Page 12 of Only for Him

In every reflection, Serena’s earrings glint dully.

Professionalism dictates that I imagine MacDougal in here, naked and sweating. But right now, professionalism is thelastthing on my mind. Because the only thing I can imagine ismyself.

Not as homicide detective Giselle Cantiano.

But as a nameless murderer with glacier eyes.

If I were you, where would I have stepped? Where would I have waited? Where would I have hidden?

My mind wanders too far, until I’m seeing myself through someone else’s eyes and imagining him standing right where I’m standing right now.

And just like last night in my dreams, all I can see is blue.

Captain Russo and I make our way down to the bedroom past a series of locked doors. There’s the familiar buzz of crime scene chatter. Evidence techs in paper booties, a photographer clicking away, and a small, bespectacled man hovers over the corpse.

The body is exactly like the photos. But no printout can ever prepare you for the full, live-color obscenity.

The mattress, once white, is now mostly red. His skin is mapped with tiny, precise incisions. The only major wound is the one where his dick used to be.

And there it is.

TO DETECTIVE CANTIANO.

The message on his chest is tidier than any tattoo I’ve ever seen. The blood in the letters has dried, turning rust at the edges. And with every second I spend staring at it, I can’t help but feel like someone is watching me.

The forensics specialist, Arata, looks up when Russo and I walk in.

“Vocal cords were severed first.” He jumps right to business, pointing to the throat and the neat, surgical slit. “He was alive for the rest. Forced to watchthat.”

He gestures towards the groin. I think, again, of the fate I’d imagined for MacDougal.

My eyes dart around the rest of the grisly scene and settle on the bowl of condoms and the bottle of roofies on the nightstand. Whatever sympathy—not that I felt any—for MacDougal evaporates in an instant.

This is better than I could have ever asked for.

Someone out there heard my wish and delivered it with interest.

A thrill sparks in my fingertips. Suddenly, I want to touch everything: the words, the wounds, the violence.

“Think the killer used those?” Russo points to the bottle of roofies.

Arata shakes his head. “I’ll know more after tox. But based on the abrasions around his wrists, I’m thinking the roofies belonged to the good councilman.”

“Fucking figures,” I whisper under my breath.

I step closer to the bed, and slip on a pair of evidence gloves to avoid contaminating the scene. MacDougal’s face is twisted, not in pain, but in a kind of slack resignation. Whatever mask he used to wear in life, it got stripped away here and replaced by something close to fear.

I turn his face, and it’s like I can almost feel the hands that did this to him.

Those hands must be steady, practiced, and full of purpose. They’re hands that I can trust to do any number of things, violent and otherwise.

Hands that I won’t mind holding my own. Hands that I want wrapped around mine so that they might guide me into replicating their work. Hands that will slowly dance along my body until strong powerful fingers close around my throat and?—

Jesus Christ, Giselle, get it together.

Russo’s lips press into a thin line. “Any prints?”

“Nothing yet,” Arata says. “We found a wipe rag, but it’s new. No DNA, no fibers.”