I awaken the next morning feeling more rested than I’ve felt in a lifetime.

When I shower, the hot water that runs down my body relaxes muscles that have never felt so good. Every part of my body is still glowing from last night.

It was easily the best sex I’ve ever had.

And it was with the virgin I found in a hole in the ground under my new house.

The strangeness of the situation isn’t lost on me, and even as I wash my body off, I have a feeling it isn’t lost on her either. I can usually hear her moving around the house early, poking around the place and getting into everything I’ve been doing.

She thinks she’s sneaky, but I can always hear.

This morning, though, it’s quiet outside. So quiet, in fact, that when I finish my shower and get clothes on, I sneak to her room. The door is ajar.

When I look inside, I see her laying on the bed, sheets half-strewn across her, and she stares up at the ceiling with as conflicted a face as I carry in my heart. Even so, she looks breathtaking, even when she’s just waking up.

I’m thinking about how I wish we’d spent the full night together when she turns her eyes to look at me. We make eye contact for the briefest of moments before I clear my throat.

“Breakfast,” I say simply, and I move to the kitchen.

I’m moving too fast with her. What I did with her could easily have scared a woman away, let alone a virgin. I could have woken up, and she would be gone, run off to the cops to tell them all about the bunker, her kidnapper.

And me.

I shake my head. I can’t let that happen. But she was still there, in bed, with that strange, far off expression in her face. Wondering what she should do.

Wondering why she shouldn’t just run.

I figure she’s been taking this time to get used to her freedom, but time is running out for her. The longer she holds off going to the cops, the more questions they’ll have for her, and the more her motivations will be questioned.

Why did you stay with the strange man in the woods? What did he tell you his name was? Salvatore... No. The Angel of Death? We heard he’d been killed in a mob shootout. Tell me, Eva, is this what he looks like? What did he tell you about the man who kidnapped you?

I shake my head free of the thought. It can’t come to that, and the fact that she stuck around is a good sign. I need her to stay until I figure out what to do with her. A lot is on the agenda today. I cook up fat sausages that crackle and split, eggs, and thick pieces of toast with butter. I hurriedly eat mine while it’s still scalding-hot and leave a plate out for Eva.

By the time she pads into the kitchen, I’m already halfway through my morning coffee.

She’s wearing one of the loose shirts I bought her and a pair of tight leggings. My eyes drink her in as she enters, and she notices. There’s another moment of eye contact between us, so charged that I can feel the electricity. Blushing, she quickly lowers her eyes and goes for her plate to start wolfing the food down.

I have to ignore the quiet pride I feel in how ravenously she devours my food. I don’t let myself linger there, though. Before she’s even halfway through, I finish my coffee and head outside into the cold morning air.

Even as I trudge across the yard, I can feel her eyes on me from the window.

Just one word has been spoken between us this morning, but I can feel her presence on me. The shower couldn’t totally wash away her scent, and it hangs on me as I make my way to the woodline around the yard.

Carrying wire, cutters, and a few mouse traps with me, I set to crafting a few trip wire alarms between some of the bigger trees around the perimeter in the places that seem most likely for someone to walk through—including the spot I used to approach the property.

Thinking like a hunter gives me a unique advantage when I’m being hunted.

Grabbing the rest of my toolbox, I set about using the rest of the morning to rig the place into a true safe house. I change the locks on the front door, set up simple wooden bars at the edges of the windows to make them impossible to open, and I even set up metal grating in the chimney to block it off—not that the fireplace is in use anymore, but those are just the kinds of weaknesses I would keep an eye out for.

I install a strike-plate into the front and back door jambs in case I need to buy time for a sudden police raid or all-out attack on the house. They’re not options I like to consider, but they’re necessary.

How is she any safer here with you than out there, my mind chides me, and I narrow my eyes. It’s a roundabout way of reminding me that I’m lying to her. That every word I say about protecting her is about protecting me. If she leaves and calls the cops, I’m the one up shit creek.

Unless the Mafia thinks she means something to me. I stop at the thought, my heart pounding a bit heavier in my chest, and not just from the renovations. No, suddenly I realize that in protecting myself, I’ve put her in more danger.

Pull yourself out of it, man. No one’s getting in here without a firefight, and you’ll keep her safe.

I focus back on my work, and start installing a peephole for the front door when I hear the pattering of feet behind me. I look over my shoulder, but Eva is gone.

I frown.

We’ve been half-avoiding each other all morning, but I can tell that she wants to be around me as much as I want to be around her. If she’s thinking anything like me, it’s because we just don’t know what to make of... everything last night.

It was incredible. Just thinking back to the way she felt in my lap makes me start to grow hard even while my thick hands work my power tools.

But was it right?

No, of course it was not. I am a killer, someone who takes lives and has abandoned his conscience long ago. She’s a broken girl who has suffered so, so much in her young life. Her innocence should be protected.

But isn’t it already gone?

I clench my jaw as I work. Maybe the tug of guilt in the back of my head is right, and I’ve already ruined her. She made the first move—she wants me. But like a demon of temptation, I led her down that road, egging her on the whole way.

I even came in her, for fuck’s sake.

When I finish the peephole, I roll my shoulders and head outside.

Maybe some fresh air and exercise will clear my head, and I have something in mind that I’ve been holding off on for a while.

I head around back to the shed, that fateful building where I first found Eva. It truly looks like something from a slasher movie from the outside. I head in and look around at the ruins of the horror show.

When I’d first stepped in, I assumed this was just where that old man watched his dirty movies and got off on some odd fetishes. I had no idea it was so much more. Hell, I didn’t even suspect that he would have this setup.

I walk to the hatch in the floor that leads down to the bunker. Paranoid old misers are fond of such things, usually claiming they want a place to hide when the apocalypse comes. That was probably what Geoffrey Mink told the people who built this dungeon.

Looking around at the tech, I confirm what I was thinking: all this stuff is old. Ancient, by my standards. It all needs to go.

I do one last sweep around the horrific office, and I only find one thing I decide to hang onto—Mink’s laptop. It was still open when I took over the property, so it has clearly seen recent use. I close the laptop and carry it inside.

I hear quick footsteps as soon as I get in, and I hold back a sigh.

Eva can’t keep running from me as if she’s afraid of me. Maybe she is, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’ll eventually have to talk about what happened.

But then another thought occurs to me. Smiling, I head off to my tools.

A few moments later, I knock on Eva’s door, then push it open. She’s sitting there on the bed, looking a little guiltily up at me as though she knows I’m going to confront her for something she did wrong.

Instead, I hold up the sledgehammer in my hand, and her eyes go wide.

“I have something for you,” I say. “Get dressed.”

“Are we going somewhere?” she asks, her eyes fluttering.

“Just outside,” I say. “Don’t dress too heavily.”

Ten minutes later, Eva is trotting up behind me as I head to the shed. When she realizes where we’re going, she stops dead in her tracks.

I look over my shoulder at her with a raised eyebrow, but she just stares at me.

“What?”

“Are we... what are we doing?” she asks, her eyes on the sledgehammer I hold in my hand.

I let out a laugh, shaking my head. The sound of it seems to take her off-guard.

“Trust me. You’ll enjoy this.”

Cautiously, she follows after me. I push the door open and lead her inside.

She visibly tenses at the sight of all the monitors. Some of them are still on, the haunting stillness of the empty bunker room still flickering on the screens.

This place will haunt her for the rest of her life.

But maybe I can make it a little better.

I snap her out of her trance by stepping forward, and she looks at me nervously.

Without a word, I smile and hand her the sledgehammer.

Her eyes widen, looking down at it and then up to me as if asking me to confirm what she’s thinking.

“All yours,” I say, taking a few steps back to the door.

She’s stunned for a few more moments, then her beautiful lips start to spread into a smile, and that smile spreads into a grin.

Watching her small frame try to hold the sledgehammer almost makes me laugh, and I cross my arms proudly as I watch her look around at all the machinery like a kid in a candy store.

“Be careful how you sling it around, it’s easy to throw your back out,” I warn her, but she just flashes a grin at me.

“I don’t think I need a tutorial for this,” she says, and with that, she throws her weight into a mighty swing at one of the big monitor screens.

It crumples with a satisfying crash of glass, plastic, and metal, and the giddy grin on Eva’s face makes my heart feel like it’s being pumped full of air, swelling with joy.

She swings it around to the next monitor, then brings it down to crash into one of the computer towers. Within a couple of minutes, she completely annihilates an entire table full of equipment, including the table itself.

I’d expect someone her size to run out of steam pretty fast, but the energy she picks up is incredible. Once one wall of cameras is smashed, she moves right into the next as if she’d just done a shot of espresso.

Every swing is full of enthusiasm and bloodlust.

“Yeah! Fuck you!” she shouts, her tiny voice so full of furious glee that it makes me laugh a little. She handles the sledgehammer beautifully, each swing bringing pounds and pounds of force onto whatever unfortunate equipment she’s wrecking next.

When she takes a breather, setting the sledgehammer down and resting on the handle to breathe, I slip past her and open the hatch to the vault. She watches me curiously, but I say nothing as I go down there and into the bunker.

A few minutes later, I emerge, hauling the wooden wardrobe full of scantily-clad clothing her captor left for her.

Just like that, her tired face is refreshed all over again.

This little woman has a lot of rage in her. I can appreciate that.

“Don’t need a breather?” I say as she readies her hammer again, then drives it full-force into the wood. This time, though, the hole it makes in it is a little less impressive than the destruction she inflicted on the computers.

“No!” she insists, panting, “I got this!”

She readies her hammer again, then lowers it, her breaths heavy.

“Well, okay, maybe I could use a quick break. Want in on this action?” she asks, grinning over at me, and I smile calmly as I take the sledgehammer in one big hand.

“Stand back,” I say. She does, and I ready the hammer.

In one solid swing, I bring it over my head and down onto the wardrobe. The wood splinters and crumples like paper under my blow with a thunderous crash.

Eva gasps and nearly stumbles back, eyes wide at me, but the surprise quickly turns to laughter, and she claps her hands as she watches me pull back and swing again.

Her enthusiasm spurs me on.

With four more solid crashes, I reduce the wardrobe full of skimpy clothing to a pile of shredded cloth and wrecked wood.

The next hour goes by in the same fashion. Eva eventually goes back into the house to get us some water while I pull out pieces of furniture from the vault and haul it up to start wrecking. I eventually have to start dragging the ruins out of the shed when it becomes too much to fit into one place.

I plan to keep the shed up. Eva and I destroy most of the stuff that made up her prison, but I don’t plan to destroy the bunker itself. There is still a year’s worth of canned goods in there, and in case the heat turns up too high, it will be a good place to hole up. Literally.

Even our energy has its limits, though, and after a fair amount of time, I notice that Eva is really running out of steam. I plant the head of the hammer into the ground and rest my hands on it, watching her surveying the wreckage with tired satisfaction.

“How did that feel?”

“Good,” she says without missing a beat. “Really good.” She looks over at me, my ripped figure standing over the hammer still as a statue, and I see her blush before looking away. I smile.

“I’m glad,” I say, and I nod to the house. “Let’s rest.”

We head inside, and as we enter the house, Eva’s eyes fall on the laptop that I brought in. She furrows her eyebrows.

“That’s new. Was it his, too?”

I nod, walking over to the thing on the table and opening it. He didn’t even have a password lock on it. “Yes. I want to make sure there’s nothing important on it before I hand it over to you.”

I see that he has his emails open, and I slowly scroll through them as she smiles beside me.

“Don’t suppose you have any explosives I could use on this thing?”

I smile and open my mouth to reply, but she leans forward suddenly, eyes wide.

“Wait,” she asks, putting her hand on mine to stop me. “Let me see that.”

She points to one of the emails.

“Can you check that one?”

I arch an eyebrow at her, then open it.

It’s a short message, the latest in a short conversation. I can see the first line of each exchange, and I furrow my brow as I recognize what looks like someone reaching out to Mink to do a job.

A hit.

The last email is dated to about a month ago.

The money will be transferred as you requested. I expect the job to be done within a week so he has time to change his will back before he dies. We don’t have time to waste with my father being sick. I want her gone entirely, and I don’t care how you do it as long as it happens soon. She brought this on herself by turning up. Do this and you’ll have a better retirement than you can imagine.

-B

The email was sent from [email protected], a pathetically stupid and sloppy use of a company email.

It reads like some corporate idiot sloppily trying to get some loose end tied up, but when I look over at Eva, her eyes are shining with tears, and her mouth is hanging open at the screen.

“What is it?”

“That email…” she breathes, putting a hand over her mouth. She looks at me, red-rimmed eyes wide and fearful. “That email is talking about me!”