Brutal

13

 "She walked up to me that day, said she wanted to talk to me in private. And when we did talk, she told me the whole story. Apparently, it was Emily's idea to go clubbing, to live their freedom—her words. In the club, initially Jade and Mare weren't drinking but then Emily and Laura persuaded then to. And they did. Mare was a lightweight, naturally, because of lack of experience. So she'd gone to use the restroom to puke her stomach out.

"She was gone for way too long. So Jade and the others decided to check on her. They found her at the rear side of the club, stark naked and stabbed. They'd seen the person. I remember her shivering as she recalled the scene. My sister was lying on the floor and she was stabbed with a bl...bl...blunt knife...eleven times. She told me that her killer was standing there, near her body, against a wall, drinking alcohol directly from a bottle."

"Here," Chicago said, handing him a bunch of tissues. He peered up at her, skeptically, the hurt in his eyes visible. "I'm a cop, Logan, so I have to be strict, but I'm not heartless."

A small smile graced his lips, so small that it could have easily gone unnoticed. "And then—"

"Logan," she interrupted him. "Continue when you're ready. We'll wait. I know the hurt, and I also know it's not easy to talk about it."

"So, you do have the whole day, huh?"

"Back to your old self, I see," she chuckled. A huge grin overtook Hunter's face as he watched her on the screen. She had this rare ability to get people to warm up to her. She knew how to comfort them, and how to get them to open up.

She heard him clear his throat and look at her. "Ready?" He nodded. "Well, then."

"Yeah. And then, he snapped his head to look at them, and according to her he looked vicious, so they simply ran as fast as their legs could take them. Later on, they decided that they wouldn't so much as mention the incident, let alone participate and help in Mare's murder investigation. They determined that it was what was best for their future.

"Hearing her say all this made my blood boil through my veins. I wanted to scream my anger out at someone, I wanted to cry my eyes out for my sister, I wanted to laugh at the irony of her life. You know, Lieutenant, she always believed that if a person did good to others, they always received better in return. But, look at the turn of events in her life, not once did she get better—even good—in return. She always had to go through the worst. Mare, my sister."

"Is that why you killed them?"

"Precisely. They needed to know what Mare felt; she was alone when she was murdered and none of them decided to stand by her when she died either. How could they do that? Just because they were scared that their underage drinking would go on their records, they didn't do right by my sister. I mean, what the actual fuck?"

"I'm sorry, Logan. Well, what triggered vengeance in you? Was it Jade's confession?"

"Ha! No. The fire of revenge was burning in me from the moment I saw my sister's dead body in the morgue. White as sheet, lifeless; my Mare. It started the moment he lifted the sheet from her face, and then rolled them further down, so I could see the torture she'd been through when she was murdered. I asked him, with whatever strength I had left in me, how it happened."

"And?"

"She was drugged, through her alcohol I suppose, and stabbed."

"And that was exactly what you did with those girls."

"Spot on, Lieutenant! The image of my sister on that bed is so deeply etched in my memory, all I had to do was zilch when I knifed them," he smirked proudly. "Once I had done that, I took out a different knife, my personalized one, and slit it across their carotids. Which was my little something for them. Done. Ta-da!"