Page 52 of Connor's Claim
Abruptly, a scream of terror tore through the air, coming from outside, and startling enough that Piers stalled in his second attempt on me.
I used the interruption to kick off my heels and run.
Chapter 18
Connor
A cry of terror ripped through the air, coming from outside Everly’s house. Sitting on her bed, and with my skeleton bandanna over my lower face, I cocked my head at her French doors which lay open from my entrance.
It wasn’t her. I knew every noise she made.
Either way, my tracker told me she was already in the house.
Dark thoughts of the woman swarmed my brain.
My first kill had been on behalf of Everly. She’d been hurt by a man, an acquaintance of her father’s who’d spent a drunken evening at the mayor’s house, a group of old boys talking politics and money. She’d been fifteen at the time, and the man had cornered her in the hallway. Felt up her tits. Pawed her between the legs. She’d managed to get away but had never told a soul until a year later when she trusted her new stepbrother enough to relive the trauma.
Cold through and barely seventeen years old, I’d stolen my mother’s car and gone after the man. Drove two hours southto where he lived. He’d opened his door to me, listened to my clenched-teeth statement, then laughed in my face.
Hours later, under the cover of night, I’d lurked down the road from his favourite pub and waited for him to emerge. His route home took him over a bridge and down a shadowed canal towpath. I’d had no experience, no sense other than of vengeance and love, but it was enough. I’d prowled after him, ran up silently behind the red-faced, rolling man, hugged my arm around his neck, and kicked his legs out to take him down to the gravel path. Then I’d wrestled his upper body into the deep water and pushed him down.
His thrashes and kicks.
My strength barely enough to keep his head under.
The risk of someone walking by.
Sweet submission when his life force gave out and I was able to drop him in the rest of the way to slither under the water, a floating shoe the only sign he’d been there.
As killings went, it was sloppy as fuck. I got away with it, though. Sometime later, the mayor had laughed about the news with another of his cronies, at how Phillips had been a sloppy drunk and deserved his watery grave.
At home, I’d told Ev, and she’d cried. Held me. Kissed me.
I’d stopped her from taking it further between us. In the short time our parents had been married, we’d become a port in each other’s storm. I already loved her in a way that would change my world forever. I’d kill for her again and again, but I knew what she’d suffered, the shite her da put her through, and the obligations she felt and that Ineverwanted her to feel for me.
She hadn’t told him about the paedophile because he would have done nothing other than blame her. He controlled every part of her life. He did the same with my mother who’d held the job Everly did now, an executive assistant.
A week later, Everly had come back to my room, stripped her shirt then her shorts, and climbed on top of me. Her hands had shaken; mine had, too, as I accepted her onto me.
It had been the first time for both of us, and it cemented everything between our hearts, permanently, at least in my case.
The door burst open, and Everly threw herself inside the bedroom, twisting the lock behind her. With a sob of anger or fear, she launched at the nearby chest of drawers and dragged it to the door.
The memories rushed away from me.
I dropped the needle I’d been holding. Moved to join her.
At my hand landing next to hers, Everly jumped and spun around. I shoved the furniture into place, right as someone thumped at the door.
“Open up, right now,” a male voice called.
The guy she’d been to the fucking restaurant with. The one her father had brought home but had chosen to send her out with solo.
I prowled to her, and Everly backed away across the darkened room, her astonished gaze flitting from me to the barricaded door.
“Leave me alone,” she called towards the hall.
From the street, someone shouted.