INTERLUDE 8

THE PAVILION

BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

FOUR MONTHS AGO

Eve was alone even though she had company.

That was how things were since Adam died. Men came and went, through her life, in and out of her bed, coasting on the far edge of her awareness. She kissed them, had sex with them, sometimes made them have sex with one another. She used them hard. She even killed one of them once just to see if that would make her feel anything.

It didn’t. And it was messy and a bit disgusting. Two of her other men had to clean things up. HK tried to scold her, but Eve walked away and locked herself in her bedroom. That had been … when? Two weeks before? A bit longer? She couldn’t tell. Time, like so many other things, had lost its meaning.

The only highlights of her day—the only thing that gave her any joy and brought her to a sharp focus—were the visits. Daddy came and sat with her, telling her things he wanted her to learn, filling her mind with plans about how they were going to find Joe Ledger. Find him, capture him, and spend days—weeks—ruining him. Breaking his will and his heart. Turning his body into a cage of broken pieces. Feeding him on pain and making sure the doctors did not let him die. Eve wasn’t even sure she wanted him to die. No. It would be so much better if Ledger were turned into a cripple. Maybe with no feet and just a few fingers on each hand. He’d only really need one eye. He wouldn’t need his cock or balls. Daddy said that a man could be reduced to something barely recognizable as having been human and still survive. A person like that could live for years. Kept in a cage or given a little dolly to push himself around on. No teeth, no nose. No hope.

And together they would drive him to the very edge of madness, but not push him over. No. She wouldn’t want that. She—and Daddy—wanted him alive so he could be aware, every single day, of what he’d become and to live with the knowledge that everyone he loved was either dead or being similarly destroyed.

Whom, then, should they remove from Ledger’s life first? Always a delicious speculation. Church, of course. Both Daddy and Kuga wanted that spooky prick dead and run through a wood chipper.

Junie Flynn. Yeah, she had to go. Eve wanted to hand her over to a dozen—no, two dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest Fixers—and then tape every moment of their fun and games with her.