Cade had been in heaven when he’d discovered the secret room filled with weapons behind a fake wall. So many handguns. Rifles—new AK-47s and AR-15s, and vintage submachine guns dating from World War II and Vietnam. Then there were the grenades. So many grenades. And they still worked, too. Cade had checked. He hadn’t checked the potency of the Claymore land mines, though. The old pedo’s house was a mile from its nearest neighbor, but a Claymore explosion might be heard or felt from that far away. He wasn’t sure, so he didn’t risk it.

He loved the weapons room. Unfortunately, to get to it, he had to walk by the other special rooms the pedo had built behind the fake wall. One was a small jail-like cell, with a bed, desk, sink, and toilet. No windows. One door.

The other room had been the stuff of Cade’s nightmares. The size of a small closet. Airtight. Soundproofed. Cade had unlocked the door with the keys he’d removed from the pedo’s pocket after he’d killed him, and found the body of a teenage boy.

He shuddered now, standing in the old man’s kitchen, remembering the horror he’d felt at the sight. Then soothed himself with the knowledge that the boy’s parents had closure. He’d put the body in the old man’s van and left it where the cops could find it. The kid was identified pretty quickly. He hadn’t been dead long. He’d been fourteen when he was killed, eleven when he was taken.

The old man had kept that kid a prisoner for three years. Then left him to die in that airtight room when he was finished with him, which, Cade guessed, was why the old man had been in the park—to get a new kid. The ME had confirmed that the boy had died of cerebral hypoxia as a result of suffocation.

But the parents got closure, he reminded himself. I did that. I also took the filthy pedophile out of the breathing population, like I did last week and last night.

He’d saved Brewer’s little stepson. Hell, he’d saved countless kids.

Cade wasn’t sorry for any of the things he’d done. He was, however, sorry that he hadn’t been more careful this time.

Flipping the fried eggs onto a plate, he sat at the table, his tablet in hand. He forced himself to click on the Ledger’s front page, wondering—with not a little dread—what the paper had to say about George Garrett’s death.

He’d been sloppy last night. And lucky.

But still skillful. He’d made it in and out of the doctor’s house in thirty seconds. He hadn’t heard the alarm blare until he’d cleared the back door. That hadn’t been sloppy or lucky. That had been talent.