“Except me.”
“For a second, when you tied her to the chair, I thought you were going to burn her alive like Bitten.”
Her jaw locks as she condenses her line of sight. “Plastic melts. The zip ties wouldn’t withstand fire. She’d get away, or she’d scream a lot.” She taps the cap of the pen against the side of the bound notebook.
“She wasn’t dead when we left, but she wasn’t moving.” I gauge her reaction: a slight chin drop creates a gap between her lips. “There was plenty of blood, and I did pass some cops on the way over here.”
Her mouth relaxes, pleased with the situation. After a long pause, she says, “I’m an outlier on your data.”
Truth, but intriguing nonetheless. “How so?”
“You didn’t give me a bullet with a name on it. Just a location. I did the rest.” She rolls her neck back and forth to release the tension.
“Correct, but what about the photos?”
“They were inconclusive.”
“Inconclusive to someone else, but not to you … It led you right toward the person you suspected.”
“If I had suspected Stefanie Frank, I would’ve confronted her a long time ago.”
“Deep down, your brain rationalized you out of your instinct. Maternal instinct begins during pregnancy. It changes your neurological functions to amplify your empathic processes.”
“Talk English.”
“Your lie detector mode is at its best during pregnancy. After becoming a mother, you’re more in tune with external factors.” My hand swirls around my face. “Especially with facial features. It’s all biological.”
She flips to the pages with detailed notes on each subject and sketches of the bullets.
“After pregnancy, the seat of emotion, or the amygdala enlarges. Which interestingly enough is also one of the regions associated with psychopath characteristics.”
“Yeah, real fucking interesting.” She shuts the book with a loud thump and tosses it on the couch. “You chose me because of being pregnant?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you let me go? Why help me during your sessions and then help me ruin my own life?”
“You were too intriguing not to study.”
16
N-this
Eleanor Devero
I touch the charm on my necklace for strength and clutch it in my hands, squeezing it tight. I’m trapped in his shed, with no way out. Going along with his story is the only chance I have of getting out alive, or I can piss him off, and Kace can put his ass in jail for murdering me.
The worst thing about all of this? Nolan’s right.
We got nothing to lock him up. Not even the people like Coralee Mitchell and Bitten Senior are willing to say something negative about the Bullet Man.
“So, you brought me here—to wherever the fuck this place is—because I’m intriguing?”
The scowl on his face … I hit a nerve. “This is my mother’s favorite place.”
“You’re a mamma’s boy?” I chide, as I run my fingers through the notebooks. “A serial killing mamma’s boy.” The book in my hand belongs to Veronica Mills, a woman, I assume, is his mother. I hold it up between us as I stare at the romance cover. “Does she know you’re using her dusty shithole to sequester women and store evidence?”
He rubs at his jaw and massages the skin between it before rushing for me and snatching the book from my hands. “Do not talk about my mother,” he growls in a calmly unnerving way, while replacing the book back in the exact same position I took it from and aligning the spine with the others.
The lack of dust on the shelf, as opposed to the couch and the window sills, even the small ledge of the doorframe, alerts me. This was her shrine.
“When did she die?” I take a chance and soften my tone, nurturing his past out of him.
“A long time ago.”
I glance around, looking for evidence and spot a glass jar on the far end of the corner. I reach for it and hold it in my hand. “She was shot?” Two casings rattle around inside the bottom of the container, jarring his attention. His fascination with bullets is starting to make sense now.
He softly takes it from me and replaces it on the shelf. “Don’t touch things.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Please.”
“Did you find the person who shot her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No,” he answers truthfully and takes a seat on the edge of the desk. “My father did.”
“Your first victim?”
“My father didn’t know the man he shot was my mother’s killer.” He opens a drawer, grabs a picture frame of a newspaper article, and hands it to me. The headline reads: Man Dies Saving Genius Son. After my mom was murdered, I went into foster care until they could find my father.”
Sadness encircles the air as he stares at the picture of his father. A quick glance at the article gives me the important facts. By sixteen, he not only had watched his mother die but also his father.
“My father owned a supermarket, some franchise that’s gone out of business since, just a few towns over. I graduated high school a couple of years early and took college courses at night, so Dad gave me my first job to occupy my days and keep me out of trouble.”
“IQ of 162,” I read aloud.
He gives me a lopsided grin and cocks his head. “I could’ve graduated earlier, but the school psychologists didn’t want me to miss out on a ‘normal’ high school experience. Turns out, not everyone likes smart people.”
“They feel intimidated,” I offer, connecting with him. “You were bullied?”
“Emotionally mostly. Like you. It would have been worse had I not gotten contacts, grown into some good genes, and clear skin.”
Not the first good-looking killer in the world. We share a sympathetic moment, where we eye each other, not as doctor and patient but two people with more similarities than I’d like to admit.
“You think we’re alike,” I point out with a little more understanding. As much as I want to find something to hate about Nolan Mills, I can’t evade the truth. Maybe that’s why I trusted him so easily… because we both have similar stories. All his subjects do.
“Does that bother you, Eleanor?”
“Stop shrinking me. I think we bypassed that point in our relationship when you broke into my house.”
“Relationship?” He rubs at the back of his neck. “And I did not break into your house. The backdoor was open.”
“Did you get revenge on your bullies?” I ask, mimicking his questions during our sessions.
He shakes his head before I even finish my sentence. “No. I already told you, I have never killed anyone.”
“But people have died for you?” I hold the frame up. “Your mother and your father?”
“There are good people in the world, Eleanor. Then there are bad ones.” He swallows and nods his head toward the picture frame. “The summer I had been working at the register. Dad was in his office, working on inventory and ordering stock while I handled the front. Two hooded figures came in. One ordered me to empty the registers while the other checked the aisles.