“A body. A teenager. He was dead.” Cade pointed to the airtight room next to the cell. “In there. Suffocated. I also left his body where the cops could find him. Gave his parents closure and saved the kids in this city from a pedophile. Does that seem like something a bad guy would do?”

She shook her head. “That was decent of you.”

“That’s what I’m sayin’. So when it comes time for me to run, I expect you to remember that I’m decent. I don’t hurt kids.”

Unless they’d been an eyewitness to murder, but that was different. That was self-preservation. It would have allowed him to continue serving the community by eliminating pedos and abusive bastards. But Michael had given the cops his description.

The kid had ruined everything.

And now I’m on the run for real. His face and real name on the news. Shit.

“What about him?” she asked, pointing to Andrew McNab, the interpreter.

The guy I shouldn’t have let live. The guy Cade had drugged so that he and Evelyn couldn’t cook up an escape plan. “Depends. Has he woken up yet?”

“No,” she said, casting a worried look at the man who still lay as Cade had left him. “I thought he was once, but he kind of moaned and fell back asleep. He’s been beaten badly.” Her words were stiff and awkward, as if she feared making Cade angry by accusing him of doing the beating. Good. She should be afraid. “He could die.”

“Then he does. He’s not your concern,” Cade said, and meant it. “You worry about you and Junior. If the man dies, I’ll drag him out of there.” He turned on his heel and grunted loudly when his knee buckled. He grabbed on to the cell bars to hold himself upright. Dammit, that hurt.

“I think you’re going to need something stronger for your leg,” Evelyn said softly. “Maybe an antibiotic injection.”

“I know,” he snapped, happy when she recoiled. They weren’t friends. She was his ticket out. Nothing more. “But unless you’re a doctor, you can’t help me.”

He blinked. No . . . she wasn’t a doctor. But Dani Novak was, and she ran a free clinic. Places like that stocked medicines. Antibiotics and maybe even painkillers. And it wasn’t a twenty-four-hour operation. They had to close sometime. When the staff left for the night, he’d slip in, get a few handfuls of meds, and get out.

That was a good plan. If he was still running a fever by tomorrow, he’d clean out Dani Novak’s pharmacy.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Cincinnati, Ohio
Monday, March 18, 11:30 p.m.