Page 54 of From Hell

“Fine, I’ll take a stack.” I hate waste, but I should try and eat something.

She sighs and writes it down. Dad orders his poached eggs and bacon and waits for the server to leave before furrowing his brow at me so deeply that I feel like he knows exactly what I’ve been up to. Maybe it’s exhaustion making me paranoid. And the fact that when I lie everyone knows it, apparently.

To avoid Dad’s gaze, I glance at the paper next to him on the table, left open where he was reading it. It’s the same headline as out front. Dad is a missing persons detective, so he has a reason to check on what the press says, even if he tries to avoid the media because they like to twist the facts. My eyes scan the article a bit more, catching the names of the missing Forbes men—Beau Haden-Callister and Geoffery Bankes. Not Henry Wickham, because I’ve just crossed his face off my killing board, so no one knows he’s missing yet.

I don’t even know where he is.

A sudden restlessness takes hold, and my heart thuds in my chest like an internal alarm, screaming a warning at me.

Someone took Henry.

I’d forgotten for a few blissful moments.

I calm my frayed nerves by sipping my coffee. The hot liquid scalds my tongue, clearing my head.

“How have you been?” Dad asks. I hear him like I’m underwater.

I force down another mouthful of coffee, the words I want to say burning my tongue like bile. Sometimes, a confession floats just underneath the surface, and I want to blurt out—I killed those men,but I always catch it in time so that it sticks in the back of my throat, making my eyes water.

“Fine.” The word comes out slowly, like sticky toffee on my tongue. Sickly sweet and a lie to boot. What happened to me keeps the flames of injustice roaring deep down. It drives me to the edge, threatening to consume me if I’m not careful—a tightrope balancing act of good and evil. I used to be good, and now I’m teetering on damned. Killing rapists and murderers is…

…the only way I can survive.

Coming clean will hurt not just me but everyone around me.

“Your mum says you’re not returning her calls,” Dad grunts, closing the paper so I have to look at him, filling the silence between us so I don’t have to.

I give him a daughterly smile. “I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy to call your mother?”

“I went to her party.”

“She said you went home early without saying goodbye.” He squints at me. “She said you were with some fellow?”

Oh no. I’m not talking about my love life with my dad. “I’ll pop by the hospital and see Fiona soon. I promise.”

He frowns, not liking that I call my mother by her first name, but ultimately, that seems to stop him in his tracks because he nods and drinks the black-as-tar-looking liquid in his mug. No sugar. No creamer. Much too bitter for my taste.

“So what’s new?” I gesture to the paper in front of him, changing the subject. “Any interesting cases?” Also. I can’t help myself.

Dad’s tired hazel eyes meet mine. “Those lads are still missing.”

Missing. Not dead—the bodies haven’t been found.

Yet.

It grates me that my father calls them lads like I’ve murdered a trio of Cub Scouts. They’re not men. They’re monsters. He’s forgotten what they did to Molly that night, even if they denied it. They had alibis, so they were never suspects. Disgust fills me with the thought of what they did to her and got away with, what they did to women after her. It sickens me to the core. Every time I close my eyes, I see snapshots of that night, like a sick, twisted horror movie.

No, don’t think about it.

“Chester said you’re on the list to see him.”

I blink back at my dad like I’m waking from a horrible dream, and then it comes rushing back. Chester is Dad’s old friend who governs HMP Hanbury. I made an appointment to visit the man they caught seven years ago claiming to be the West London Ripper. Chester must have told my dad.

“I have questions,” I choke out.

Dad shakes his head. “Still? Don’t you think it’s time you moved on?”