“You’ll run,” he says. “Everyone runs from their truth.” His hand slides to my thigh, comforting, possessive. “I can’t let that happen, London.”
My mind spinning, I sink back into the seat, assessing my situation. My skin is sticky, itchy with dried sweat. I’m barefoot, my legs and feet covered with dusty mud. Pain pulses through my body, but it’s manageable. We’re in a stolen car.
I look and am behaving like a captive.
I’m a psychologist who needs to act like one and reason with her patient.
“How did you get the car, Grayson?” I ask him.
“Luck,” he says evasively. At my impatient glare, he releases a strained breath. “Newer models are designed to prevent theft. Just needed to find an older model to hotwire.”
For all I’ve learned of his psyche, I realize I know very little of the man. “Is that a trade you picked up from your childhood, from your stepfather?”
His smile is knowing. “Not every confined space belongs to you, doctor. You can stop trying to shrink me.” He looks over at me, his hold on my thigh gripping tight. “You were never the one in control.”
Heat rushes to my face, humiliated, anger singeing my nerves over the fact that he’s right. “How long have you been planning this?”
He releases me to grip the wheel with both hands. “At first, I accepted my outcome. I believe you call it the cool-down period. But then you requested an interview.”
“So this is all my fault.”
“No,” he says, his tone low, measured. “There’s no fault. That’s like blaming the sky for being blue. The sky doesn’t determine its color—it’s the sun and atmosphere, external influences scattering molecules to create an illusion.”
His gaze finds mine, intense. “We’re no different. Just molecules and impulses, light and dark playing fucking god with our identities.” He shrugs. “I don’t know if it was nurture or nature that influenced us, but like recognizes like, London.”
“Christ,” I mutter, shaking my head. “You’re twisting things, using decades of psychological debate to serve your own purpose, Grayson.”
“Hmm,” he hums, smoothly turning the wheel. “Maybe, but the sky doesn’t feel bad about being blue. It just accepts it as fact.” He glances over and winks.
We’re silent for a while, until he suddenly asks, “How many patients have you tried to rehabilitate?”
I stare off into the dark, ignoring the throb in my wrists, watching headlights flash across the grimy windshield. “Too many,” I admit.
“You chose me that day in the waiting room not because you believed that, just maybe, I was the answer to whether rehabilitation was possible. You chose me because I was proof it’s not.”
I shake my head again. “No.”
“Yes, London,” he says slowly, letting his words sink in. “I couldn’t have orchestrated all this without you. I’m good—damn good, I admit—but this was a complex strategy, over a long period of time. It required every piece to fall perfectly into place.” He looks over, a taunting gleam in his eyes. “You enabled us.”
On some level, he’s right. Grayson is a master manipulator, adept at identifying my weaknesses and exploiting them. Which he did remarkably well to achieve his desired outcome. And I’m the arrogant psychologist who believed I could control a volatile relationship with her patient.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” I whisper, almost to myself.
“You didn’t know what you wanted,” he says, “but it’s what you need. You’ve been screaming into a void, demanding the truth, and the void gave you the answer. Just accept it.”
“You are absolutely psychotic,” I say.
We exit the highway, and after a few miles, the car bumps down a dirt road. Anxiety knots my stomach, and I start to tug uselessly at the cuffs. Too soon, we’re turning into a darkened driveway.
He puts the car into Park, kills the engine. “We’re here.”
I duck my head to see past the visor. Tall, dense trees surround us. Amid the secluded, wooded scenery, a large contemporary-style home rises up against the night sky.
If he brought me to a house, it means no one knows it exists. Most of my patients had hidden places. A cabin, a trailer, a storage unit—some secret location where they took their victims.
Dread constricts my chest as the reality of my situation sinks in.
Grayson brought me to his kill spot.
