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A flicker of something bright flashed through the woman’s eyes. Something quite like hope—a commodity that had been there, but distant while murmuring her prayers, but was now immediate.
An angel. Cora snorted, shaking her head, wondering what her father would think if he heard that.
She winked at the woman chained to the wall, made sure her arm was comfortable where it dangled, and then she moved forward, hastening towards the stairs leading up into the killer’s house.
As she hotfooted across the bare basement, moving over the cold concrete, her own emotions began to rise. People like this..predators like this...
They didn’t make her blood boil so much as they made it go cold. If anything, in moments like these, she felt as sane as she’d ever been.
But first things first, she needed the key to those chains, and she needed to know if the bastard upstairs was the reason behind the mayor’s terror.
But now, Cora was the boogeyman. She’d given a promise after all.
The woman behind her was safe. Cora wouldwillit into existence.
And the man upstairs? If that’s what he could be called.
He was anythingbutsafe.
CHAPTER TEN
She took the stairs quickly, hastening up the concrete slabs until she reached a wooden door. This door wasn’t nearly as well protected as the basement one. Cora supposed the killer relied on the chain to do his controlling.
She unlatched the door, using the same nail from before, and slipped through a gap, hooking the latch on the other side. Tentatively, sweating still, she pulled the latch. It fell with a fainttap.
And then she eased the door open.
She stepped into the kitchen with the wood burning stove. The scent of cinnamon wafted through the room. A couple of begonias sat by the sink, the petals red. She moved through the kitchen towards the living room. A shadow danced across the floor now—the shadowboxing killer completing his workout—the faint glimpses of sun through the half open blinds revealing the ocean beyond and the cresting morning.
Cora approached the shadowboxing figure from behind. Jab jab. Overhand right. He danced back, as if avoiding a larger, more gangly opponent. She caught his wrist.
A strong, tense wrist. He spun with a yelp of terror, his eyes the size of saucers as he rounded to look at her.
For a split second they held one another’s gazes. His eyes staring from beneath his thick brow; hers calm, placid, and cold like a snake’s. And that shared look was all it took for Cora.
She had the measure of the man in a split second. It didn’t take longer to figure out a person like this.
The terror, the tension, and then the sudden bunching of his muscles and fists. This was a man who had lived his whole life in such fear that he eventually began to take it out on others for the sake of his own sick, twisted nature.
And it was in that moment that Cora decided what she was going to do with him.
At the same time, as that split second passed, she twisted the wrist she had caught. Her intention had been simple and brutal. To break his arm.
And by the look of things, it was his favorite: his right hand.
As she twisted and brought the elbow down again in a surging move that she had once learned while training with a particular, foreign nation’s elite special forces, the man tried to yank his arm back.
She had caught him by surprise, but he was quick.
Still, the arm was a foregone conclusion. Her knee slammed into the bone. A loud snap. A howl of absolute agony. He stumbled back, cursing and spluttering, his eyes shifting from terror to pain.
His broken arm hung uselessly.
A more compassionate person might have let it end there.
But Cora had always been trained to subdue an enemy with merciless precision. Whenever she raised a gun, it was with the intent of killing.
Whenever she raised a fist, it was with the intent of ending the fight as soon as it started.
