“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, I know one thing. You couldn’t keep her safe for one night.”
The rage that’s been simmering since the moment I lost her boils over. In a way, he’s right. I couldn’t protect her, and it twists my guts with a serrated blade. One night. That’s all it took for me to lose her.
“She chose me. She wants me.” I need this to be true as much as I need to be the man who saves the girl, gets the girl, keeps the girl safe. To prove I can be the hero Birdie wants me to be, when all she’s ever known is villains,
“Maybe she does, but you’re not what she needs.”
“And you are?”
“Yes, because a man like me will kill for her, and a man like you will just fill out the paperwork after she’s already dead.”
I take a step closer, looking him straight in the eye. “You don’t know the first thing about me or what I’m ready to do for her.” A bitter chuckle escapes me as I feel the weight of the folded photo in my pocket. “But we don’t have time for this shit. You check your cameras, and I’ll call it in, see if forensics can pull anything. Let’s get this motherfucker and save Birdie.”
I lower my gun slightly, and he does the same, even though I’m certain each of us wonders if the maniac we’re hunting is standing right in front of us.
CHAPTER 7
Butterfly Man
“I’m cold. Can I, at least, have a blanket?” Reagan slurs angrily.
A blanket would be a wall. It would hide the beautiful tremor of her thighs, the desperate climb of her ribs with each breath. It would grant her a sense of false privacy that I can’t allow in here.
Her skin is a map I’ve memorized, but its terrain never ceases to fascinate me. In this light, it’s a landscape of winter plains and subtle ridges. A scar on her left hip, shaped like a comma. A burn mark like a star on the inside of her right forearm. The faint cuts. The fractured bones underneath that haven’t healed right.
But no tattoos.
In a world where people, including myself, stain their skin with ink to claim ownership, to tell stories, to hide flaws, her canvas is clean. All her stories are written in the scars and the memories that come with them.
Reagan lies to the world, but she stays true to herself.
“Did you hear me?” Her teeth chatter.
“No blanket.” The distorter flattens the possessive finality of my decision. I want her naked, always, for my pleasure, yes—the sheer aesthetic of her restrained form is a masterpiece—but more than that, I need her legible. I must read every shiver, every goosebump, every pulse of fear or rage that flushes her skin.
“I’m not one of your dead butterflies you’re preserving in the cold, afraid of decay. I’m human and alive. I need warmth or I’ll die.”
Appealing to the logic of a collector? I smile. “People get tattoos to hide scars.”
Her eyes dilate a fraction, disoriented. “What?”
“Your skin. It’s clean. No ink. Why?”
A shudder runs through her body, and she wets her now purplish lips with her tongue. “I… I don’t like needles.”
She doesn’t like needles. A simple, practical truth. It’s almost disappointing. Not a poetic statement of authenticity, just a phobia. But I know Reagan well enough to read between her lines. To hear the stories hidden in the pauses before the answers. Like she always says, everything is a story, and there’s a story in everything.
I glance at the pins in her flesh. The irony… She doesn’t like needles, and I have a case full of them.
“I’m freezing. I need a blanket.” Her voice is a thin scrape in the silence now.
“There are so many other ways to keep you warm, my little butterfly.” I peel off my right glove, finger by finger. Her breath catches, a tiny, sharp inhale that speaks louder than any of her screams. The glove drops to the floor.
Her eyes lock on my hand, horror dawning in them. “What are you going to do?”
I reach out slowly, letting her anticipate it. “I can do anything to you, anything I want, whenever I want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
