She tried to laugh, but it was a jagged, ugly sound. “You’ve finally lost it. The war broke you. You’re talking nonsense. Put the knife down—wait, I have the knife. Get out of my house!”
“It’s my house, Isabella. I built it for Sarah. I built it for a woman you murdered.”
I took another step forward. She lunged, the butcher knife whistling through the air. I had spent a decade training in hand-to-hand combat. A silk-robed narcissist with a kitchen utensil was no match for a Captain of the 82nd Airborne.
I caught her wrist, the plush fur of the rabbit hand providing a surprisingly firm grip. I twisted, and the knife clattered to the hardwood floor. I pinned her against the counter, my rabbit face inches from hers.
“Tell me what you did,” I hissed. “Tell me how you killed her.”
“I didn’t!” she screamed. “She was weak! Her heart just stopped!”
“I have the reports, Isabella. I have the tissue samples from the exhumation. I have the logs from the pharmacy in Oregon. I know about the first two husbands.”
Her face changed then. The fear vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating void. She stopped struggling. She looked at me through the mesh of the rabbit eyes and smiled. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
“So you found out,” she whispered. “What are you going to do, Elias? Kill me? In this ridiculous suit? You’re a soldier. You’re a man of honor. You’ll call the police, and I’ll tell them you came home in a PTSD-fueled rage. I’ll show them the bruises you just gave my wrist. I’ll tell them you’ve been threatening me for months. Who will they believe? The hero Captain or the grieving widow who’s been caring for his ‘disturbed’ daughter?”
She leaned in closer, her breath smelling of expensive wine. “I’ve already won. I’ve poisoned the well, Elias. The neighbors, the school, the base—they all think you’re the problem. If I die tonight, you go to prison, and Lily goes to the state. And believe me, the state won’t protect her from what I’ve already put in her system.”
My grip tightened. I wanted to crush the life out of her. My thumb pressed against her carotid artery. Just ten seconds, the soldier in me thought. Ten seconds and the threat is neutralized.
But then, a sound came from the doorway.
“Daddy?”
Lily was standing in the kitchen doorway, clutching her tattered teddy bear. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the glass of water Isabella had left on the counter—the one I now realized was sitting next to an open bottle of industrial-strength cleaner.
Chapter 5: The Trap is Sprung
“Lily, go back upstairs!” I commanded, my voice breaking character.
“No,” Lily said. Her voice wasn’t trembling anymore. It was flat, echoing the hollow tone I’d heard on the satellite calls. “She’s going to make me drink it, Daddy. She said if I don’t drink the ‘magic water,’ Cooper will never come back from the basement.”
The basement.
I looked at Isabella. Her eyes widened. She had forgotten that I knew this house better than she ever would. I had built a hidden storage room in the basement for my gear—a room she shouldn’t have been able to find.
“Where is the dog, Isabella?” I growled.
“He’s… he’s fine,” she stammered, her bravado crumbling as she realized her leverage was shifting.
I didn’t wait. I shoved her toward the laundry room and locked the door, trapping her in the small space. I scooped Lily up in one arm—bunny suit and all—and ran for the basement stairs.
“Is he in the gear room, Lily?”
“She put him in the dark box,” Lily sobbed into my fur-covered shoulder.
I hit the basement floor and kicked in the door to my storage room. There, huddled in the corner of a large plastic crate, was Cooper. He was emaciated, his golden fur matted with filth, but when he saw me, his tail gave a weak, thumping beat against the plastic.
I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for two years. I set Lily down. “Stay here with him. Don’t come up until I call for you.”
I turned and headed back upstairs. I wasn’t a rabbit anymore. I was the Reaper.
I reached the laundry room and unlocked the door. Isabella was gone. The window above the dryer was hanging open, the screen kicked out.
I didn’t panic. I went to the kitchen counter and picked up the silver dog tag I had brought with me—the one Miller had prepared. I tapped the activation switch.
“Miller, you seeing this?”
“I’ve got it all, Elias,” Miller’s voice came through my earpiece. “The camera in the kitchen caught the whole thing—the knife, the confession about the husbands, the threat to the girl. And the GPS on her phone just went active. She’s running for the car.”
“Let her go,” I said, walking out onto the front porch. The cool night air hit my face as I pulled off the rabbit head. “She thinks she’s escaping. She doesn’t realize I’ve already moved the finish line.”
I sat on the porch steps and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.
Three minutes later, the quiet suburban street was flooded with the blue and red strobe lights of six police cruisers and two blacked-out SUVs from the Criminal Investigation Division (CID). They didn’t go to my house. They swarmed the intersection two blocks away, where Isabella’s SUV had been boxed in by Miller’s team.
