Page 27

He watched the action from across the street. A little while ago, he hadn’t been sure that he’d ever get the opportunity.

Initially, he’d just wanted to get away from the spa as quickly as possible. That’s why, when the kaleidoscopic disco ball lights in the club all turned red at once (the pre-determined warning signal from the organizers that a raid might be in progress and people should leave), he followed the rest of the crowd out of the place.

At first, the club staffers had people wait in the hallway behind the club, but concerns about police bursting in at any moment proved intense, and people poured out into the alley behind the building.

There was a backup of people waiting for the town cars and, deciding that he didn’t want to be a sitting duck if the authorities arrived and took everyone into custody, he left the alley and walked down the main road. He caught sight of his ride stuck in traffic halfway up the block and waved to the driver. He got in, and they were about to pull away when he had a change of heart.

“Actually, I’m going to get back out again. This traffic backup could take forever,” he lied. That wasn’t his real concern. “Just let me grab my phone and other stuff and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Once he collected his things and left the car, he headed across the street to a coffee shop. He bought a drink and settled in at a table with a clear view of the front entrance to Elite Spa. To his surprise, no army of squad cars appeared. After a while, he became suspicious that there hadn’t been a raid at all.

What if the cops were here for him? He hadn’t expected that the authorities would make the connection between the masquerade ball masks and the parties—referred to by the organizers as “Special Friends Events—so quickly, or even at all. After all, they’d been going on for nearly two years now without any issues. The organizers, whose real identities he was unaware of, had been masterful at keeping the parties secret.

But maybe he should have expected this attention. Finding naked dead bodies with masks on their faces was certainly unusual. And having three victims made him a serial killer of sorts, even though he hadn’t really viewed himself that way until this moment. Now that he thought about it from their perspective, of course, the cops would pour a ton of resources into this case. To have thought otherwise was na?ve.

To that point, it was probably foolish of him to have gone to another party so soon after his kills. If the police had connected the masks to the parties, then it was logical, at least in retrospect, to assume that the killer might be found there. But he was new to all of this, and his brain didn’t work like a cop’s. It worked like a security software developer, which is what he was.

He’d have to change how he thought. Of course, he never went after a victim at the club. That would mean an end to the parties and to his supply of victims. So it’s not like the police would be able to catch him in the act while he was there.

But if they somehow got access to the parties’ guest list, they could conceivably go through everyone and backtrace their location at the time of the killings. They would discover that he’d been at the home of Richard and Cynthia Hartley on Saturday night and the apartment of Evelyn Channing last night. It would only be a matter of time, whether it be hours, days, or weeks, before they linked the killings to him.

Then again, if the police couldn’t secure a list of guests, then they might never be able to determine who was committing these acts. He’d been very careful to hide his face from the cameras at Channing’s building and to avoid them entirely at the Hartley’s mansion.

In fact, with his security software and design expertise, he’d been able to hack into the security systems at the victims’ residences, so he knew what to expect. And copying the access card to Evelyn Manning’s apartment had been a breeze. He’d thought well ahead.

But then he had a thought that sent a shiver through him, one that not even the coffee he was sipping could contain. While he’d been very careful to hide his identity at the homes of his victims, he hadn’t thought to do the same thing as he entered the back of the spa through the alley.

If the police had known enough to have people inside the club posing as guests, then they likely would have prepped for their undercover operation by setting up recording devices to log anyone entering the building. If that was the case, then they’d eventually have his identity. Suddenly, all those concerns about them discovering his geolocation in recent nights returned.

In that moment, he realized that he was almost certainly on borrowed time. At some point, likely sooner than later, they would realize it had been him. But that didn’t have to be the end of it.

After all, he was more than just a software developer. He was a millionaire twenty times over after selling his first company three years ago. He’d simply book a flight to a non-extradition country, pack a bag, and head to the airport. He could be gone before the clock struck midnight if he wanted to be.

And he did want to be. He just had to do one thing first. There was a young woman he’d been hoping to pay a visit to later tonight. But now he’d have to move faster than anticipated. It would have to happen this afternoon.

He thought it through as he sipped his drink. He knew where his next choice worked and the building she lived in, but he wasn’t sure of the exact apartment number or the details of her security setup. So he had some work to do before he followed her home after she left work.

As he plotted out a timeline in his head, he took note of four people exiting the front of the spa. There were two men and two women. One of the men, in his early forties and weathered-looking, was dressed casually. The other looked to be wearing a spa uniform, though he didn’t seem at all comfortable in it.

The women were a different story. Both were wearing dresses that would have worked at the party. Then, it occurred to him that they likely had been at the party. In fact, he thought he remembered ogling the one in the painted-on red dress. But his attention was soon diverted by the one in black, not so much because of her outfit but because of her face. He recognized her. It was Jessie Hunt, the famed criminal profiler.

No wonder they had moved so quickly on this case. With her involved, it was a surprise that he wasn’t already in custody. He was flattered that she’d considered his work important enough to take on. But it also meant he needed to move even faster than before.

If he wanted to get in one final kill before escaping for good, he had a lot of work to do and not much time to do it. The realization made him both apprehensive and a little giddy. This was all very exciting.

He waited until their town car pulled away and then left the coffee shop, focused on the task ahead of him.