Bloodhound hits him before the palms are fully raised.
One punch. Straight to the solar plexus, no windup, no warning.
The sound is a wet, hollow crack—air leaving a body that wasn't braced.
Creedy's mouth opens. His eyes bulge.
A string of spit stretches from his lower lip to the linoleum as he folds.
He hits the kitchen floor on his knees, gasping.
Ounce grabs him by the back of the neck, drags him to the kitchen chair he'd been sitting in, and slams him down.
Maddox produces zip ties from his jacket and secures his wrists to the chair arms before Creedy's lungs have refilled.
The kitchen is small. Yellow light from a fixture above the table. Dirty dishes in the sink. A phone on the counter next to the beer.
Creedy's phone.
I pick it up. Scroll through the messages. Dennis Halstead's name is everywhere.
Texts, calls, a thread going back months. Instructions, details, photographs.
A photograph of Saylor walking to her car after a Backroads shift. Taken from the parking lot. Time-stamped two weeks ago.
A photograph of her mother filling up at the gas station. Taken from the other side of the pumps. The angle of a man who positioned himself deliberately.
A photograph of Saylor's apartment building. The same image that ended up on the true crime forum.
My vision narrows. The phone screen blurs and clears and blurs again.
He didn't find the forum post. Hemadeit.
He took the fucking photographs, posted them online, tagged Saylor's account, and led the true crime crowddirectlyto her door.
He terrorized her in person and online. She never knew it was the same man.
I set the phone on the table and look at Creedy.
He's breathing hard, wrists straining against the zip ties.
His bare chest is red where Bloodhound's fist landed.
His eyes are moving between us, calculating, measuring, running the same assessment I watched him run in the Backroads parking lot.
Except this time there's no truck to retreat to. No wave through the windshield. No practiced smile to hide behind.
"You took pictures of her." I pull a chair from the table and sit down across from him. Close enough to see the sweat beading on his forehead. "You posted them online. You tagged her account. You gave strangers her address."
He doesn't answer. His jaw is tight, his breathing controlled.
He's been in rooms like this before. Prison teaches you how to take a beating.
Prison didn't teach him how to take what's coming.
"You showed up at her mother's workplace." I lean forward. My voice is low, even, and doesn't belong to the boy who sat in statistics class seven weeks ago struggling with regression analysis. "You grabbed her arm. You told her to stop being difficult."
Creedy's lips peel back, his jaw working. "Dennis asked me to?—"