“Is this what it feels like?” whispered Wes. “Is this what it’s like to a Raptor? Did the illusion of power course through you every time you held someone at gunpoint, Donovan? Did it make you feel special?”
Davenport’s head lolled to the side. There was no telling if he could even comprehend Wes’s speech. Wes pulled on his collar again, straightening him.
“Because I don’t feel special, Donovan,” Wes went on, pressing the knife to Davenport’s throat. “I feel empty. Vacant. That’s what the Raptors have done to me. And I swear to God, if Nicole winds up hurt or dead because of your damned pride, you will feel my wrath in hell. Do you understand, Davenport?”
Davenport was in no condition to answer. For a moment longer, Wes considered his options. He still gripped the knife in one hand, his knuckles white. With one flick of Wes’s wrist, Donovan Davenport would cease to exist. Yet for some reason, as the blade quivered above Davenport’s throbbing carotid artery, Wes couldn’t do it. With a defeated sigh, Wes released Davenport and stood.
Behind him, Brooks rolled his eyes. He snatched the switchblade from Wes’s hand and leaned over Davenport’s cot. “Bitch,” he spat at Wes, and without even looking at his prey, Brooks plunged the knife into Davenport’s throat.
The spray of blood caught Wes off guard. He turned away, but not soon enough to avoid seeing the knife sticking out of Davenport’s neck at an odd angle as blood gushed out of the wound. Clogged coughing sounds made their way out of Davenport’s mouth, and he slouched to one side, spilling crimson blood across the thin, white mattress of the cot. Brooks wrenched the knife from Davenport’s throat and shoved Wes out of the cell.
“Move it,” ordered Brooks as Wes stared openmouthed at Davenport’s convulsing body. “We need to get out before that bitch at the front desk comes looking.”
Brooks strolled away from the row of holding cells. Wes, his mind blank from the shock, followed absentmindedly behind him, leaving Donovan Davenport to die alone.
22
When Wes and Brooks returned to the warehouse, they found Flynn pacing back and forth between the locked reinforced trunk and the metal folding chair. As Brooks slid the warehouse door shut behind them and shoved Wes forward, Flynn turned toward them, her palms splayed out in a gesture of expectation.
“Well?” she demanded, pausing her frenetic patrol near the trunk.
“We got it,” reported Brooks. He grabbed Wes by the collar of his police jacket, reached into the pocket, and extracted the baggie containing the locket.
Flynn rushed forward, snatching the plastic bag from Brooks’s grasp, a triumphant grin plastered across her sharply angled features. However, when she saw that the locket was encased in a mucous layer of vomit, she grimaced and handed it off to Wes.
“If you’d be so kind, Officer McAllen,” she said. Wes rolled his eyes, accepted the bag, and headed toward the bathroom, listening with a keen ear to the conversation that continued to echo through the warehouse behind him.
“Donovan?” asked Flynn in a low voice.
“Taken care of,” replied Brooks. “Although your plan to have McAllen do it fell through. He chickened out.”
Wes heard Flynn’s exasperated sigh as he lifted the handle on the sink in the bathroom, carefully coaxing the locket out of the baggie so as not to make contact with any of Donovan’s leftover stomach bile. As the tap dribbled and frigid water from the cold pipes flowed out over the gold locket, Wes listened closely.
“To be honest, I didn’t expect him to go through with it,” admitted Flynn. “He’s far too moral. It had to be done, of course.”
Brooks grunted in agreement. “I believe you made the right choice, ma’am. Donovan’s greed and rash actions were becoming a hazard to us. I apologize again for my involvement with the cop’s abduction. Donovan told me that you had cleared it.”
“Worry not, Ashton,” cooed Flynn, her voice smooth and soothing. It made the hair on Wes’s arms stand up. “Though Donovan’s little revenge jaunt into Nicole Costello’s apartment wasn’t precisely planned, it worked out to our advantage, wouldn’t you say? For thirty years, I’ve been searching for the key to open that damn trunk. Now, I can finally be free of that nasty woman’s hold on me.”
Her tone had darkened at the mention of Nicole’s mother. Absentmindedly, Wes scrubbed at the locket then pinched it open. Inside, the pictures of Nicole and him beamed innocently back at him. A small smile touched his lips. He remembered the day they had taken those pictures. It was one year after they had graduated from the same state school, and the day had also marked the first full year of their relationship. To celebrate, they had gone to Peru and embarked on the hike up to the ruins of Machu Picchu. When they reached the citadel, drenched in sweat and impossibly out of breath, Nicole had insisted on taking pictures to commemorate their adventure. When she’d put the pictures in the locket, covering up the faded photos of her mother and father, Wes had protested at first. He had asked her why she wanted to use the pictures of their flushed, sweaty faces rather than the nicer, posed photographs that they had taken at their university graduation a year prior.
“Because this is real,” she had replied, trimming the edge of one picture to ensure that it would fit in the miniscule frame of the locket. She held up
