Page 16

Max

The feeling wouldn’t go away, that prickling, stomach-knotting sense of being watched.

It wasn’t paranoia, it wasn’t me losing my edge.

It was real.

When I got home, I found another black rose on my doorstep.

I finally texted Dave, thanking him for the roses but telling him it was a little weird that he just kept leaving them, one at a time, on my doorstep.

’I haven’t left any roses.

Game for round two?’

I swiftly blocked him after that.

But if he wasn’t leaving them, who the fuck was? Could it be him, the guy from the café? Great, so now I had two men on my radar, two men to put my focus on.

One I had been watching for weeks, the other had been watching me.

One was a man I had every intention of killing; the other was a man I wasn’t sure I should be afraid of – or intrigued by.

Either way, one of them wouldn’t be walking away from this.

Chris Whitmore was exactly the kind of man I hunted.

Rich, powerful, untouchable.

His ex-girlfriend had disappeared five months ago, no body, no evidence, only rumours.

And then, two weeks ago, another woman – Rachel – a bartender at Mitzie’s, had accused him of drugging her.

The case had disappeared overnight, that was enough for me.

I had stolen his case file from work two weeks ago and had spent every night since reading every vile accusation, every whispered testimony.

And just like the ones before him, he had money, which made him think he was invincible.

But unlike the other men I had killed, this guy made no fucking effort to hide his behaviour.

He frequented Mitzie’s on Fridays, always left with a different woman, always making sure that she was too drunk to protest.

That would be his downfall though, because this Friday? He’d be leaving with me.

I tapped my nails against my desk, eyes flicking from Chris’s file to my phone.

I had spent three nights trying to dig up information on the guy from the café – the one with the dark, dangerous eyes and the smirk that sent a shiver down my spine.

Nothing.

No social media, no records, no trail, not that I had much to go off of.

But I liked to consider myself quite the expert at finding people on social media.

I’d done it for Lara a few times when she was speaking to those kinds of guys who claimed they didn’t do social media, but it actually just meant they had a whole other life.

Normally, a whole wife and family that they didn’t want her to know about.

Only this time I didn’t have a name to search, just his face.

I scrolled through friends pages, looking at their friends, their friends, friends.

But he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

That was impossible, you couldn’t just not have social media in this day and age, damn, even an old profile would’ve been helpful.

He didn’t give me law enforcement vibes, I knew how to spot a cop a mile off, Tony taught me the signs to look for, how they never play it cool, no matter how hard they tried.

But he had the same presence, same subtle surveillance energy, that told me he wasn’t just a random man that randomly turned up to my favourite café one day.

Every.

Damn.

Day.

And that book, that fucking book.

The Book Of Azrael.

Out of all the book series in the world, he just so happened to be reading the one that had been recently added to my favourites list? I wasn’t stupid, this wasn’t coincidence.

I didn’t know why, but I just knew that it wasn’t.

It fucking wasn’t, I wasn’t going crazy, I wasn’t letting my paranoia set in.

I glanced back over at the file, then back to my phone.

Two men, two entirely different problems, yet I only had come up with one solution.

One needed to die, but the other? I wasn’t sure yet.

When I walked into Melinda’s Café after work, I didn’t look at him right away, but I felt him.

That familiar pull at the back of my mind, the weight of someone’s gaze just lingering long enough to make my skin itch, the hair on the back of my neck began to prickle.

I ordered my coffee, offering small talk to Mel about life and Jez, took my seat, and waited.

Sure enough, just like every fucking time, he turned a page in his book and glanced up at me.

Not too fast, not too slow, it was calculated.

I inhaled, deciding it was time to be a little reckless, I couldn’t let this keep eating at me.

So I met his gaze, really met it, and something in my belly stirred, like butterflies fluttering around chaotically in a little glass jar.

His dark brown eyes, framed by lashed I could only wish I had, didn’t waver.

They held me in place, deep and unreadable.

But I didn’t look away, and neither did he.

Checkmate.

By the time I left the café, I had a plan.

I didn’t need to waste my time looking into him anymore, that clearly wasn’t working.

I needed to provoke him, see if he was truly watching me, and if he was watching me, he’d be watching me Friday night.

I’d be at Mitzie’s, I would be baiting Chris, and if this guy was what I thought he was, which at this point, was a down right stalker, he’d be there too, and that would tell me everything that I needed to know.

The thought of having a stalker should have scared me, worried me even.

But there was something about him that had me feeling something quite the opposite of fear.

I was excited, I was intrigued.

What the fuck was wrong with me.

The days leading up to Friday night felt different.

I had planned kills before, I had mapped out escapes, cleaned up blood, and helped disposed of bodies with Tony like clockwork.

But this time? I wasn’t just counting down the days to a kill, I was counting down the days to see if he would appear.

The man with the relentless eyes who invaded my life, my thoughts.

Lara was relentless.

“You’re seriously bailing on me again?”

She flopped onto my couch, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

“It’s been weeks since we went out, and you refuse to do it again, to go out and actually live your life.”

I sipped my wine, keeping my face neutral.

I couldn’t tell her that I actually did have plans, not my plans anyway, she would never understand.

I love Lara, and trust her with 99% of my life, but not that side.

Nobody could ever know about that side, except for me and Tony.

“I’m just not in the mood, Lar.”

She groaned, “You were in the mood the other weekend!”

I smirked, “That was my birthday, different circumstances.

And if I remember correctly, you didn’t actually give me much of a choice in that either.”

Lara rolled her eyes, grabbing a handful of chips from the bowl between us.

“Come on, Max, you need to have fun.

Get laid again or at least pretend to have fun for once.

Life is more than just work and Melinda’s café.”

If only she knew, I had plenty of fun, it just didn’t look like hers.

Instead of flirting, drinking and fucking random men, my kind of fun involved hunting my prey for a week or two, then binding him to a chair and making him confess for his vile sins.

It included watching the light die from his eyes, knowing that he could ever hurt another woman again.

“I'll make it up to you,”

I promised, raising my pinky finger.

“Soon, I swear it.”

Lara eyed me suspiciously, hooking her pinky in mine.

“Fine, but if you abandon me for your sweats and crime documentaries for much longer, I’m dragging you out by force.”

I laughed, “Deal.”

She had no idea that I was the person who should be in a crime documentary.

I had never been the kind of person to look forward to mornings, but today was different, because today it was finally Friday.

I stepped into Melinda’s Café and was instantly greeted by the comforting scent of coffee, and the warm, familiar voice of Mel.

“Morning, honey,”

she said, wiping down the counter.

“The usual?”

I nodded, glancing around the café instinctively, and there he was, sitting in his usual seat, still reading that fucking book.

My stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the fact that I was desperate to figure him out.

Why was he watching me? Why was he here every time I was? And why the hell did I like it? I didn’t even realise I had been staring at him until Mel chuckled.

My eyes snapped back to her. “What?”

Mel leaned against he counter, smirking. “Connor.”

I blinked. “What?”

“The guy you’ve been not-so-subtly eying every day,”

she teased, sliding the coffee across the counter.

“His name is Connor.

He’s a quiet one, but real polite.

Had a few conversations with him.”

My fingers curled around my coffee cup, my heart racing.

Finally.

A name, a goddamn name to go off.

“Did he –?”

I cleared my throat, forcing a calm casualness.

“Did he say anything about me?”

Mel’s smirk widened to a downright grin.

“Actually, yeah.

He has asked about you once or twice.”

My pulse spiked, I knew it.

I should’ve felt alarmed, my suspicions were slowly being confirmed, he was watching me.

But I didn’t feel even an ounce of concern, only pure exhilaration, and slightly smug about the fact I was right.

“He noticed you looking at him,”

she continued.

“And well, I might’ve told him your name first, because I caught him looking at you before you even noticed him.”

That stopped me cold.

Before I noticed him? He’d been watching me before I noticed?

I masked my thoughts with a casual sip of my coffee. “And?”

Mel shrugged.

“He just asked general stuff.

If you came here often, what you liked to drink.

Didn’t seem like a creep about it, just… curious.”

I swallowed, stealing another glance at him.

He looked unbothered, completely at ease.

His eyes fixed on his book, as if he wasn’t sitting just a few feet away and driving me absolutely insane.

I turned back to Mel, keeping my expression unreadable, “Good to know.”

The rest of the day felt like slow torture.

I went through the motions at work, filing away cases, half-listening to office gossip, ignoring the occasional texts from Lara asking what I was up to.

My mind was already at Mitzie’s, already on Chris.

On Connor.

Even with a first name I couldn’t find him on social media, if Mel hadn’t mentioned him, I’d start believing he was a figment of my imagination.

Would he show up? Would he follow me? Would he interfere? Fuck.

What if he interfered? I wanted to see what he’d do, but he couldn’t cost me this kill, I’d been tracking Chris carefully, ensuring he would be exactly where I needed him to be.

I wanted to push Connor to the edge, see how much longer he could hold this distance, but I didn’t want him stopping me from having Chris at my mercy.

By the time 3pm rolled around, I was out the door.

I loved early finish Fridays.

I went straight home, missing my stop at Melinda’s, took a shower, and slid into something a little different.

A dark red dress, dark enough that under certain lighting, it looked black.

It clung to my curves, accentuating my ass and my breasts.

A little flashier than what I usually wore, but this wasn’t just about catching Chris’s eye, this was about seeing how closely Connor was watching.

I stared at myself in the mirror, swiping on the deep red lipstick, a colour I knew he had been paying attention to.

I saw the way his eyes slid to the lipstick stains I left on my coffee cups, the way his eyes would linger on my lips just a little too long.

My mind drifted, a warmth starting to coil in my belly at the thought of Connor, at the thought of him smudging my lipstick, seeing it smeared across his mouth, his neck. His co –.

I blinked, looking at my reflection in the mirror.

What the fuck was wrong with me? I finished getting ready, ignoring the blush that had crept cross my cheeks.

Wait… where’s my second lipstick? I always had two in the bathroom.

I looked around the bathroom, opening drawers, cupboards.

Nothing.

What the fuck? Had Lara taken it the last time she came over?

I shot her a quick text:

‘Hey, just cleaning up my bathroom and noticed one of my lipsticks is missing.

Did you take it you thieving little shit?’

I spritzed on a little perfume, ignoring that my panties weren’t entirely dry anymore after my unhinged, perverse thoughts of Connor.

My phone buzzed, the screen lighting up with a response from Lara:

‘No, I did not, you cheeky bitch.

And you’re cleaning your bathroom? What a fucking wild Friday night, grandma.’

Then where the fuck had it gone? I laughed at Lara’s text, putting my phone in my purse, sliding its strap onto my shoulder.

A wild Friday night indeed, she had no idea.

Time to go play.