My fist sticks the punching bag hard, and the bag wobbles sideways. I catch it and start my routine again, my mind grasping at any distraction to prevent the one thought that only allowed me a few hours of sleep.
Having my suspicions confirmed brought on the nightmare, but this time, the faces of my revenge targets made cameos.
I take aim on the bag and lose myself for half an hour of intense focus. My wrapped knuckles take a beating as I visualize Alex’s face as the bag. I see the moment so clearly in the dark forest, when I tried to escape and he blocked me with surprisingly skilled Jiu-jitsu moves. The shock I felt at his betrayal.
Not just the overall betrayal of the abduction and invasion of my person—but the duplicity, the expert way in which he masked his life into the ultimate lie to mislead me.
I groan and hit the bag harder, working out my aggression, which I never seem to work all out. It feels like a constant, irritating itch beneath my skin. As I land a fast strike to the bag, the music mutes as my phone dings with a notification.
I hold the bag, pulling in labored breaths to steady my heart rate. I remove an earbud and glance over at my tote. My phone lights up with an alert. I slip off my gloves and remove my ear pods before I swipe the notification open.
A prickle of dread touches the back of my neck. I recognize the name on the alert: Reilly Stafford.
Reilly was one of my first jobs. He was a really bad guy who more than deserved the revenge I doled out to him on behalf of my client.
Now he’s dead.
His body was discovered behind a liquor store. Wallet and money missing. No shoes.
Twelve stab wounds to the torso.
A frantic laugh slips past my lips. I mutter a curse and rip the tape off my hands.
With most of my attention given to confirming Alex was even alive, I didn’t stop to process the fact that he’d make the connection between me and Ericson’s murder.
Or what it could mean if he figured it out.
Alex is no longer hiding. He’s calling me out. He wants me to know it’s him picking off my targets. Every single one has had the same MO as Ericson’s murder; it’s a blatant message right to me—his twisted way of telling me he knows.
So what is this to him…foreplay?
Some kind of warped hide-and-seek kink?
I drop down on the bench and shove my fingers into my hair, elbows pressed to my knees. I stare at the tiled floor, gaze unseeing.
Before, I rarely had doubts. No, I never had doubts. I always knew what my marks were thinking and how to access them. Hell, I’ve stalked stalkers before and set sophisticated traps for their revenge.
I want to believe I can read Alex, that I’ve come to understand his sick, demented brain—but the truth is, my rampaging emotions make me second-guess him, us…everything.
He was always unhinged. But he had a purpose. His belief system—no matter how flawed—kept him from losing complete touch with reality. I could always see a grain of sanity in his eyes even as he struggled with what he believed and his moral compass.
But what purpose does he have now? Why is he doing this?
And then I decide I don’t care.
Trying to unravel the workings of a madman’s brain is a descent right into madness itself.
All I know for sure is Alex is making a scene and drawing attention. He’s not even hiding the bodies. He wants me to know.
But I’m not the only one who can draw comparisons.
A string of murders of wealthy financial advisors and rich pricks with the same methodology denotes a possible connection. It’s a giant red flag—one that will damn sure be investigated.
I don’t want the authorities to catch Alex.
He’s mine.
I can’t wait for him to come to me.
I push off the seat and grab my bag, heading to the locker room to shower and change. I strip my clothes and stand under the lukewarm spray, telling myself I’ll get used to showering in a facility.
With three of my previous targets murdered, the detectives might even have already declared it a serial killer case. That will bring on more heat. Eventually, they’ll narrow their scope enough that one of my identities will pop up on their radar.
Someone will come asking questions.
I constantly ask myself what Blakely would do. I need her fearless mentality right now, that clear-headed focus that cuts right through all the emotional bullshit to find the answer.
I turn off the shower and towel down, knowing that, even if there was a way to stall, I just don’t have any more time.
The longer I have these feelings, the longer they sync with my mind and personality. I’m no scientist, but somehow I figure time will only make it harder to reverse the damage.
It might even be too late now.
Regardless, I have to try. There was a moment, one single instant where I thought Alex could see reason. He let me go. He burned his experiment to ash. He admitted his guilt over the lives he’d taken.
There was a moment in that dark room when sanity shown through.
I don’t know what’s happened to him since, but an unhinged person doesn’t strategize and execute a plan of this capability. Either his actions back at the cabin were a part of a larger scheme, or something inside him has changed.
As soon as the thought strikes, I breathe a curse. I’ve been so obsessed with finding him, with correcting my own brain, that I didn’t even think of him making the connection between Ericson’s murder and his treatment.
Back at Devil’s Peak, I convinced Alex that he had failed—that I was still the same unfeeling psychopath he’d brought to that cabin in the woods. His failure, coupled with my rejection, sent him over the edge. At least, that’s how I took his clock-smashing, cabin fire meltdown.
Maybe he truly wanted to set me free. To let me believe he died in the fire.
Until the news of Ericson’s murder hit.
What I didn’t count on was his deduction that—with that fucking scientist brain of his—the reason why it had happened in the first place.
It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t self-defense.
A heightened moment of uncontrollable emotion took hold of me, and the only outlet was to put a switchblade into the vile bully in an alley.
An action taken in the heat of the moment.
Psychopaths don’t commit crimes of passion.
I leave the studio with a new trepidation chasing me through the city.
London was wrong. Alex won’t find me; he’s already found me. He’s been watching me this whole time, studying me, analyzing his subject.
Every time I felt eyes on me and questioned my sanity, he was there.
He’s been trying to recreate the outcome and prove it was a success by subjecting the highest profile psychopaths on my revenge roster to the procedure.
He’s been so close to me this entire time.
And he’s been leaving bodies in his wake. He’s been failing. He can’t replicate his outcome with me.
If I want him to show himself, I have to force him out of the shadows.
I have to threaten the one thing he desires the most. His successful subject. His proof the treatment worked.
Me.
7
Physics
Blakely
I wonder if this is how Alex found me.
Did he first build a database of psychopaths and narrow his selection pool by parameters like physical attributes, difficulty of abduction, fuck-ability? Did he stalk me for days or weeks before he followed me to that night club with a whole plan already in place?