Hunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse Duet #2)

girl with a bullet wound in her thigh. A mammoth of a man with light brown hair

tied up in a bun and tattoos crawling up his arms and neck stands at the foot of
the bed, watching the doctor work with an intense look on his face.
Jay poises his finger over a key, ready to flip to the next video, but I put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “Wait, I want to watch this one.”
Swirling in my gut is an inexplicable feeling that I need to see this.
I lean closer to the screen, zoning in on the tattooed man and the little girl he
brought in. He could be a trafficker in this area, and if little girls are getting shot, I can only imagine the situations the children are being put in.
The doctor is frantic as he works to stabilize the child, administers what I assume is anesthesia, and then quickly performs surgery, blood spilling from the girl’s leg as he extracts the bullet. It seems as if the doctor is shouting, but after fast-forwarding, we watch him finish up with the girl and then leave the room.
The entire time, the man stood as still as a statue, hardly moving an inch.
I frown, focusing on the screen as the man rounds the bed, lifts his hand, and
gently swipes the girl’s hair from her face. She’s still knocked out from the anesthesia, so it’s impossible to tell how she feels toward him.
Setting my jaw, I stare hard, trying to interpret his tenderness. Is it coming from a man who is fetishizing her or from someone who saved her? And how the fuck did the little girl end up with a bullet in her leg?
I’m not entirely sure what it is, but something about this video feels…
important.
“Send all of these files to me, and then let’s get into the security cameras and
see if we can get a view on the vehicle that they left in.”
I slap Jay’s back before turning back to the grimy windows, a silent thank you.
He’s been handling my attitude like a champ, and even in the throes of grief
and fury, I can still recognize that I’m being an intolerable shithead.
“Shit,” Jay mutters, the sound of his fingers clacking on the keyboard
growing louder and more intense. I grind my teeth, already suspecting the answer before it comes out of his mouth.
“No cameras back there. No cameras angled toward the parking lot from
other buildings, either. I’m sorry, man. I got nothing.”
I tip my head back, breathing in deeply through my nose as black fire licks at
my nerves. Addie left here only a week ago, but that’s an incredible amount of
time in the human trafficking world.
“You sent the files?” I ask. I don’t even recognize my own voice.
“Yes,” Jay confirms. I hear rustling as he packs up his belongings, sensing the
obliteration on the horizon.
“Get out of here, Jay.”
“Yep, consider me gone.”
“And Jay?”
He pauses. “Yeah?”
“Set up cameras that point toward these windows. Just wait until after I break
through it,” I order.
He hesitates but ultimately agrees and shuffles out.
I give him two minutes to leave. Two minutes of warfare raging in my head,
bubbling to the surface, and bleeding out onto the floor where I stand, just like
the bloated dead man below.
My body moves on autopilot. I head down to the hospital room and rifle
through a cabinet, collecting drapes, clothing, and anything else that's
flammable, then scatter them throughout the entire building. Next, I grab
alcohol-based liquids, and saturate the littered floor with them. Fires are more common in hospitals than most realize, and it’s fucking perfect for the destruction I’m intent on causing.
After that, I take every bedsheet I can find in his studio and tie them together
into an extensive rope, then set it aside.
Breathing heavily, I aim for a heavy cabinet in his kitchen and empty out the
contents. Dragging it to the massive window, I lean it snugly against it and then
take a step back.
I inhale deeply, gather every ounce of wrath, use it as fuel, and kick out my
leg with all my strength. The cabinet splinters the glass, spiderwebs fissuring across the entire window. Growling, I kick out once more, and with a loud crack, the cabinet goes flying through it.
Tiny shards cut into my skin, but I hardly notice, just as the deafening crash
from the cabinet barreling into the ground doesn’t register, either.
I’m already making my way back down to the second floor, where the doctor
lies dead, donning gloves and a mask from his supplies. The smell stabs at my
nostrils and eyes; the N95 doing nothing to filter out the smell.
Snapping on two layers of gloves, I grab the corpse by the collar of his shirt
and drag him back up to his studio, where the sick fuck used to take patients and
rape them while unconscious.
Regardless of his extracurricular activities, the doctor was clearly involved in
the skin trade, which means this won’t only send a message to the Society, but it
will also send a message to every trafficker who has had the misfortune of stepping foot inside this place.
They will know that Z knows.
Vomit swirls in my stomach from the pungent odor, threatening to rise up my
throat as I drag the dead body to the window. I grab the last bottle of alcohol and
dump the entire contents all over him.
Holding my breath, I grab the rope made out of bed sheets, tie one end around
his torso beneath his arms, and the other end to his bed frame.
Then, I throw him out of the fucking window. The legs of the frame scream
against the cement floor as it drags a few feet before holding tight.
Satisfied, I tear off the gloves and mask, pull out another cigarette and light it
up, inhaling deeply as I sit on the edge of the bed. I hold the lighter to one of the drapes on the floor, the material bursting into flames and quickly spreading.
And then I enjoy my cigarette while my wrath comes to life before my eyes.
It’s both loud and silent in my brain, filled with white noise that drowns out
any coherent thoughts. I feel everything and nothing at all, and I’ve never been
more dangerous.

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