Page 25 of Pretty Savage: Defy

The spray makes this easier.

Not morally. Nothing could accomplish that.

It allows me to do more damage without leaving evidence.

I sit beside Jackson and slap his cheek. His head rolls toward me, but he doesn’t wake.

“Jackson.”

Nothing.

I hit him harder.

His eyelids flutter, revealing pupils reduced to pinpricks. He tries to lift his head, fails, and sinks back into the pillow.

That won’t do. I need him alert enough to feel everything and lucid enough to keep the memory afterward.

I remove a syringe from the kit and flick the barrel with one finger. “I’ve only got forty-five minutes, so we’re going to skip the part where you lie.”

I told Laurel I had a few things to take care of before we went on our road trip tonight. When I said that, I was already calculating how long it’d take me to drive from school in Ashfordville to my hometown of Ashport, where Sinners is, and back again.

The needle goes into his arm with more force than necessary. He jerks and makes a wet, confused sound as I depress the plunger.

Within minutes, his breathing changes. His eyes open fully, confusion giving way to pain and then rage as the Narcan races him toward sobriety.

He strains against the cuffs.

“What the fuck?” His voice breaks. “Carrson?”

I pull a chair up close to the bed and sit back with my ankle crossed over my knee, letting my foot bounce.

“Good. You know who I am.”

“Let me go.” He pulls on the cuffs, testing them. “Let me go, or I’ll kill you.”

“Not until we have a little chat.” I try balancing the tip of my dagger on my finger, like my father does, but it clatters to the floor. I’ve never been able to master that trick. It’s irritating.

“Chat about what?”

“You didn’t think you could touch Laurel and not have to answer to me.” I tip my head to the side. “Did you?”

Without making a fuss, I lean over and scrape the sharpened tip of the dagger down his side, a long straight line. Jackson screams, high-pitched and warbling, as blood wells.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Several people have asked me that recently.”

I make another cut parallel to the first, deeper this time. His body jerks, but the restraints hold.

The violence feels good.

I came for information. I came to warn him away from Laurel. Either objective could have been achieved without opening his skin.

But Jackson selected women who looked like Laurel and marked their bodies while imagining hers. He crossed a line I can't ignore.

I do it again, a little deeper, and get the same response. On the third pass, the wound opens wide enough that blood spills freely down his side.

“You hit her, dragged her through the cornfield, and took her to Silas.”