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COHEN

I took a long drag of my cigarette, holding the smoke deep in my lungs before forcing it back out again. I didn’t get that buzz of nicotine that shot through my bloodstream and left me feeling momentarily light. Almost drunk. My central nervous system had built up a tolerance, which meant my body craved a fix more frequently with little to no benefit of that high it used to offer me. It did help me stay awake though. And I needed to be awake so I could watch her.

“That shit’ll kill ya, ya know?” Casper hummed from where he was perched on the branch above me, his legs kicking back and forth like a kid on a swing set instead of a grown-ass man too old to be climbing fucking trees.

“Yup,” I grunted, as I dropped the butt into Emily’s flower bed and stomped it out with the toe of my boot. It was reckless to leave it behind… and I wouldn’t have. If it were anyone else. But I wanted her to know I was here. That I was watching. Her blissful ignorance was getting under my skin after all these months.

Nothing seemed to faze her, not even her complete lack of a social life. Thanks to yours truly. She’d tried. Tried to fuck someone who wasn’t me. Tried and failed. The first guy was easy enough to scare off. A few photos snapped of his bedroom, more specifically his bed with him sleeping in it, had him blocking Emily’s number before the shit was hot in his phone.

The next fucker took a little more effort. Not much but some. Had to leave a couple knives stabbed into his front door. But the look on his face was totally worth the loss of a good blade. A few more asshats would come and go but none of them stayed when I was done with them. She seemed to resort to self-care after that. Alone in her bed under the cover of night when she thought no one was watching.

But of course, someone was. Someone was always fucking watching. Waiting.

It would be so easy to snatch her right now. Drag her out of that house and hole her up in a basement somewhere. But I wasn’t ready for her yet. I was still working on getting everything in order. Setting up my bunker and acquiring the appropriate equipment.

Emily was the long game. And I refused to be rushed, even by my own subconscious. I could almost taste her as she flitted in front of her bedroom window. Tugged her dress shirt over her head and began to unhook her bra.

“Time for you to go,” I hissed in Casper’s direction, knowing his eyes were on Emily as much as mine were. You couldn’t not look at the woman. It was how she lured you into her trap. “I don’t need a fucking babysitter.”

I could hear the rustling of more branches as Casper jumped down, his landing silent despite the full force of his weight hitting the ground. That was how the fucker got his nickname. He was a goddamn ghost when he wanted to be.

“Yeah, I ain’t leaving now that the show’s just getting good.” He grinned, the whites of his teeth glowing in the darkness of the shadows as he slung an arm over my shoulder. “What do ya think she tastes like? Bet it’s something sweet…” he whispered against my ear while fixing his glare back on that window. “I could go in there and fuck her for ya. Bend her over and press her up against the glass since watching seems to be your thing.”

I drove two fingers into his brachial plexus, forcing his arm to drop before I pressed on his chest and shoved him back a step. The fucker didn’t feel pain, not like any normal person should, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t immobilize him for a few minutes.

“You can do whatever you want with what’s left of her body… as soon as I’m done with it,” I ground out between clenched teeth. “And not a moment before that… or I’ll carve you up and use ya for spare parts.”

Casper threw his head back and barked out a laugh, much louder than was good for either of us. “Yeah, and which parts you gunning for, Doc? My eye or my cock?” He ran a hand down his chest before tugging on the bulge in his pants. “Shit’s prime real estate. Can’t go wrong with either.”

I grabbed onto the front of his shirt, curling my fingers around the material and dragging him back towards our blacked-out SUV. Fucker could stop me if he wanted, but he enjoyed the games. It was his favorite form of entertainment. And sometimes it was safer to indulge him, for both our sakes.

I slid into the driver’s seat, waiting for the blonde Johnny Knoxville to fling himself over the hood on his hands and pivot back onto his feet on the other side. Rumor was the fucker was some sort of Russian gymnast whose visa expired after a career-ending injury. My guess? He was just a coked up asshat who didn’t get enough attention as a kid.

He jumped through the window into the passenger seat, pulling his legs up under his ass in a way that should be inhuman or at the very least uncomfortable before stretching them out over the dash. His arms raised and his hands clasped behind his head.

I peeled off down the street, breezing past the red light when Casper tipped his chin in my direction. “So, she the one who did that shit to your face?”

“Something like that,” I grunted between clenched teeth.

“Ouch. That’s brutal.”

“Yup.”

“I like ?em brutal.”

I could hear his smirk without having to look in the fucker’s direction. “Don’t go there. I’m not gonna tell you again.”

“And if I do? If I break in to that nice little condo of hers, slide right into one of those windows we both know she doesn’t lock… whatcha gonna do about it, Doc?” He leaned back in his seat and tapped a foot against the dash. “We both know you can’t kill me.”

“Oh, I don’t need to kill you. Killing you is too easy… too quick. Instead, I’ll slowly cut away at your body. Starting with your eyelids… Do you know what happens when someone removes your eyelids…? What it feels like? It’s a slow burn that becomes more excruciating with each hour that passes. You can’t sleep. Not really. And as time goes on and insanity seeps in, so does the blindness. And that’s just step one.”

Casper was quiet for a long minute until the crazy son of a bitch slapped a hand on a thigh and broke out in a fit of dark laughter. “Now that’s the spirit. I knew I liked you.”