Page 152 of Obsession

“Do I what?”

Playing with the soft curls behind his left ear, I meet his gaze, rubbing the strands between my finger and thumb. “The news. Do you watch them?”

Frowning, he opens his mouth to reply, but before he can get a word out, the pen in my hand—the same one I spotted in the center console—is rammed into his windpipe. He chokes, surprise flickering across his face. I cock my head, watching the shock morph into fear.

“The ending in my book goes a little something like this,” I explain. “The reporter falls in love with a condemned serial killer who breaks out of prison and kills the men who hurt the female as a child. He even kills her brother, when he turns out to beyet another monster. But then he disappears, and the reporter realizes she has to play him at his own game.”

He’s soft inside me now, and his choking intensifies, blood staining his tanned skin red where the pen protrudes, like a candle in a cake.

I continue, playing with the collar of his suit jacket. “My brother taught me something very important. Do you care to know what? He taught me the importance of radical acts to make people notice you.” Shrugging, I run my fingers through his hair, lingering at his nape. “There’s only one man I want to notice me. One man who thought he could just run away. I’ve tried everything to find him, but that man knows how to hide. Do you know what he can’t hide from, though? What none of us can hide from?”

I finger the pen, feeling the wood jump beneath my touch when he swallows. “Himself.”

Closing my hand around the pen, I yank it out.

Blood sprays over my throat and chest, warm and wet and coppery. I stab him again and again, gripping his hair tightly to hold his head in place while I let loose on his exposed neck, littering it in wounds.

I don’t know when his life slips through my fingers or when he stops struggling. It doesn’t matter. I keep going until exhaustion burns my limbs, and my anger morphs into broken sobs.

Covered in blood, I press my ear to his chest and clutch his soaked suit jacket, fighting to breathe through the rippling pain in my chest. Outside, the rain comes down heavier on the roof.

I don’t know my place in this world. I’ve killed before, but something always held me back from the darkness inside me.

Something made me pause.

But that was then, and now is now.

There’s no denying I’m a newborn lamb, clutching a corpse, wondering what the hell it will take to get Robbie’s attention.

But this should do the trick, if anything. After all, this is my third roadside kill, and it takes three homicides to be classed as a serial killer. Three kills to get headline news.

Well, scoot over Robbie Hammond. There’s a new serial killer in town.

The intrusive thought that maybe he has fled the country and won’t read the news enters my mind, but I force it back down as I pick up my pants and underwear from the footwell. No, he hasn’t left. He’s waiting and watching somewhere. I know it.

When I’m dressed—after wrestling to get my clothes back on in the confined space—I dig a single playing card out of my pocket. It’s crumpled from hours inside my jeans, but it adds to the charm.

After sliding off the used condom, I place the card down on top of the dead man’s soft dick and cock my head, staring at the Queen of Hearts—my calling card in the world of serial killers.

Theoneconnecting evidence that will send me to death row one day if they catch me. All the dead men had a queen card on their dick because that’s what will get me headlines.

Headlines that Robbie will read, knowing my darkness matches his, knowing I’m not hiding anymore, knowing I fucked someone else to forget him.

And if I know him at all, he won’t be able to stay away after he scents blood.

Robbie is nothing if not territorial, and this act of defiance will undoubtedly enrage the monster inside him when he catches sight of my red flag.

60

SAVANNAH

Sweat clings to my skin, and strands of hair stick to my neck as I throw back my apple shot. I slam it down on the bar top, and Louis—at least that’s what I think his name is—sniffs his, pulling a face.

“Don’t be a wuss,” I laugh.

Louis made the mistake of chatting me up at the bar shortly after I arrived.

While I don’t deny he’s attractive, and my age, he doesn’t carry the same irresistible darkness Robbie shrouds himself in. The kind of darkness I have come to crave and miss.