Hidden Chaos (The Chaos #3)- Keta Kendric Page 0,2
incredible sense of power and confidence she was instilling in me. The reality of my current situation had me calling on the values she planted that had somehow taken root deep within me.
This specific test was the only way I would know if I had what it took to defend the person I was being trained to protect—me. My heart hammered fast, thumping out a trembling beat that rattled my ribcage, but I held steady, not letting what I felt inside affect my focus. Sweat seeped from my pores, the wet droplets being drawn out by the sun blasting down on me.
The air had stilled, and I held my breath to match its deadly calm. At first, I fought my keepers, giving them hell for the horrific lessons I’d once rejected vehemently, but I eventually learned to endure them.
“No matter how hard something gets, remember you are harder, tougher, and smarter. No matter how bad something hurts, you can overcome the pain because your mind holds the ultimate power, not your body.” The statements had been branded onto my brainstem, repeated by my mother so often, I remembered them like she still spoke them.
Now, here I stood, letting my mother’s words be the confidence booster I needed to persevere. Even while deep in my thoughts, the pistol in my hand had never wavered.
“You saw the tapes, girl,” Malin, one of my keepers spoke and pointed a stiff finger at the man’s head, keeping her arm aligned with the height at which I maintained my steady aim. “He’s not only a member of the organization that threatens your very existence, but he also kidnaps unsuspecting young girls, ties them up, and tortures them to satisfy his sick fantasies.”
I was being reminded of what the middle-aged, seemingly normal Caucasian man in front of me did to girls just like me. His wife and two children were a cover to hide his favorite pastime of murder.
My keepers set it up so that I had bumped into him at the library. Unaware of his background, I had fallen for his pleasant charm and became one of his victims. Thankfully, I was the bait needed to catch him in the act of doing what he loved, and it was a lesson I needed to learn in order to see the monster unveil himself.
Glasses, low-cut hair, decent body and looks, he was a man who worked, took care of his wife and children, cut the yard, and pruned the hedges. He hosted barbeques and invited the neighbors and went on double dates with his and his wife’s friends. He would never make the suspect list because he didn’t fit the profile, murdered every victim, and covered every track. He was a demon who hid in plain sight, uplifted by his church, and adored by his family.
My gaze locked on his dark gray horror-filled eyes, and I focused my aim, remembering the terror running through my body like wet fire when he tied me to the bed in his hidden cabin and wheeled out a table filled with cutting instruments he had planned to use on me.
The sounds around me began to fade into the background and my heart rate slowed to an obedient thump. The man’s naked body jerked against the fat hairy rope binding his arms and legs to the thick wooden chair he was seated in. His erratic movements, begging eyes, and the strained groans he released were followed up by pleading words that fell on deaf ears.
I released one final breath, allowing my lungs to expel most of the oxygen before I squeezed the metal trigger and observed the impact of the damage caused by my split-second decision.
His head exploded, the front intact, with a small hole while most of the cerebral content splattered all over the target paper attached to a flat wooden panel behind him. He was staged in one of the outside shooting ranges where I trained. I had been firing off rounds at him for hours, refreshing my training while my keepers gave me pointers.
My task now that the test was completed was to amble closer to the target in order to check my stats without allowing my emotions of the deed to interfere with my concentration. The loud drips of blood and brain matter tapped out a steady beat as it fell in thick clumps to the ground. His body jerked involuntarily, revealing the pulses of energy trapped inside were not fully extinguished.