

It was something Gideon hadn’t done during the experiments until the chill of the air actually hit his guts. Until the pain had been worse than hell on earth, and his body had fought to die amid it.

And there was nothing he wanted more than to slice into the monster at that moment and allow him to feel that same agony. To watch his blood seep from his flesh as it parted. To see it run in bloodred streams along his chest and abdomen to pool into the creamy carpet beneath him.

But first, first, he needed information. He needed information more than he needed to smell his victim’s death.

At least, for the moment.

He could wait to kill him. He could wait until Scott gave the truths Gideon knew he held. The truths the man had so far hidden from his friends, coworkers and priest. The truth of the location of the one person Scott had shown any gentleness to in those labs. But he wouldn’t be able to wait for long.

“Unlike you and your scientist masters, I can be merciful. I don’t want to be, but I can be. If you cooperate.”

Scott’s lips quivered as he sobbed, snot dripping from his nose and running along the side of his cheek.

“Anything, Gideon,” he begged desperately. “Anything you want. I swear it.”

Gideon looked to the safe he had found earlier. Tucked into the wall across the room, and hidden, not very imaginatively, behind a framed print of Scott, his wife and two sons.

His sons didn’t look as pathetic and weak as Scott. Surprisingly, they more resembled their mother with her strong Nordic features and direct blue eyes.

How had Scott Connelly managed to find a wife of such strength when he was such a weak, pitiful excuse of a male? How had he bred sons whose scent was mixed with the sweat of hard work and whose palms were calloused with it? Men whose reputations for honesty and a hard day’s work were so well known in their small community that parents often held those sons up as examples to their own children?

Perhaps they weren’t his sons, Gideon mused before turning his attention back to Scott. Unfortunately, Gideon couldn’t be certain. Familial lines weren’t scents to which he was particularly sensitive. His primal strengths ran to other areas.

“The combination to the safe,” Gideon demanded, keeping his voice low. “I want it.”

The combination spilled from Scott’s lips as his teeth chattered in a cold Gideon had been created to ignore.

When he finished, Gideon nodded then smiled again. He knew the image he presented.

With the slash of the Bengal’s strip across his face, the sharp strength of his incisors and the icy mercilessness of his cold pale green eyes he appeared every bit the animal he had been created to be. That image and the chill of ice in his eyes assured the researcher that Gideon had every intention of causing him to suffer however possible.

Strangely, the primal stripe across his face was new to him. It hadn’t appeared until the first vivisection and transfusion of viral blood two years before. It had only grown darker with each horrific experiment he was forced to endure. With each transfusion of the only blood they had found that his system would accept after the feral fever had overtaken him twelve years before.

Her blood.

Only her blood was compatible. Only her blood could save his life and with each transfusion the insanity seemed to take a tighter grip on him.

Rising to his feet, Gideon moved to the safe, followed the directions and hummed in satisfaction as the steel door swung open.

Cash, jewels, bonds and several false identifications filled the interior, along with a laser-powered side arm.

It was the typical items anyone who worked with the Genetics Council kept on hand since the revelation of the Breeds and the horrific experimentations the Genetics Council had practiced.

No one who worked with the monsters responsible for the creation of the Breeds wanted anyone to learn they were aligned with them. At the moment, sentiment was with the Breeds, not with the Council.

Once such individuals were identified, it wasn’t unheard of for Breeds to descend upon them with the full fury of years of torture, blood and death. Very discreetly, of course.

“Very good, Scott,” Gideon murmured approvingly as he filled a bag with the very profitable find.

It was his best haul. Scott Connelly had been a bit more frugal than some with the proceeds he’d been given for his participating in the Breed research at Brandenmore Research.

Too bad. He was losing this little stash of it tonight. But then, dead men had no need for wealth, and if Gideon’s research was correct, then the wife’s family would protect her and her children from destitution.

Dropping the bag to a chair next to his victim, Gideon crouched down beside him once more and picked the scalpel back up.

“You promised,” Scott suddenly sobbed. “You promised not to hurt me.”

“No, I said I would be merciful,” Gideon reminded him patiently. “But we’re not finished yet. There are a few other things I need before I can be on my way.”

Scott would die, of that there was no doubt. There was no way Gideon’s conscience would allow him to let the bastard live, to continue on with his life unpunished for the crimes he had committed against every law nature possessed.

“Honor Christine Roberts,” he said the name slowly, clearly, watching Scott’s eyes the entire time. “How can I find her?”

Scott had been her main caretaker while she had been at the research center. He had recorded the effects of the serum pumped into her. He had watched over her after her release to her father, a United States Army general aligned with the Council, and it had been Scott who had led the search for her after she had run away twelve years before.

She hadn’t been his favorite, but she had been his most important subject. The only one he’d known the Council would never risk killing.

Scott’s gaze flickered and the scent of fear thickened. There was more than fear there, though. Strangely, there was also the scent of—affection? Scott Connelly had felt something for somebody? Something he had evidently told no one else if the scent was anything to go by. But even more, he knew something. Gideon was certain of that now.

Gideon grinned at it. “What do you know, Scott? Tell me, my friend, so I can go away as silently as I arrived.”

Gideon ran the scalpel along the other man’s stomach, watching the thin trail of blood as it oozed from the deep scratch and heralded a pained cry from his victim. “Don’t bother lying to me. I can smell it. And it would just piss me off worse to have to ask you again.”

He let the tip of the scalpel press deeper into the vulnerable, soft flesh of the man’s pelvis. A bead of blood welled then slowly eased down along the side his inner thigh.

“No one knows where she is,” Scott blubbered pathetically, his voice high, terrified. “All the Coyotes working with Brandenmore could find out was that she may have been in contact with one of the other two children who were in the labs with her, just before she ran away.”

Gideon almost cursed. Fuck, he hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t heard the rumors that the Council or Brandenmore had suspected the other two were alive. He had suspected Scott knew, but Scott was the only one, and he hadn’t believed Scott would ever reveal that knowledge to any other living soul.

“The other two were terminated.” Gideon stated the story his other victims had related to him. The story they had believed.

Gideon let himself appear a little less threatening by pretending he was ignorant of their survival—it would encourage the former researcher to talk. If Scott thought it would save his pitiful little life, he would turn over his own family, let alone one little research project—as long as it wasn’t his favorite. As long as it wasn’t the only creature on the face of the earth for whom Scott Connelly seemed to have any warmth. But, there was nothing as important to Scott as his own life.

“No, no. They weren’t.” Scott sobbed. “They were supposed to be.” His voice hitched violently with fear. “They were being transported to the facility where they would have been. Then the Bengal kid managed to get free of his chains and attack the driver and the soldier transporting them. The van wrecked and the two kids escaped. No one knew where they went but they found evidence that there was someone else there.”

There was. Gideon had been there. But no one should have known that. Even after he had been recaptured weeks later, far from the area, weak and all but dead, they had never thought to question him about them. And Gideon had never used the information. Even when it would have eased the pain they inflicted, at least once.

Deception still edged Scott’s voice though. There was just a hint of it, and Gideon knew the researcher was hiding more.

Gideon allowed the scalpel to scrape along Scott’s hip bone, peeling the skin from raw flesh as he screamed in pain.

“What do you know, Scott?” Gideon lowered his voice, the tone a warning, dangerous rasp.

Scott was sobbing. Gideon knew how it felt to have the thin layer of skin peeled back from living flesh to feel the agonizing caress of cold air meeting it.

“It can hurt more,” he warned the research assistant. “Much, much more. I want everything Scott. Tell me everything you know.”

His lips trembled a second before he wailed in pain and fear. And fury. Gideon knew that inner, agonizing fury when the will breaks and the instinct to survive kicks in. “They’re with an old Indian. I didn’t know his name or who he was and I fucking didn’t care. He was looking for a girl kidnapped decades ago by the Council. Everyone knew he was searching for her. All I had was a contact e-mail. He was rabid about his identity. I e-mailed him their location and the approximate time they’d be there. But Brandenmore’s men found someone who saw this old Indian bring them into a café three days after their escape. They ate, then headed west. They were in Missouri. The waitress remembered them clearly despite all the years because the little girl seemed ill, and the boy had a broken arm.”

Headed west. And yes, the girl had been ill. With whatever illness she had infected Gideon with as well. That still infected him.

“And a team has been sent out?” Gideon asked.

“No. No.” Scott swallowed tightly. “The team is still in Missouri trying to identify the Indian. It’s been too many years. They have to find the Indian to find the kids now, because they’re adults. Because they had no idea what they would look like now.” He licked his lips nervously, hopefully. “I destroyed all the pictures of them. All the files because they were supposed to be terminated.”

Only Gideon had been recaptured. Because they had left him. Left him in the cold and the emptiness of the night after infecting him with her illness. After saving him when death had been rocking him in her gentle embrace.

“You were supposed to have escaped.” Scott sobbed again. “I gave you the means to do it. I helped you too.” Rage filled his eyes. “She made me.” Tears were pouring from his eyes, snot running in streams. “How else could you have slipped out so easily, Gideon, after so many years of failures? You and the boy. That was all she cared about, you that damned boy.

Gideon hadn’t known that.

The boy wasn’t exactly a boy, if Gideon remembered correctly. He would be in his midthirties. Like Gideon, he’d endured the research for years before the girls were added. The one who had been slated for termination had been a submissive little thing if Gideon remembered correctly, and he was certain he did.

Dark hair and big dark eyes. She had only been fourteen at the time of the escape, just as the Roberts girl had been. It was only weeks after the escape of the other two that she had run away from her home.

Honor Roberts had simply disappeared after leaving a short letter to her mother. That letter, as Gideon had read himself, was a good-bye, and the hope that she would understand. Although the mother had seemed as confused as anyone else that the girl had left.

Gideon wasn’t confused.

Honor Roberts had been too intelligent, even in the labs. And she had always seemed to know, and to hear, more than was good for her well-being.

He was betting his own life on the hunch that she had learned, or suspected, that the research scientists were trying to convince General Roberts to allow them to do more testing on her.

And he was betting, once again, his life that the other two had contacted her. They had been close in the labs, so there was no way in hell they had completely lost contact after the other two were free.

He only knew he had to find the other girl. The one with those big dark eyes and vulnerable expressions. The one he had held despite the punishment to come, after a particularly brutal experimental session with the drugs she was being pumped full of.

“Very good.” Gideon sighed at the useless memories. “What else did Wallace tell you?”

He had yet to catch up with Wallace, but he was on Gideon’s list. His time would come.

“They had a list,” Scott wheezed. “A list of names, of Indians who were known to be in the area at the time but didn’t live there. But I know that the person they’re looking for wasn’t on that list. When I heard it was an Indian, I knew who it was and I didn’t tell them. I figured it out over the years and I made certain his name never showed up.”

Gideon tilted his head to the side curiously. “Really?”

He wasn’t lying. Greedy little fucker. He’d thought he could capture them himself and gain the reward, no doubt.

“Who was it?” he asked.

“There was a girl the Council killed when they learned she mated one of their Coyote soldiers,” Scott rasped. “It was over twenty years ago. Morningstar Martinez. She was taken from Window Rock, Arizona, because of the suspected psychic talents that ran in the family. I know her brother, Terran Martinez, was in the area at that time, but no one else knew. And I never told a soul.” His gaze was tormented. “I let it lie, Gideon. I helped them escape.” He sobbed. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“For something,” Gideon agreed, lying as easily as the Council trainers had taught him to lie while he was under their less than tender care.

This information was interesting, though. Very, very interesting. The Genetics Council had always searched for breeders who had shown, or whose families had shown, a high rate of psychic or other paranormal talents.

Gideon considered the information for several long moments, wondering if he could satisfy his need for vengeance without spilling blood now. Without hearing Scott Connelly scream in inhuman agony.

Why was he bothering? he wondered. Why did he care if the son of a bitch believed Gideon had lied to him or not, once he began torturing him?

Because, Gideon admitted, he had made a promise.

He’d promised mercy.

Cutting into the man’s guts as he lived wouldn’t be considered merciful, he thought in resignation. And unfortunately, Gideon couldn’t think of a worse death that he could use to assure Scott that the vivisection would be less painful.

And that sucked, he admitted to himself.

Scott had given him something no one else had, though—he tried to appease the animal that snarled restlessly inside. That counted for something, for mercy at the very least.

The researcher had tried to aid his escape, Gideon hadn’t known that. But what he knew, he would tell anyone who tortured him. Gideon couldn’t allow that.

Unfortunately for Scott, it didn’t count for a reprieve.

Gideon finally nodded slowly. “No vivisection for you, Scott. You did what the others haven’t managed. You gave me something useful.”

Relief mixed with distrust filled Scott’s eyes.

There was nothing Gideon could do about the distrust, because he couldn’t explain that he would indeed die.

“I have to be going now.” Gideon tossed the scalpel aside as he rose to his feet and glanced around the room.

The small pillow on the couch caught his eye. Moving to it, Gideon picked it up before returning to his victim.

“Here. I’ll lift your head so you don’t choke on your own snot.” He snorted. “That wouldn’t exactly be a comfortable way to die.”

“Gideon.”

He paused as he stared down at the helpless, vulnerable monster that had once filled his nightmares, but would no more.

“Yes, Scott?” Arching his brow mockingly he stared down at the tearstained face as he remembered the sneers that had once covered it.

“You’re after the girl, aren’t you?” Scott’s lips quivered as more tears fell. “You’re after Fawn.”

Gideon bared the sharp incisors in warning. “I’m after all of them, Scott. Every last one of them. And I’ll have what’s owed me. Never doubt that.”

“I’ve done everything to keep them hidden.” He swallowed tightly. “To help you. I didn’t know they would use the vivisections on you. I wasn’t there the day the decision was made. They didn’t warn me in time.”

“No one warned me either.” Gideon shrugged as he moved once again to place the pillow beneath his head.

“Gideon, if they find her first . . .” Scott swallowed tightly. “They’ll find out what I’ve hidden all these years.”

“And that is?” He really didn’t care.

“She’s special,” he whispered. “The last time I tested her blood there were additional hormones in it. Changes that didn’t make sense. Changes the scientists would have killed her to understand—and still will.”

“And why did you care?” Gideon lifted Scott’s head to adjust the pillow beneath it.

Crouched behind him, he pushed the pillow in place.

“She’s my daughter,” Scott whispered.

“Liar!” Gideon snarled at the same moment he twisted Scott’s head with brutal force.

The sound of Scott’s spine cracking clashed with the scent of instant death as Gideon closed his eyes and fought back the shock, and the regret, he insisted on feeling.

He refused to even consider Scott’s final words because they didn’t matter. Nothing could make him more determined to exact his vengeance, not even the paternity of his prey.

He should be able to kill easily, he thought instead, without remorse or guilt. He should have never felt the need to keep his promise for mercy when he himself had never been given mercy.

He settled Scott’s head upon the pillow and stared down at the limp form. Gently, he closed the empty eyes that still reflected the abject relief he had been feeling at the moment of his death.

Gideon refused to acknowledge that glimmer of resignation he had heard in the other man’s voice, though. As though he had known he would die in that second.

“I couldn’t allow you to live,” he said softly as he stared down at the lifeless face of the man that had tortured him for so many years. “Monsters can’t be allowed to live past their usefulness, Scott. And your usefulness ran out.”

Then his gaze was caught by that damned family photo.

Son of a bitch. He didn’t want to see that. He didn’t want to see nor consider the family that would return later.

Yet his conscience refused to allow him to do otherwise.

He re-dressed his victim before picking him up and carrying him to the couch where he laid him against the cushions as though the man were napping rather than entering hell. Then he cleaned the floor of the urine and excrement, disposed of the rags he used and carefully returned the room to its pristine condition.

Connelly’s wife was considered a kind, compassionate woman. The week Gideon had spent watching the family and learning their habits, he’d found reason to believe it.

The two young men who were his sons were considered friendly and generous young men who laughed and enjoyed life with an apparent sense of humor and a love for people.

Even for Breeds.

They didn’t deserve to find their father laid out naked and so obviously tortured. It would be a sight they would never forget. One Gideon would have regretted leaving for them.

Though where he’d found the ability to care, he wasn’t quite certain.

Scott Connelly hadn’t given a damn about anyone or anything in those labs, except the girl whose big, dark eyes watched the world with somber resignation. Gideon had shown the scientists he’d found over the past months the same lack of mercy they had shown him. But as he’d watched Connelly’s family over the past week, he’d found himself feeling sorry for the wife and the sons who lived beneath the tyranny of the bastard who was rarely home and who cared little for their feelings.

They would be at peace now.

If only he could find a moment of that peace as well.

Stepping from the living room he shut off the lights, then slipped through the house as silently as he had entered it. Leaving through the back door, he left the security system disabled and didn’t bother worrying about any fingerprints that could have been left.

He had none.

Those had been burned and peeled off long ago, leaving only calloused, roughened flesh in their place.

Moving through the shadows of the backyard, he made his way to the small park several blocks from the house and then to where he had parked the black pickup he’d stolen the week before.

Tossing the bag of cash and other items onto the passenger’s seat, he started the vehicle and pulled from the darkened slot he’d parked in.

He would use his own fake ID and buy a vehicle when morning came and ditch the stolen truck. It would make the trip ahead safer.

If he drove day and night, he would reach his destination quickly.

Window Rock, Arizona, the home of Terran Martinez and his family.

Gideon had heard of Morningstar Martinez and knew well the story of the Coyote Breed who had mated that lab’s favored Breeder. The information found during their vivisections had been used in Brandenmore Research for the serum created there.

And apparently her girlhood home was also now the home of the girl that, for a while, he’d only known as subject number 4. The girl who would now pay the price for the last two years of agonizing experiments Gideon had suffered.

Once he found her, she too would find herself inflicted with the same pain, the same torment and the same overriding agony Gideon suffered because of her.

Her time was coming.

But first, first, there was one small problem he needed to deal with. The four-man, one-woman mercenary team searching for the girl as well.

He could kill them. Or, he could find a way to make contact with the commander, the only member of the team he trusted, and use her to ensure he got close enough to take possession once the girl was found.

There was no doubt his prey would never trust him. He remembered in his pain, in his fury, the threats he had made as she watched him with those dark, tortured eyes.

“I’ll find you.” The growl that left his throat was animalistic and enraged as her blood flowed into him, burning him, awakening the animal genetics his loss of blood had silenced. “You will both pay. I’ll ensure it.”

“You’ll have to find us first, Gideon.” Judd’s voice had spoken softly from a point behind his head. A point Gideon couldn’t see, because he couldn’t turn his head. He couldn’t strike out. He could only speak.

“I’ll find you both,” he had sworn to her as she sobbed.

“And I’ll make certain you don’t,” Judd had promised. “We’ll hide you before we leave, make certain you’re safe. But you won’t know where we are. And you’ll never have a chance to harm either of us.”

He would find them both. And he would keep the promise he made. They would both pay.