Don't Make a Sound (Sawyer Brooks #1)(56)

“Because like most predators,” Malice said, “he knows how to charm people. I saw him this morning on TV. His story has already gone nationwide. He’s doing interviews right out of his hospital room.”

Bug nodded in agreement. “He’s convinced a large group of followers that his profile in sections of the video has been photoshopped, and he’s been set up by an angry mob of females who weren’t happy after he dumped them.”

“He’s been at this for a while,” Malice went on. “Brad knows what he’s doing. He used to focus on one woman, pouring on the charm, grooming, and manipulating until he had her right where he wanted her. He’s still doing the same thing, but with the public.”

Lily turned to Bug. “I want all those videos, even mine. Two can play at this game.”

“It gets worse,” Bug said.

“What do you mean?” Lily asked.

“All the favorable press toward Brad has given our waiter friend the confidence to come forward and tell his story. They have some blurry footage of Cleo in her blonde wig inside the restaurant, but that’s it. Even so, the waiter told investigators and reporters that she seemed to be having the time of her life with Brad.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Psycho said, pacing the room. “I warned the little asshole, and now he’s going to pay.”

Malice held up a hand. “One predator at a time. Take a breath. Calm yourself. We need you here.”

“I should have known it was you,” Otto said from the corner of the room. “The wig can’t hide those scars you wear so well. I remember every slice I made with the blade.”

Bug looked that way. They all did. One eye was uncovered. “I thought we covered his eyes,” Bug said.

“You did,” Otto said. He made a slurping noise. “A little saliva goes a long way. I’ll get out of these chains too.” His laugh came out as a bark. “Did you get my letters, Christina?”

They all looked at Psycho, who’d visibly stiffened at his words. Nobody had known Psycho’s birth name until that moment. Psycho had never mentioned getting any letters from Otto, but judging by her body language, she had received correspondence from the sicko while he was in prison.

“I knew you would come for me,” he said. “I just didn’t know you would come so soon. I taught you well.”

“I should have killed you the second you walked past me in the park.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Psycho walked up to him and kicked him hard in the gut, making him grunt. Kneeling down, she reached out and used a box cutter to slice through the side of his face, starting at the hairline and ending an inch past his ear.

Malice was about to tell her to stop, but Lily raised a hand and shook her head at Malice.

Otto hardly flinched when Psycho cut him. Maybe because he’d been ready for it. Blood ran down his face and dripped onto his pants.

“That felt good,” Otto said. “Aren’t you going lick it up like I used to do?”

Psycho spit in his face, found a roll of duct tape, and wrapped it around his head and face, covering everything except his nose and mouth.

Malice didn’t want to watch. She pulled off her wig and mask and busied herself with helping Bug gather her things so she could walk her to her car.

“He knows Psycho’s identity,” Malice told Bug as they walked outside. “We’re fucked. Completely and royally fucked.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but you need to calm down. Whatever happens in the end, nobody is going to believe that monster over the woman he kept chained and locked underground.”

“What was the point of all that planning, then?” She threw her arms wide. “Slicing and dicing him was never discussed.”

Bug found her key and opened the trunk of her car, where she carefully placed her things. “I guess you could think of all that planning as an outline, a first draft. The end product rarely resembles the original idea.”

The thing about revenge, Malice thought, was that it all sounded so glorious—making someone pay for what they did. They were going to teach these guys a lesson, scare them, make them sweat. But cutting him open? “So you’re good with what you saw happening in there?”

Bug slammed the trunk closed. “I guess I don’t see it like you do. For three years—” She stopped midsentence as if to collect herself and started over. “For three years Psycho was kept underground, in the middle of a wooded area where nobody could find her. Psycho is obviously more fucked up than any of us imagined. But if that had been me alone in the dark for one thousand and ninety-five days, being sliced and diced and fucked eight ways to Sunday, I would be leaning toward crazy too.”

Malice watched Bug open her car door, then pause and turn back toward her. “My advice to you,” Bug said, “is to stop looking at everything as black or white. There is no right and wrong with what we’re doing. I went into this whole thing knowing that it was dangerous and illegal.”

Malice said nothing.

Bug wasn’t finished. “For me, revenge is about retaliation and not about restoring justice. For years, I trivialized what happened to me. It was the only way I could try to forget about it and move on. But that’s bullshit. Those football players knew exactly what they were doing when they spiked my drink and carried me behind the school. I had no say. And I had no control.” She swallowed. “I want them to feel what I felt. I want them to pay for what they did to me.”