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He had tried with everything that he possessed, reminded himself of the risks, and the consequences of continuing contact, but he just couldn’t stop.

When she’d rented an apartment in this building, he’d rented the one across the hall so he could watch her whenever he wanted.

As far as his wife knew he traveled a lot for work, and he supposed he did, only she had no idea that selling insurance wasn't what he spent the majority of his day doing.

Now he was standing in her apartment, pushed into claiming her because Eli Lennox had entered her life. No longer was she single, sitting in her apartment alone every night. Now when he tried to daydream about taking her for his own, he kept seeing this man intruding and stealing her away.

“Toby?” Florence’s voice dragged him out of his head. “You want to do the right thing here, I'm sure you do. You’ve been so very careful with everything you’ve done so far, it’s why we could never find you. Why I could never find you, so shooting Eli here and now isn’t the smart thing to do.”

“Don’t talk about me like I'm some helpless victim or something,” Eli growled, trying to move closer, but Florence moved with him, continuing to put herself between the two men.

“You were looking for me?” he asked, he hadn't realized that Florence thought about him at all except when he sent her letters. The idea that she had been as consumed by him as he was by her pleased him.

“Of course. What you did to me changed my life,” Florence said, also ignoring Eli. “I tried to find you, but all I knew was the fake name you’d given my mother. You made sure that we didn't have anything to use to find you. Who are you, Toby? Do you have a wife? Children?”

Toby nodded. “I’ve been married for thirty-two years. My high school girlfriend and I got pregnant when we were sixteen. We married just before our son was born. It was the right thing to do.”

“Yes, it was. That must have been hard, having a child so young, you were practically a child yourself.”

Florence’s soothing tone spurred him on.

“It was hard. I was one of eight kids, we were expected to work in my parents’ restaurant from the time we were old enough to bus tables and clean dishes.

I went straight from working at my parents’ business and chores at home to having my own home, a wife, and a baby.

More work. Diapers, teething, a colicky screaming baby keeping you up all night.

Responsibilities, work, a marriage, all I’ve ever done was take care of other people, I never got to just be me, never got to go to college and get the job I wanted because I had a family to support. ”

“You never really got to be a child, just run and play with your friends, climb trees, swim in the river, play a team sport, have sleepovers.” From the tone of her voice and the sad, faraway look in her eyes, he wondered if they were talking about him or her.

“You never did either,” he said, taking a step toward her.

“You had to fight just to stay alive, you had to take care of yourself because your mother sure as hell wasn't. You had to work two jobs to put yourself through college, and you still work long hours just to pay your bills. I know what that’s like. To just want to take a break, to just lie down, close your eyes, and rest.”

“Like the girls. You put them to sleep so they could forever be peaceful children. They’d never have to grow up, never have to work for anything, they got to be little forever. You gave them the life you wished you’d had.”

He’d never thought of it that way before, but there was a lot of truth to what Florence was saying.

As far back as he could remember, all he had wanted was rest.

Just to sleep in in the morning and not have to be up and at the restaurant to help before school. After school there was no hanging out with friends, no sports practice, it was working at the restaurant, homework, then bed. Weekends were more of the same, schoolwork and work.

Work.

Work.

Work.

All he’d needed was a break.

A break that had never come.

He’d never had a childhood, so he’d gifted those little girls with a childhood that would last forever. No growing old, no responsibility, no work, they got to stay little forever, the best years of their life would never end for them.

But he’d failed Florence.

He hadn't given her eternal peace.

Instead, she had gone on to continue living in poverty, going hungry, no electricity or running water, no one to care for her and look after her.

He hadn't saved her.

Her continued suffering was on him.

That was something he needed to rectify.

“Put the gun down, Toby. You’ve been so careful to make sure that this didn't end with you in prison, you don’t want to do that to your family. You’ve taken care of them, provided for them, made sure that they would never find out the truth about you. Don’t ruin that now.”

His family would never find out the truth.

The cops had nothing to pin on him, and there would be no way for them to connect him to Eli Lennox’s murder.

“No one will know it was me,” he said.

“That’s not true, Toby,” Florence said. “We have something, you left a fingerprint behind when you were here the other morning. Sooner or later, they will connect that fingerprint to you, and when they do everything you’ve worked so hard your whole life to build will fall apart.

The best thing you can do for yourself and your family is to turn yourself in, don’t make it worse for your wife and children by spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. ”

The cops having his fingerprints sealed things in his mind.

He was done.

Finished.

What he wanted was standing right before him, and he was taking it.

7:17 A.M.

He wasn't going to do it.

He wasn't going to put the gun down.

Florence could see it in his eyes.

Toby Lane had just come to the realization that this wasn't going to end the way he had envisioned. He wasn't walking out of here with her in tow. They weren't going to live out whatever fantasy he had been dreaming about. And he certainly wasn't going to be killing the man she loved.

Loved?

She hadn't realized until that moment that she was in love with Eli.

Everything had happened so fast, and she barely believed in falling in love let alone love at first sight, but that was pretty much what had happened.

That connection had been forged the second they touched, and it had only grown.

It didn't matter that she’d been wary of getting involved, of letting anyone in for fear of being hurt, he had barreled into her life, turned it upside down, and in the process had finally helped her break free of her past.

They had their whole lives ahead of them, a future where she could just be her, a normal woman who wasn't ruled by her messed up childhood.

There was no way she was losing that.

She was not letting the serial killer who had nearly taken her life and played such a large part in shaping the person she’d become take anything else away from her.

“Don’t do it, Toby. I can see in your face what you’re planning, and it’s not the way to play this out,” she said.

“He has to die, it’s the only way,” Toby insisted, shifting to try to get a clear shot at Eli.

That wasn't happening.

Eli should have listened to her and left while he’d had the chance, but the stubborn man wasn't going to leave her alone in here with an armed man even if she was the one who was trained to deal with situations just like this.

Florence both loved him for it and was annoyed with him about it.

“Killing him won't change anything,” she said, moving with him to keep herself as a barrier between the gun and Eli. The man was determined to take Eli out, and he wasn't going to put his weapon down, the best she could do was keep his attention on her and then seize an opportunity when it presented itself. “I'm not yours. I was never yours. All I am is someone you tried to kill. There’s no other connection. You're the one who couldn’t let me go, who kept sending me letters, bragging about your kills like they were conquests that I would be proud of you for accomplishing. The only reason I was looking for you was to arrest you, put you in prison where you belong. I didn't want to find you to be with you, I hate you, Toby. I don’t know what kind of relationship between us you’ve built up in your head, but it’s not real. There is nothing between us.”

Toby’s eyes bulged, and his face turned beet red.

Because she’d been a cop a long time, she could read in his expression what he was going to do before he did it.

He was a representation of every killer she’d ever dealt with.

He took his issues and painted them onto his victims, killing children because he envied them their childhood and yet also wanted to protect it for them.

He wanted her because she was the one who had bested him, over years of stalking, he had built up this idea of her in his head that was never going to match up to reality.

“Last warning, Toby,” she said.

“You're mine, nothing can change that, you’ll never belong to him.” Toby had fire in his eyes as he waved the gun about wildly.

He was devolving, and the end was coming quickly.

The bang echoed through the room.

Pain tore through her.

She fired her weapon.

The bullet hit Toby—the man who had haunted her dreams for the better part of two decades—in the shoulder, and he dropped.

No way was he getting off easy.

A quick death was too good for him, she wanted him behind bars where every criminal in jail with him knew that he raped and murdered little girls.

She wanted him to suffer, and Florence didn't even care if that made her a bad person. Surely there was nothing wrong with wanting the man who had nearly ended your life before you got into double digits to suffer like you had suffered.

“Florence,” Eli yelled, and she heard him rushing toward her.