I watched from the bed as Dolly applied her makeup. Needing to feel her again, I walked over to where she sat. She smiled at me in the mirror as she applied blue shadow to her eyes. I picked her up and sat down on the stool. Dolly yelped as I placed her back down on my lap.

It was all part of her game. I’d done this every day since the night at the field. Since the night I couldn’t keep my hands off her.

Dolly picked up her blusher and started to brush pink onto her cheeks. I rested my chin on her shoulder and simply watched her. Moving her hair out of the way, baring her neck, I kissed at her skin. I flicked my eyes up to her reflection. Her hand had paused midair and her eyelids had become hooded.

We were in Laredo now. The final place on my map, home to the King of Hearts—Dolly’s papa. The mastermind behind the ring of rapists. The man who bet his daughter’s pussy. Gave it away to whoever won a round of poker.

I closed my eyes, inhaling the rose scent from Dolly’s skin. When I opened them again, she was finishing off her lipstick. She lowered the lipstick to the table and, sighing, lay back against my chest. My arms wrapped around her waist. I held her close. I ran my nose down her cheek.

“Mmm,” she murmured and closed her eyes. Her hands covered mine at her waist. Her fingers ran over my skin. When I pulled back, I met her open eyes in the mirror. I played with the ribbon around her neck, the one that held the vial which read “Drink Me.” It had been filled since the night at the Jabberwock’s home.

My blood once again hung around her neck.

“We have to go,” I said. Dolly nodded. We had been in a cabin Chapel had organized for us. It was another one of his homes. Now that the police were after us, now that our faces were splashed all over the news, we couldn’t risk motels.

We couldn’t risk traveling during daylight.

“The Sick Fux,” the news claimed, “are highly dangerous.” The Texas Rangers had declared a manhunt. A reward had been offered for our arrest.

It was never gonna happen.

I wouldn’t live without Dolly.

She wouldn’t survive without me.

Dolly placed all of her makeup in her bag on the vanity. “Ready,” she sang. I lifted her up and placed her feet on the ground. I righted my cravat in the mirror and took my jacket from the bed. I buttoned it up and picked up my cane from where it leaned against the dresser.

When I turned around, Dolly was holding her crown. She was stroking the “jewels,” as she called them. In reality, they were inexpensive colored stones.

Seeing how happy she was, just looking at that damn crown, made my black heart melt. I walked to her and stopped a few inches away. Dolly looked up and cast me a huge smile. I took the crown from her hands and placed it on her head.

Dolly stilled as I did so. She touched the crown, and her searching eyes tried to read my face. “A queen is never seen in public without her crown,” I said. Tonight was the first time we had been out in the world since we defeated the Jabberwock.

“Queens are not seen without their crowns.” She nodded. She turned to look at herself in the mirror. “So beautiful . . .” she murmured, never taking her attention off the sparkling crown.

I thought exactly the same thing, though I wasn’t looking at the crown, only her.

Always her.

I held out my hand. “Let’s go.”

Dolly placed her hand in mine and I led her outside. We walked past the Mustang that had seen us through the slaughter of the “bad men.” Dolly’s hand came out and stroked along the door. “Bye-bye, Mustang,” she sang as we left it behind.

I unlocked the garage at the end of the property. When the wooden doors opened, Dolly gasped and stared at the large black truck that awaited us.

“It’s huge!” She rushed forward to brush her hand over its hood. “And so shiny!”

I passed by her and opened the door. I bowed in her direction. “Your carriage awaits, Your Majesty.”

A loud giggle burst from her throat. Slipping her hand in mine, she nodded her head regally and said, “Why thank you, kind sir.”

I lifted Dolly up to the seat and shut the door. I put her makeup bag in the back of the truck with the rest of our things. I grabbed the boombox and jumped into the driver’s seat; the truck was too new to have a cassette port. Dolly took the boombox from me and pressed play. She danced as I pulled out of the garage and onto the dirt road that led us out of the property.

I killed the lights, eyes focused on the dark as I led us toward our final destination. The drive was quiet but for the music. I stopped outside of the property lines, hiding the truck from sight behind an old barn.

I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. But if we got out, I wanted to make sure we had the truck ready.

Out of all of the bad men, Earnshaw was the only one the PI couldn’t get much on. He never left his home. Hadn’t left in two years. As far as the PI knew, he had no guards. There was no sign of a housekeeper. Just an occasional delivery man. The PI didn’t know what he was delivering.

I wasn’t surprised. Earnshaw was always the smart one. The creator of the fucked-up life he and the uncles led. The chess player moving us all around, his fucking pawns. He had never touched me. I didn’t know if he had touched Dolly. She had never mentioned him in her conversations with Ellis.

But I knew he had touched all those kids I saw being brought in at night. Delivered in trucks, for God’s sake. My blood ran cold as I wondered if that was what was being delivered to his door. More kids from foster homes. Carers paid off with thousands of dollars taking kids to be raped.

“Rabbit?” Dolly’s voice dragged me from my fucked-up thoughts. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, staring at her in her blue dress, striped socks and the crown on her head. Her makeup was impeccable. Then I looked at the scars on her arms. The ones she gave herself when she had begun to go insane. The ones she inflicted on herself because of what he let happen. When he had sent me to that hell, the Water Tower. Endless days in darkness, devoid of Dolly.

My blood began to boil, like a kettle bubbling with rising heat. He had been responsible for all of this. He had been the one to take me into that fucking office and ply me with whiskey. Got me so drunk, day after day, for the Cheshire Cat to fuck me. To hold me down and fuck me hard.

He had been the one to take Dolly on her tenth birthday and give her to the Jabberwock. The man responsible for so much hurt over so many years that her mind had blocked out her life, retreating into the world of a zombie. A shell of the little girl who liked to sing and dance, and hold imaginary tea parties with me.

The boy she loved . . . who was sent away for killing one of them.

That fucker had deserved to die.

“Rabbit?” Dolly asked again.

Nodding, I exited the truck. I kept my cane close. I walked to Dolly’s door and lifted her out onto the long grass. The night was humid and sticky. Dolly held her doll’s head in her left hand. Her knife and gun were tucked into her waist belt.

Dolly slipped her hand into mine. I stared at our intertwined fingers. We always walked this way now. Ever since the night at the field, she never let me go. I had only taken her that way once since. It wasn’t in me to be . . . romantic. I needed more. Needed the blood. The fight.

Dolly needed that too. But she also needed me to be soft with her. Gentle. To keep her by my side, to have her happy after so many years of being lost, it was a sacrifice I could make.

The house had only just come into sight when I pulled us to halt. Turning to Dolly, I said, “I don’t know what’s waiting for us in there.” I stroked her cheek over the blush she’d so expertly applied to her porcelain skin. I drank in her huge blue eyes, committing them to memory . . . just in case.

“Rabbit?” she whispered and lifted to her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “You look sad.”

I thought about it. Sadness. Shaking my head, I pushed the truth of her statement away and said, “I don’t know what will happen in there, Dolly darlin’.”

She blinked, long false lashes brushing the tops of her cheeks. She looked down, then back up at me. She swallowed, like she understood what I was saying. “It could be dangerous,” she ventured.

I nodded, touching her face again. I ran my fingers down her cheek, her neck and down her arms. I squeezed her hand still joined in mine. “He knows we’re coming,” I said and saw Dolly hanging on my every word. “He will have seen us on the news. He will know that we have killed his friends.” I paused when Dolly took a deep breath. “He will be expecting us.”

“It will be dangerous.” This time there was greater certainty in her tone. When her eyes fell and she held my hand just that little bit tighter, I knew she understood perfectly.

We might not come out of this alive.

But he had to be destroyed. It was the penance he had to pay for all the years of pain he had put us through. For all the years he had kept us apart.

“He has to die,” Dolly said, as if she had heard my thoughts. I nodded and saw a sheen of tears in her eyes. She looked away, wiped her eye, then said, “Ellis must be freed . . . even if Dolly and Rabbit must die.”

“Yeah,” I rasped, trying and failing to imagine a world without her in it.

“Rabbit?” she asked. I lifted my chin. “Where does one go when one dies in Wonderland?”

I smirked, seeing the surge of hope in her face. “To the best part,” I said. “Bright skies. Green fields . . . and lots and lots of tea parties.”

Her face lit up. “With Earl Grey tea, buttered crumpets and strawberry tarts?”

“Of course,” I confirmed. Leaning down, I kissed her lips, and then whispered against them, “Only Earl Grey will ever do.”

I went to pull away, needing to go and face the cunt, to escape the thought of losing Dolly, but she tugged on my arm. She sniffed back a tear. “I love you, Rabbit.” A smile ghosted on her lips. “Maybe even more than Earl Grey tea.”

My heart fucking cracked. “I love you too.” My voice was rough, resonating through my insides. Edging closer, I kissed the back of her hand. “But there is nothing to compare it to, because I have never loved anything else. It has always been you. Only ever you.”

“Rabbit . . .” Dolly whispered, wrapping her arms around my waist. She held on for a few moments, and then she pulled back. Tucking her doll’s head into her belt by its hair, she took her gun in hand. She held it up, slipped her other hand in mine and said, “We’re going to be late.”

On we walked, my cane at the ready. Dolly held her gun up as we approached the dark house. We scoured the ground, waiting for any sign of movement, of threat . . . There was none.

We reached the front door. It was unlocked. We entered the large foyer. It was as deserted as the grounds. Dolly’s hand held mine tight as we searched the rooms. Each one was empty.

A lone door stood at the end of the hallway. We stood before it. Dolly looked to me and cast me a small smile.

A second later I had opened the door. I held my cane up, Dolly readied her gun . . . and sitting before us was large desk, identical to the one in the office of the Earnshaw estate.

And behind that desk was Earnshaw.

He was dressed in a suit. His hair was white where it had once been dark. He was thin where he had once been built . . . and there were two tanks next to him; clear plastic tubes led from one to his nose.

His eyes locked on us, a stand-off.

A handgun lay on his desk, nothing else. Two chairs were positioned opposite him. I darted my eyes around the room.

“Heathan James. I have been expecting you.”

I felt Dolly freeze. I heard her breath stutter into short, quick pants. The King of Hearts looked at her. His face melted, a look of pure adoration gracing his sallow features. “Ellis . . .” he breathed. Tears seemed to build in his eyes. “You look beautiful.” Dolly’s hand began to shake in mine.

“Take a seat.” He gestured with a weak hand to the empty chairs opposite him. My eyes narrowed, waiting for someone to leap out and attack. I expected him to pick up the gun and fire. But his hands lowered unsteadily to his lap, the tubes coming from them tapping on the wooden top.

I took a hesitant step into the office, then another, keeping Dolly behind me in case this was a trap. I expected nothing less. He was smart. Calculated.

I was too.

“Please,” he said, his once deep, commanding voice weak and strained. I sat down. Rather than have Dolly sit on her own, to face the man who should have loved her more than life itself, I pulled her down onto my lap. I kept my cane at my side, ready to fire when the time came. I eyed Dolly’s gun. She had it braced for action.

Then I studied Earnshaw. Bags of medicine hung at his side on metal poles. His skin was pale, and he wheezed when he breathed.

“Lung cancer,” he informed me, clearly noting my interest.

I glared at the fucker, not giving two shits.

“Turns out all those cigars I smoked were bad for me.” He chuckled, then coughed.

I sneered.

Dolly remained silent.

Still.

Earnshaw shifted in his seat, a move that made him hiss in pain. His cheeks reddened with the effort. When he reached the position he wanted, he met my eyes. “They think I only have a couple of months left.”

My heart beat faster at that news. Not because I was happy, but because I wanted us—Dolly and me—to be the ones who killed him. Not cancer. Our bullets and blades. Our payment for what he had done.

“Seems your arrival here was fortuitous,” he said. “Much longer and I would not have been alive.” He smiled, and that was the smile I remembered. The smile that signaled he got off on the pain of children. The one he gave me as he plied me with whiskey. The one he gave me as the Cheshire Cat led me to my bedroom, changing the course of my life forever. The one he gave me when I returned and he passed me off to whichever fucker wanted my ass next.

“I wouldn’t have been here to chat. To tell you why I did what I did.”

Dolly remained silent. She was barely moving. My jaw clenched. “Why?” I asked, hating myself for even giving him the floor.

His stare singed mine. “Because I loved it,” he gloated. I felt the temperature of my blood spike to an all-time high. “Because I really do like to fuck children. Because I like to play with people’s lives. Because life is boring without pleasure . . . and children give me so much pleasure. It’s that simple.”

I breathed. I breathed. I breathed as I restrained myself from fucking killing him right then.

“I have money,” he went on. “I have all I could ever want. Money can buy you anything.” He smiled the thinnest of smiles. “Even you, Heathan James.”

“What?” I said, teeth clenched.

“Your papa,” he said with a tired flick of his hand. “All it took was a few thousand to ensure that if anything happened to him, I would acquire you. I would become your legal guardian.” I felt the color drain from my face. “Only took a few thousand for a desperate man to ensure Mr. James had an unfortunate accident, ending his life, right when his son was ripe for the picking. Age, you see. It counts a lot to men like me, and my colleagues.” He flicked his hand again. “You hold zero appeal to me right now.”

I felt sick as his words sank in. Then his gaze fell on Dolly. She was a statue on my lap. “And Ellis, my sweet, sweet girl.” He beamed a smile at her. I wanted to reach across the table and rip off his predatory head. “My girl, who believed she was Alice. Who paraded around in a pretty blue dress.” He nudged his head at her outfit. “Seems not much has changed.”

I felt Dolly’s legs twitch.

“It was a shame your mother found out about my . . . preferences.” My breathing paused. Every part of Dolly tensed. “I couldn’t let her know that I knew, of course. But like you, she loved her tea. Earl Grey, if I remember correctly.” He looked past us. I turned and saw a picture of Dolly’s mama hanging on the wall by the door. Earnshaw shook his head. “A tiny drop of arsenic in her many cups of tea ensured she would never steal my little girl away from me, like I knew she planned. I had plans for Ellis. I knew what my friends liked, and she was definitely it. They played good games of poker for the privilege of breaking her in.”

He sighed. “The only spanner in the works was you, young Heathan. Your obsession with my daughter.” He shook his head. “If only you hadn’t killed one of my best friends, you would have remained by her side.” He shrugged. “Perhaps she wouldn’t have gone mad. Ellis, my fun little girl, became a deaf-mute.” He flicked his head toward her, sitting statuesque on my lap. “Seems not much has changed there either.” Dolly remained still. I panicked. Had she become repressed again?

Earnshaw took a long wheezy inhale. “I would love to hear how you escaped from the Water Tower, Heathan.” He whistled low. “You and those men you escaped with have pissed off a lot of people. Important people who relied on that place to bury their indiscretions.”

My lip hooked at the corner in disgust. I fucking hated this prick. He laughed when he saw my expression. “Heathan James,” he murmured and laughed again. “You think we are so dissimilar?” He leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “I like to fuck kids. You like to kill. I get hard from their screams. You get hard from your victims’ spilled blood. Our tastes may differ, but we are cut from the same cloth.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I hissed, holding Dolly even tighter.

He smiled victoriously. “You are.” He sat back. “You like the power killing gives you.” He licked his dry lips. “You use your anger to fuel it. I guess you have me to thank for that. All those years of being fucked must have royally pissed you off.”

I swung my cane up, ready to fire, but Earnshaw took hold of his gun and aimed it at me. He opened his mouth, about to say something else, something to make me lose my shit, when a bullet struck him right between the eyes.

Earnshaw’s face froze in shock. His arm fell to the table, taking the gun with it. I flicked my eyes up at Dolly, arms out, her gun still in position from the kill shot.

“Time for tea,” she declared coldly, then slowly lowered her gun. She shrugged. “I got very sick of him talking, Rabbit. He had such bad manners, don’t you think?” She creased her brow and pouted her lips. “You know how I feel about bad manners.”

Dolly jumped from my lap and dusted her hands down her skirt. I watched her, spotting Earnshaw’s blood beginning to pool on the table from the corner of my eye.

I flicked the final card beside his head.

The King of Hearts was no more.

Dolly walked to the wall of pictures next to the door. Her breath hitched as the picture of her mother stared back at her, all long blond hair and blue eyes. She looked just like Dolly.

Dolly’s shaking hands traced over her face. My gut twisted when I saw her swipe a tear from her eye. Then she moved to the picture of Ellis. She must have been only about eight. I remembered her like this. The little girl who sat beside me on the grass, when no one else talked to me. The girl who told me we were friends, when I never had any before.

Dolly laid her hand against Ellis’s smiling face for so long that I rose from my chair. Before I got near, Dolly said, “Ellis has gone.” I froze, mid-step. “Ellis is free . . .” Dolly sighed and turned to me, her hand slipping from Ellis’s face. “She has gone to the part of Wonderland where the skies are bright blue. The grass is green, and there are lots and lots of tea parties.”

Dolly’s eyes fell. When they looked up at me through false lashes, I knew why. She was gauging my reaction. Seeing how I would react to knowing that my little Ellis, the person who lived behind a door in Dolly’s mind, had gone for good.

She wanted to know if Dolly was good enough for me.

I moved toward her and cupped her face. “I’m glad she has gone. I want her to be happy. No more darkness and no more sadness.” I kissed Dolly’s mouth, and she sighed against my lips. “Rabbit has his Dolly; it’s all that matters now.”

The responding smile was blinding.

Dolly looked around the room. “What now, Rabbit?”

“The mission is complete.” I reached into Dolly’s pocket and pulled out her lipstick. “The last one,” I prompted, and Dolly nodded.

She looked about the room. Her eyes fixed on the wall behind where Earnshaw lay dead. Dolly walked behind him and began her scrawl. “SICK FUX,” for the final time, in her favorite pink lipstick . . .

Right below a picture of Ellis sitting in Earnshaw’s lap.

Dolly dropped the half-used tube to the ground. She opened her mouth to say something else, but the howl of police sirens sounded outside.

“Come. We must go,” I said, the pulse in my neck leaping into a sprint.

Dolly giggled in excitement and ran to me. I dragged her from the room to one of the windows. Police cars raced down the road.

“What pretty blue lights!” Dolly said in awe.

Pulling her by the hand, I raced down the stairs. I tried door after door until I found one that led down to a cellar. I knew from the PI’s maps that there was an underground tunnel to the barn. No doubt the way he brought in the batches of kids he’d raped before he got sick.

We raced down to the cellar, closing the door behind us only moments before I heard the police enter the house. Muted voices came from the floors above us. I pulled Dolly through the large cellar until I found a door. I opened it to see a short tunnel. I was about to run through when I realized that it led to the storm cellar.

“Wrong one,” I said and began looking for other doors. My heart pounded faster when I couldn’t find one. Then I saw a large shelving unit. A cobweb clung to the top of it . . . a cobweb that was blowing like there was wind behind it.

The doorway was behind the shelves.

I pulled Dolly toward it and released her hand to start pushing the shelves out of the way. Dolly hummed behind me, dancing on the spot.

A gasp came from the bottom of the stairs.

I whipped around to see a man wearing a cowboy hat. Heart beating wildly, I pushed Dolly behind me and pulled out my cane. But the Ranger wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on Dolly.

Dolly peeked around my waist and looked at him.

He stepped closer, ignoring me, until I blocked his path. Narrowed eyes glared at me . . . and that’s when I saw it. Those eyes. I knew those eyes. Eyes that looked at me with hatred.

“Eddie fucking Smith,” I said and watched his face tense. I looked down at his uniform and smirked. He’d got his wish after all.

Texas Ranger.

“Rabbit?” Dolly whispered from behind me. “Who is this?” She walked around me. Eddie Smith swallowed as he beheld Dolly in her full Alice in Wonderland regalia. As her blue eyes, eyes that he had once loved for many years, locked on him. By his reaction, I was sure that love had yet to fade.

Eddie didn’t speak, just stared. When Dolly looked at me, waiting for me to answer her question, I said the only thing that came to mind. “The Mad Hatter,” I announced, looking at the Stetson on his head. “Dolly, this is the Mad Hatter.” Dolly gasped in excitement, her hands covering her mouth.

Then, meeting Smith’s eyes, I asked, “Question is, what is the Mad Hatter about to do?”