“Whatever helps you sleep at night. Again, we need each other, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

He imagined all the different ways he could kill her. Then he saw their faces. Women, children. All bleeding from their eyes, their mouths, their noses. How he was forced to hack off their heads, their limbs. He felt a thousand wildebeest stampeding through his chest, all of them kicking and clawing to get out. His breathing became increasingly erratic.

Dr. Raskin’s scowl deepened. “Take a chill pill, big man. We still have a lot of work to do. I can’t have you losing your shit on me now and going through some whiny PTSD panic attack. Where the hell are those burgers?”

Kruger reached to the small of his back where he kept his hunting knife in a concealed sheath. He pulled it free and held it out in front of him. He towered over the red-haired doctor like Goliath over David. Like David, Dr. Raskin showed no fear.

She narrowed her eyes at him and said, “Do it. See how your retirement plan works out for you without me.”

He smiled. “I’m not an idiot, doctor. I’m well aware that sometimes partnering with a devil is a necessary evil.”

“I’m the devil, huh? Flattery will get you nowhere with me. So, you just wanted to show me your knife? It looks a bit oversized. You compensating?”

He rested the knife in his massive hands and held it out for her inspection. The blade stretched out to ten inches and was two inches wide. Its edge was sharp as a scalpel, and he could wield it with just as much precision. The handle was made of bone, intricately carved into the head of a lion. The lion wasn’t roaring or bearing its fangs. Its eyes were closed. It looked peaceful, as if it were asleep or dead.

“I crafted this knife myself,” Kruger said. “The handle is made from the bones of the first lion I hunted and killed.”

“Did that make you feel like a big man? Shooting some poor, defenseless animal?” Raskin asked.

He laughed. “I would hardly call a lion defenseless. A typical male lion weighs over 400 pounds. His back teeth, called carnassials, are like razor-edged scissors that allow him to carve large chunks of meat from his kills. His eyes are six times more sensitive to light than a human’s, allowing him to see through the darkness. His roar can be heard from miles away. He can run for short distances at fifty miles per hour and leap nearly forty feet. His claws can reach lengths of almost twelve inches from base to tip. And I didn’t hunt him with a gun, doctor. Only a knife.”

“Bullshit.”

“Every year, on the anniversary of my mother’s death, I hike into the heart of the savannah, and I kill one of the lions, using only this knife.”

“That’s idiotic. Why would you do that?”

“When I was a boy, the lions devoured my mother while I listened to her screams. They took her from me, so every year I take retribution from their pride.”