Killer Instinct (The Naturals, #2)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“Have you ever told Briggs precisely what you did to his wife, Dean?” Daniel Redding didn’t raise his voice, but the question seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room. “Or does he still think it was me who drew the knife slowly down her shoulders and thighs, me who sank the brand into her flesh?” Briggs’s grip on Dean tightened. If he’d been steering him toward the door before, he was shoving him now—anything to get Dean out of there. But Dean’s feet were suddenly glued to the floor. Go, I told Dean silently. Just go. But he didn’t. Redding relished the moment. “Tell your agent friend there what you did, Dean. Tell him how you came out to the barn where I had Veronica Sterling bound hand and foot. Tell him how I went to cut her—how you took the knife from my hand, not to save her, but to do it yourself. Tell him how you made her bleed. Tell him how she screamed when you burned an R into her flesh. Tell him how you asked me for her.” Redding closed his eyes and tilted his head toward the ceiling, like a man offering thanks to his gods. “Tell him she was your first.” First victim. For Redding, that was the only first that mattered, no matter how much innuendo he might jam into the word.

oh fuck oh what the fuck