The small-dick-mobile zipped past him, but Cain kept his eyes on the curve in front of him. The Mustang roared with all the confidence of good ole American muscle. Tires hugged the pavement on the curve, momentum pushed against him, exhilaration flooded his system. And then the curve was gone and only a straight hilly road stretched out before him. He needed about fifteen more of those curves, and he just might make it home without obsessing about Mercy.
Mercy. How did she like Mac? She would have to like him. If Mac could win Cain over, the guy would have no problems with Mercy. But what if she—
“Fucking stop. Don’t think about her. Think about something. Anything. Just not her.”
His brain turned into a giant empty chasm with only one thought ping-ponging off the walls.
Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.
Goddamn it.
He searched the landscape for something, anything, to latch on to. The road. Yes. And the sports car that had passed him. It was probably a Porsche. Had that metrosexual foreign look to it. And that stupid-assed license plate. HEADOC. “He ad oc? Hea doc? Head oc?” He heard himself say the words—heard what his brain wasn’t putting together. Head doc.
Head doc, head doc, head doc bounced around inside his skull, colliding with his thoughts of Mercy. The world blinked out of existence, and he remembered how narcissism had screamed from the picture he’d seen of Dr. Payne on the Center’s website: perfectly tailored trousers and pin-striped shirt with genuine fancy-ass cuff links. The guy dressed like a Wall Street pussy, not a psychiatrist working in a state-funded facility. That Porsche was just the kind of car he would drive.
“Fuck!” Cain yanked his cell from his pocket and hit the button to call Mac.
Beep beep beep. The no-signal sound hammered into his ears.
He slammed on the brakes. Tires screamed. Rubber smoked. The car shuddered and bumped. He wrenched the wheel, the vehicle sliding and slipping over the pavement as it swerve-turned in the middle of the empty road.
Facing the way he came, Cain nailed the gas so hard his foot slammed the floorboards, punching his hip up off the seat. It seemed like a small piece of forever while the tires churned, trying to grip the pavement. And then he rocketed off going zero to sixty in only a fast jiffy.
The woods on either side of the car whipped by in a smeary blur of green. Only moments ago, he’d pulled out of the driveway, yet the drive back took hours. Tortured hours while he pictured Mercy’s eyes so wide the whites showed all around the irises. Pictured her mouth slit open in silent horror. Pictured her screaming for help. Screaming for him.
Something dark and terrible clawed around in his guts.
At the driveway, he jammed the brake at the same time he cranked the wheel. He was going too fast—fighting a losing battle with inertia and momentum. The car skidded off the road into the dense forest alongside the driveway. Bushes and brambles slapped and banged against the vehicle as if they were protesting its intrusion. His Mustang slammed into something big, immoveable, heavy enough to jostle him like a crash-test dummy, but then somehow all four tires hit gravel and he rocketed down the lane. The small-dick-mobile had been parked in the middle of the lane—just out of sight of the cabin.
Every goddamned one of his fears was confirmed.
Cain mashed the brake. He didn’t remember slowing or parking—he just found himself sprinting for the cabin. Arms and legs pumping, each footfall an explosion of sound.
Ppggll… A gunshot.
A blade of terror sliced his sanity, his control, in half.
Mac hadn’t worn his gun. There were three people in that cabin, and Cain couldn’t afford to lose two of them.
He burst through the door and froze.
Mac lay on the floor, blood gushing out of a wound in his side in waves that mesmerized…hypnotized…relaxed…
Cain felt the pull, the urge to kneel in all that red and paint himself with its gooey warmth. He wanted to lavish his body in the wetness the way his father had taught him. No, his father hadn’t taught him. His father had forced him. His father had made Cain into the human version of Pavlov’s pups. But instead of ringing the bell before food, Cain had to wallow in blood before he’d be fed.
Blood was a savior. Blood was his nightmare.
He tore his gaze away from Mac—away from the blood—and found Mercy.
Her clothes were gone, and she was on her knees. Dr. Payne had his hand fisted in her hair, cranking her head so far back on her shoulders it looked as if it were about to tumble off and roll away. Against her neck—against the scar his father had given her—Payne scraped the muzzle of a gun, turning the old wound an angry red. An angry red that matched the welt Payne sported down his own cheek, the only thing marring his perfect complexion.
It was bad enough that Mercy was naked, but that wasn’t what sent a shard of ice into Cain’s brain. It was Mercy’s eyes. They were all wrong. They stared up at Payne, not showing one hint of fear. Instead, she actually looked…defiant. Like she double-dog dared him to carry out the threat his gun made.
That look on her face scared Cain more than anything. More than the gun. A sound came out of him. A sound he didn’t recognize, but one that felt as much a part of him as his heartbeat. He launched himself at Payne.
Yeah, Cain had a death wish. A wish for Payne’s death. And nothing short of a kill shot was going to stop his progress. Two more steps toward the guy—almost there—and the gun barked.
The noise magnified in the small space. Heat seared Cain’s flesh in that odd fleshy place between neck and shoulder. His body flinched away from the feeling, but his legs didn’t stop moving.
He tackled Payne with all the force of an NFL linebacker, sending them both into a game of momentum versus the wall. Payne met the wall first. The impact sent the gun flying out of his hand and clattering out of sight.