Barefoot and naked, I hurried through the bedroom and into the bathroom to turn on the shower. While I waited for the water to heat up, I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My straight, dark hair hung around my face and past my shoulders in strings wet with a combination of blood and rain. Be warned that when cutting an asshole’s balls off, the blood can and will get everywhere.

The bathroom was steamy and the mirror started to fog over before I shook out of my daze and realized the shower had been running for plenty long enough to warm up. I opened the glass door, and only when the hot water hit my skin did I notice how chilled I was. That I was shivering.

“Little sister—”

“Not now, Dom,” I snapped.

I gritted my teeth to fend off the sudden swell of frustrated, disgusted tears and snatched the bar of soap off the little built-in recess in the shower’s slate-tiled wall. I lathered it between my hands, then started scrubbing my body. I scrubbed and lathered, lathered and scrubbed. I attacked my hair with a vengeance. I washed myself until my skin felt raw and stung when the water touched it. Until the soap was little more than a sliver. Only then did I set what was left of the bar down. Only then did I feel even remotely clean.

I placed my hand on the wall beside the recess and bowed my head, letting my hair act as a dark curtain shielding me from the world. Letting the water cascade all around me.

I should’ve killed him. The thought buzzed around in my skull like a drunken bee. “Damn it!” I yelled, slapping my hand against the wall hard enough that it made my palm throb. I may have broken something. I didn’t care. I should’ve killed him.

My shoulders shook, and my whole being caved in from the soul out. Horrors danced through my mind, taunting me. I couldn’t help but imagine whatever ghastly, perverted things Carmichael had done to poor little Sammy. The possibilities haunted me. Nauseated me. It didn’t matter that he could still be useful, that he still had information we could use, even if none of it had anything to do with the disease.

I should’ve killed him.

I leaned in, resting my forehead against the shower wall, then turned, wedging my shoulder in the corner. I slid down along the wall until I was sitting on the floor, one knee pulled up to my chest, the other leg outstretched. Forgotten. I leaned the side of my head against the wall and stared at the glass door, watching the rivulets of water stream down in stops and starts.

I should’ve killed him.

Chapter Fourteen

“Kat?” It was Garth, calling out for me from the other room.

I was shivering again. I was still on the tile floor and the showerhead still rained down on me, though the water was no longer even remotely warm. I could hear Garth’s footsteps drawing nearer. He was in the bedroom now. He was almost to the bathroom.