Page 29 of X's and O's

“Will do. Love you. See you Sunday.”

“Love you too.”

I let myself out the door, and she stood on the step waving until I got in the car.

I started the ignition and glanced back up at her, standing in front of the familiar home with its neatly tended gardens and bright-red front door. The whole scene was like something out of a storybook.

Sometimes I really had no idea how I’d been born into this family.

I was fairly sure I’d been mixed up at the hospital, and I’d actually been born into some other family. One where the urge to kill was an inherited trait.

Because I certainly hadn’t gotten it from my parents. They were as Brady Bunch as they came, and when I was with them, so was I.

I mean, maybe I was a little bit of the black sheep, but I tried hard to hide it. I turned up every week for Sunday night dinners. I played with my niece and nephew so my brother and his wife could have a break. I tossed footballs in the backyard with my dad.

And then I left them on the couch, watching PG-rated movies, and went out to prowl the streets, searching for people on the list who I could sink a knife into.

It was all about balance.

While sitting at a set of traffic lights, I took out a piece of paper Hendrix had printed for me. Violet’s schedule for the next two weeks.

I found the page with today’s date on it and checked the time. She should be just about finishing up at her last house of the day. It was at an apartment building not far from my parents’ house, and I steered my van in that direction, realizing I didn’t have time to go home and get changed first.

It was close to dark out, the sun just about completely set behind the horizon, the streetlights all flickering on while I drove. I found the address and parked across the street from the building entrance, sticking to the shadows since nobody walking past needed to see my white assflashing them as I tried to struggle into the suit in the back of the van.

Not the world’s easiest task when you were six three and your suit was just a tiny bit too small, because you were a tad chunkier than your twenty-one-year-old brother.

“Seriously, Hendrix, how skinny are your thighs? Quit missing leg day at the gym,” I muttered into the cramped space and tried not to crush the flowers sitting on the passenger seat.

There was no tie in the suit bag, so I left my top button undone. Using the rearview mirror, I checked my hair, mussed it up a bit, wincing as my jacket pulled across my shoulders.

If I ripped this thing, Hendrix would kill me.

Not literally, because I was the only one with the crazy gene in my family. But he probably wouldn’t be happy.

Finally ready, I picked up the flowers and locked my car. I stood beside it, staring up at the building, mentally counting the windows and working out which one I thought Violet was cleaning behind.

It felt like a sucker punch when I realized I could see her moving around the apartment, pushing something that had to have been a vacuum. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, her hair scraped up in a high ponytail that swung around behind her while she cleaned the floors.

I couldn’t stop watching her.

But I only got about a minute before the light in the apartment went out, and I realized she was probably finished and locking up.

Butterflies suddenly swarmed my stomach, and I clutched it, wholly confused by the feeling. I hadn’t gotten nervous like this since I was a teenager, planning out my first kill.

The thought stopped me dead in my tracks. My mother was right. I never brought women home because I didn’t date. I’d tried, as a teen, eager as any other to make girls like me.

But every time I’d been alone with one, all I could think about was how I was more interested in what my fingers looked like around their throats than the words coming out of their mouths.

Even back then, I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, and yet, something dark inside me had demanded it. Sought out situations where I would have opportunities…

And so I’d set myself a rule.

No women in private places.

That meant not having one in my car. Not having one in my home.

The only place I’d ever allowed myself to even peek at a woman was at Psychos. In the middle of a sex club, I could have a woman all up on me and not worry I was going to want to slit her throat.