“He’s been stalking her,” Maddox said, overstating the obvious. “For fucking sure.”
It was a goddamn stalker shrine. Photos of Summer at clubs. Onstage. Recent photos. I knew, because I’d been there with her. Most of them were blurry and far away.
But he was there, at her fucking shows.
“These are all from the last two weeks or so,” Maddox said.
I couldn’t look anymore. I just saw fucking red.
“Uh… Summer’s not the only girl in here, either…” Maddox kept thumbing through. “Motherfucker’s been busy…”
I tossed the drill and slammed my fist into Sanchuk’s face.
How many women had this freakshow been stalking?
Lots, apparently.
And he’d been coming to Summer’s shows. Right under my fucking nose.
Violating the restraining order.
Taking fucking photos of her, so he could come back to his stinking motel room and, what? Jack off while looking at them and planning how he was gonna break into her house the next time?
“What do you want with her?” I growled in his face. I was cracking. I knew that. I knew he was stalking her, just saw it with my own goddamn eyes. But now that the evidence was right in my face, I couldn’t handle it. “Does this have anything to do with your MC?” I struck him again.
Of course, he couldn’t exactly answer me.
Least effective way to interrogate anyone: lose your fucking shit all over their face while asking them questions they’d never answer anyway.
“You’re just a fucking psycho, is that what you’re telling me?”
I slammed him in the face again, and blood spurt from his nose.
Then I released him and stood up. He slumped on the floor, groaning.
I turned away, panting, fucking raging… half of me wanting to walk right out the door, and the other half wanting to pick up that power drill and slam it through his heart.
Instead, I grabbed the TV remote. I snapped it in two, tossing one piece aside. The other piece, in my hand, was pretty much a jagged plastic knife.
“Well, look at that,” Maddox said, sounding halfway impressed. “You just made yourself a shiv.” He slipped Sanchuk’s phone into his back pocket, and while he was still pretending not to give a fuck, he took a step closer. But he didn’t try to stop me.
I stood over Sanchuk with my newly minted weapon and what had to be a scary-as-fuck look on my face. I was kinda scaring myself at this point.
But the adrenalin and the rage were keeping me going.
Sanchuk scrambled away from me on all fours like a wounded crab. “You’re just gonna let him kill me?” he asked Maddox. “I can… I can tell you things. About the Bastards.”
Right. So now he was willing to sing like a canary to save his own ass.
So much for brotherhood.
Maddox leaned on the nearby wall, watching. “Kill? Looks to me like he’s about to cut off your balls, which might be worse for you, all things considered. But since you’re a fuckin’ pervert who’s been stalking his woman, I’m not feelin’ too inclined to stop him.”
Sanchuk went white… as he finally got the fucking picture. That this was so much worse than he’d thought it was.
That this was personal.
That he was looking at Summer’s man, standing right over him.
“If I were you,” Maddox went on, “I’d start talking before he permanently changes your channel.”
“It’s sharp,” I said, turning the weapon in my hand. “But not that sharp. Might take a while. You’ll probably have to hold him down for me…”
Sanchuk held up his hand to ward me off. “I wasn’t gonna hurt her.”
“Riiight,” Maddox drawled. “You were just gonna break into her house to serenade her with hymns.”
“I… I was high,” Sanchuk said. He was getting desperate. But his face was flushing red now, because he was also getting angry. His hands were shaking as he tried to sop up the blood pouring from his nose. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Try again,” I said.
“I just wanted to talk to her.”
“Try. Again.”
“You,” he spat, blood and saliva flying. “You don’t fucking deserve her. You don’t even know her. And you can’t make me stay away from her.”
I laughed. Did he just fucking say that to me?
“Oh, fucking yes, I can.”
“You have no right,” he said, and his voice lowered to a growl, like a wounded dog with no way out. “She used to talk to me. You said something to her. You made her stop talking to me.”
“Think you arranged that yourself,” Maddox said. “With your fuckin’ charm.”
“No. No, you don’t know. Her music speaks to me,” he grit out, with so much force that he spit through his teeth.
And now I was starting to get the picture. Of just how crazy this asshole was.
There was something so deeply wrong in his eyes, it made my neck itch.
“Jesus,” Maddox said. “How much meth you need to smoke to believe the shit comin’ outta your mouth right now?”
“I just wanted to talk to her,” Sanchuk repeated, in a feral growl that rattled right through his clenched teeth.
I got down in front of him, and poked the tip of my remote control shiv into the hole I’d made with the drill, until I’d forced his head back against the wall and he had nowhere left to go—and the weapon in my hand had nowhere left to go but into his jugular.
“Oh, no. No. You’re never talking to her. You’re never getting near her, ever again.”
He swallowed, and blood oozed out of the hole.
“See, that drill? I brought it in here. I use it against you, it shows forethought, premeditation, all that shit. Bad idea, right? But who knows. Maybe I just came in here to talk, and you pulled that gun on me. I had no choice but to use the only thing I could… this TV remote… in self-defense.”
“I…” he tried to say something, his voice garbled, but I pressed the jagged plastic deeper and he shut up.
“Who do you think the cops are gonna believe? Me? The bodyguard of the woman you
