Simon Says_. Walk (Kate Morgan #6)(36)
Author: Dale Mayer

 

A few hours later, the dreams hit him. He thrashed in bed, before his eyelids popped open. As if a complete switch from day to night, he saw around him a weird glow.

 

He wasn’t even sure where he was, and it took a moment to realize that he was stuck, caught up in a vision. He hesitated and then tried to sink deeper into the vision to get answers, at least some information, something that would help them to sort out the most recent nightmare killer cases that had engulfed them. And yet there was nothing.

 

Then he saw dice flying on a craps table, poker cards hitting a dealer’s hands, horses on a race track, greyhounds running. He tried to concentrate and to get deeper into the vision to figure out what all this gambling had to do with two recent murders, and then it hit him hard; it wasn’t about gambling. It was about games. It was all about games, and that’s what this killing spree was about—games.

 

Somebody had gotten bored with some game and had decided to up the ante.

 

Simon woke with a start, hearing a weird voice around him. And then he noted Kate, who stood silently to the side of the bed, looking down at him warily, the covers pulled off him. She was wild-eyed. They were both nude, and he was the only one lying on the bed. “What happened?” he asked her.

 

“You started thrashing and kicking, getting caught up in the blanket, so I took it off you, but that didn’t seem to help much.”

 

“It was the dream,” he said, as he sank back into the mattress. “That crazy-ass dream. I am sorry. Are you hurt?”

 

“Nah, I am good. Anything useful?” she asked in an offhand way, but her gaze was intense, as if she understood perfectly well what she was asking.

 

He gave her a lopsided smile. “All I saw were all different kinds of gambling,” he replied, his voice tired and coming from afar. “Well, at first, I thought it was all about gambling, as I was being shown games of chance—so a craps table, a poker table, various things such as that. And then it came to me. That vision wasn’t so much about gambling as it was about games.”

 

She nodded at that. “Games. So what does that even mean to you—or to the killer?”

 

With a note of anger threading through his voice, Simon stated, “He’s bored, and he’s decided to up the ante. He has decided to create his own games, to write his own rules. And I am afraid it’ll get way worse.”

 

*

 

It was all Simon’s fault. It was easy to pin everything back to that beginning. How it wasn’t fair, but it had happened anyway. So many things in life weren’t fair, and yet no one could do absolutely anything about it. It was infuriating. At the same time, no real way to change it. Staring at the screen, the killer looked down at the keyboard, trying to figure out exactly what words to type. The killer’s fingers moved automatically, and the words appeared on the screen in front.

 

Simon’s at fault. It’s Simon’s fault. If Simon hadn’t done what he’d done, it would be different. Life would be different. Life would be happy. There would be joy. There would be romance. There would be … love. It was all Simon’s fault.

 

And with that, the killer went back to the notes that he’d gathered on Simon’s life, trying to sort through what else needed to be done. The killer was on point, yet this emptiness was inside, this longing for what could never be, for what had long since passed, even if it had been ten years ago. And now recently, yet again, it seemed so unfair. The killer closed down the screen, got up, and walked over to the window to stare out into the darkness, knowing a teeming city was below, a city full of opportunities, a city full of possibilities, and such hope and dreams and so much more than anything and everything the killer wanted.

 

And yet here, among them, were no answers. The killer grabbed a bulky coat and stepped out into the night, calling out, “Be back in a few minutes.” The killer took several deep breaths, straightening up and standing taller in the evening air. Outside, the killer wandered, big and unafraid, knowing that most people would avoid someone of this size alone, and that made a huge difference. And the killer walked tall, with an attitude. Of course the coat helped, as did the attitude.

 

The killer smiled, then lifted up the collar against his neck, trying to get distance from the growing knot of pain inside, that … nudge that told the killer to act, needed to do this all over again. The killer didn’t really want to, but some people needed to be taught a lesson. So, if nobody else was willing to do it, that fell to the killer. It also fell to the killer because of Simon. Simon had changed everything. If Simon had left well enough alone, then revenge wouldn’t be needed.

 

It’s all your fault, Simon.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning Kate headed to the office. She drove directly from his place, grateful that she had followed his suggestion a while back to keep at least one change of clothes at his home. That way, should she stay over, she wasn’t forced to wear the same clothes to the office again. And now freshly showered and changed and feeling a whole lot better, she mulled over his vision from the night before. It didn’t help much in the sense that they already knew it was a game. They’d earlier been told it was a game. So absolutely nothing about that perspective was a new insight. However, the vision hinted that boredom was an element to this.

 

That part was different.

 

It boggled the mind to think that somebody would kill people because of boredom of all things. It took a special mentality to even get into this mind-set and play it willfully. And, if it was a game, how come Simon wasn’t given any rules? How come he wasn’t invited to play? Why was he only shown the results of whatever it was he was losing?

 

That’s the part that got to Kate. It’s not as if Simon had been invited into this game, and then she realized that Simon wasn’t invited at all because Simon wasn’t playing the game. Whoever this asshole was, that was his game. His game was the whole of it; his creation was absolute.

 

It was up to Simon to figure out what the game was before somebody else died. It’s not as if this were a straight-up kidnapping, and he was supposed to deliver $50,000 or $500,000 someplace. This was all about a game that somebody else was playing, and the challenge was for Simon to stop it before it went too far. Of course Simon had failed because he hadn’t even realized what game they were playing. Simon wasn’t told the rules because it wasn’t his game. It was this asshole’s make-believe scenario, forcing everybody else to just react.

 

The game was rigged. The game was one-sided. The game was torture, then death.

 

As she walked into the office, Rodney looked up at her and smiled. “You look better.”