The Quiet

I couldn’t speak. I just stared at Clay, and he looked back, equally horrified. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want Maddox to see, to have the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to me.

I was a creature that he had hunted for and I was being hurt for reasons I did not understand.

“Stop it,” Clay whispered. “Leave her alone.”

Maddox only frowned at him, touched my cheek, and ran his fingers through my tangled hair. I forgot he had at least been nice enough to wipe off the blood after he sliced into me.

How considerate for a psychopath.

“I’m not going to kill her,” Maddox told Clay. “But I can’t promise you’ll be alive by the end of this night, Mr. Davenport.”

“If you’re not to kill me,” I said weakly, “then what the fuck do you want?”

“I guess you didn’t listen to my little story before,” he muttered. “I want you to suffer, is that so wrong?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “It doesn’t give justice for what happened to your partner. Killing my friends won’t bring him back.”

“Friends?” Maddox laughed. “Lena was never your friend.”

“But she was mine,” Clay snarled. “I killed my own friend because I was forced to. You’re fucking sick and I hope you go to jail for a long time.”

This in turn made Maddox angry, so he settled for kicking Clay in the face, which knocked him out. Then he crouched down beside me, ran his hands through his hair, and sighed.

“I’m not a bad guy. I mean, I didn’t used to be.”

“You threatened me, broke into my house, set a fire, had my friend kill his ex girlfriend, slashed my face, and you’re telling me you’re not a bad guy?”

I didn’t know why I was being so calm about this, probably because he might have been lying when he said he wasn’t going to kill me, but I didn’t want to take that chance. So I listened to the rest of his story.