“I hear you’re looking for me,” he whispered, and my gaze darted to Amber’s sleeping form. “She’s out,” he assured me. “I been here for hours, and she hasn’t moved an inch.”

My breath shook the next words from my mouth. “Did you do anything to her?”

“No.” He offered me a chastising frown. “Little girls aren’t really my thing.”

And I remembered what his thing was. I had proof sitting in the next room, nestled beneath my lingerie. Thinking about what he’d done to Reyes growing up, I could honestly say I’d never hated anyone more in my life.

“Let me take her home,” I whispered, “then I’m all yours.”

“Do I look stupid?” he asked.

“Hardly,” I said quickly, placating him. “That’s why I made the suggestion. You’re supposed to be dead. You certainly wouldn’t want anyone to see you here. If they find your fingerprints, this game that you’ve been playing for over a decade will end. Where’s the fun in that?”

His scrutinized me from head to toe, sizing me up, before saying, “Fingerprints aren’t usually a problem when I burn the place down.”

“That makes you a smart man.”

“Don’t patronize me,” he said, the warning in his tone unmistakable. He leaned in, his hot breath fanning over my face. “We’re going to wake her up and walk her to the door. If either she or her mother comes back, they’re both dead. I’ll kill the first one through the door, then go after the next. Do you understand?”

I swallowed hard. “Completely.”

He moved the gun just enough so I could raise her up. If it were just my ass on the line, I could’ve made a run for it the moment I saw him, but not with Amber. I would never have risked her life like that.

“Amber, honey,” I said, shaking her softly. “You better get to bed, munchkin.”

She blinked and tried to focus her sleepy eyes on me.

“Your mother’s going to wonder where you are.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice groggy and spent. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep.”

I smiled. “That’s okay, hon. I just don’t want your mom to worry.”

I helped her to her feet and led her as she padded to the door, thanking all things holy she didn’t even notice the monster with the snub-nosed .38 in the room. After one attempt for the closet and one for the pantry, she finally made it out the right door. Walker grabbed my arm then, not allowing me past the threshold. Thankfully, her door was unlocked. She opened it and went inside without another thought.

In the second I had to think about it, I contemplated running. Would he really go after Amber and Cookie? Of course not. He’d come after me. But what if he caught me? What if I didn’t make it? In that case, I had no doubt whatsoever he’d come back to fulfill his promise. And I would be dead in the parking lot or the alley, unable to stop him.

About one-point-five seconds after Amber closed the door, I felt a sharp pain explode in my head for approximately the third time that day, and I knew the decision had been made for me.

* * *

“Dutch.”

I heard Reyes’s voice from a distance. I tried to reach out and take his hand but found that my own was like smoke, a swirling white mass. “Reyes.”

“Shhhh,” Earl Walker said as I jerked to consciousness, not that he was actually trying to keep me from screaming. He hadn’t taped my mouth, hadn’t gagged me in any way. He’d just warned me.

After he’d dragged my limp body to a chair and fastened my arms and legs to it with cable ties, it occurred to me that I could be in trouble. “Have I mentioned how much I hate torture?” I asked, fighting for every consonant.

He put the gun on the end table to his left and scrunched my face in his thick hand. Which really wasn’t so much torturous as annoying. “Here’s how this is going to go,” he said, speaking softly, slowly, so I would understand. “I cut, you bleed. You can scream if you think it’ll help, but the first person through that door will die. Your pretty little receptionist’s throat will be slit before she even knows I’m here.” He leaned closer, his hot breath sour against my face. “And who will come running in next?”

Amber. He didn’t have to say it.

“Amber.”

Or maybe he did.

“And let me make something very clear.” He leaned in farther so he could whisper in my ear. “Hurting children makes me happy.”

He’d probably had a really bad experience as a child.

Twenty minutes later, he was proving how skilled he was with the scalpel, one slice at a time. I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t become a surgeon.

A sharp burn shot straight to my core as he cut me again, this time on the inside of my thigh. Jeans. No jeans. He didn’t care. I welded my teeth together, my eyes rolling back in my head as I felt the nick he’d placed along a tendon. The cut was deep that time and very near my femoral artery. Or right on it. I could no longer see. Blood from the wound on my scalp was streaming into my eyes and clinging to my lashes.

“One more time,” he said, seeming a little annoyed.

Well, join the club, buddy.

“Why were you looking for me? How did you know I was still alive?”

I wanted to answer him—I really, really did—but I couldn’t seem to push my voice past the crushing pain. I knew if I opened my mouth to answer, I would scream. Cookie would come. Amber would follow. And my world would cease to exist.