CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She walked into the police station. Officer Will took one look at her and leapt up from his desk.

“Marie!”

“Don’t touch me. I have DNA. Lot of it.”

“Marie, what did you do?”

He reached out to touch her but she pulled back.

“Please. Could you take me to the hospital? Is that what I need to do?”

The officer’s face changed. Anger and concern, yes. A little bit of hope. Something that looked like sorrow, but she couldn’t be certain. But underneath, something primordial and snake-like roiled to the surface.

Hatred and revenge.

“He assaulted you?” he asked. “I can’t believe he would be so stupid. Where is he?”

“It wasn’t like that at all. He didn’t do anything that I didn’t ask him to do.”

Marie didn’t realize another person could look so stricken. His concern was making her lose her nerve.

“Please,” she said. “The hospital. Because after this is done, I really want to take a shower more than anything else on earth.”

“Marie.”

He reached into his desk for his keys. Murmured something to a fellow officer.

“Would you like me to call my wife?” he asked. “See if she could meet us there?”

Marie gasped in relief.

“Oh, yes, please! Please, if you could!”

She saw that her gratitude hurt him. That he was simply being kind, and a little kindness shouldn’t bring out this type of reaction.

“Will,” she said, and the seriousness made him look at her carefully.

“What?”

“Did you hear me? I have his DNA. Lots of it.”

He nodded. She didn’t think he could speak.

“And a bite mark. Several. Good ones.”

Once again, stricken.

Her heart fell. Her excitement, her triumph, everything that got her through this experience began to crack, break, shatter. It was breaking her. Breaking her more thoroughly than anything else could.

“Tell me I did the right thing,” she said bluntly. Her eyes had swollen so badly that she could barely peer through them. “Tell me it was worth it, and you can catch him now. Because I don’t think I’ll make it through the night if you can’t say that.”

His mouth dropped open.

“Was it worth it?” she demanded. She held her arms up so he could take in all of her. “Will this help my Aleta? Will this help other little girls? Look at what he did to me! What if it had been other little girls?”

“You did good, Marie.” His voice sounded strange. Strangled. Husky. Rough. “You did everything perfectly. I couldn’t ask more of you. Nobody could. We’ve asked too much as it is. And I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Will. You know that.”

“I know we did the best we could and it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough, and now look at you. What you went through. I can’t even . . . let’s go to the car.”

“All right.”

She wanted to tell him how she had hoped The Wolf would make it quick, that she would simply pick up the discarded condom afterwards and bring it in a plastic baggie. But he had refused to use one. Refused to drink anything. He was actively protecting his DNA like sweet young things protected their virginity, and that’s when she knew she had to go deep and hard and give her all to get everything that she could.

She put her mouth on him. She guided his teeth to her breast and begged him to bite her. He left imprints on her skin and her back and her neck and her buttocks. No pleasure, only pain. He didn’t want to please, he only wanted to hurt and dominate. When she cried out, it was in horror and a numbing type of agony.

That was when he laughed, and the sound of it gutted her.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and raked her nails down his back. He was under her fingernails. He was in her teeth. In her hair and on her lips and everywhere she could possibly put him. She packed him into her body so wholly that she was afraid he’d never leave. She’d bleed him through her pores. Smell him in her sleep. He had infested her physical form just as much as he had her head.

Thank you, Mom, she heard. Something brief and on the wind.

Huntsman Marie had just caught The Wolf and nailed him to the wall.