Olivia and I settle into our usual routine, keeping everything low-key until Wright comes back to us. Livi’s selective mutism means she never speaks at work, so she signs while I fill the air with casual chatter. Or it is casual until Olivia signs,“Maybe the Vigilante Choker will find him.”
Wright laughs because Olivia’s quiet vicious side always makes her smile. I, on the other hand, go stock still.
“They’re saying he killed another patient before escaping,” Wright says.
Some boys bring you roses, mine brought me forensic evidence of a murder he just committed and tracked it around my house.
Olivia points at her screen where an article about Flynn is open. Wright hops off the filing cabinet to take a look, and I can’t help myself from peeking at the title.
Confession or pre-meditated murder: Did the Vigilante Choker hand himself in all to have access to his next target?
Olivia’s hands form patterns in the air.“The man he killed was a serial rapist, same as his other victims.”
“It’s still wrong,” I say, trying to convince myself more than anything else.
Wright’s sharp gaze cuts to me. “Does that make what I do wrong?”
I shush her, my eyes darting to the open door. The three of us may know Wright colors outside the lines after hours but if anyone else found out, she’d be arrested for sure. Maybe it’s hypocritical of us to be breaking the law but more and more cases are being dismissed these days and it’s hard to sit by and watch. Besides, what Wright does is different. “You don’t kill anyone,” I hiss under my breath.
“Some people deserve to die,”Olivia signs and not for the first time I wonder what happened to her. She’s got the sweetest face, delicate, elfin features and a smile of pure innocence but every now and then she gets this dark look that worries me to my core. There’s a reason the three of us band together. We have matching scars, but I get the feeling Olivia’s cut deeper than most.
Wright and I have known her for three years now, but she still hasn’t told us anything about her past. She just appeared out of nowhere one day and that was that.
Wright has her secrets too. I know what she gets up to at night, but she doesn’t tell me the details because in her words “plausible deniability exists for a reason.” She wants to keep me out of it, but she doesn’t realize I’d be her alibi in a heartbeat, even if I had to perjure myself. After everything she did to get me away from Tommy, I owe her my life.
Out of the three of us, I’m the one who’s the open book. I tell Olivia and Wright everything. Which begs the question, why haven’t I told them about Flynn?
4
IT’S NOT STALKING IF YOU LEAVE A GIFT
Flynn
I replay the video again.The pressure in my head builds each time I watch it, but I’m looking for something, so I block out Hope’s cries and go through the video frame by frame.
Mirrors line the closet of the room they took her to. It’s how I identified half the fuckers in the video. The camera’s right in the corner of the bedroom. It never moves, which is why it didn’t occur to me that someone was behind it. I suppose it’s possible Sleet was making it up, but he was awfully specific, and I find people tend to lose the ability to lie when they’re about to die.
Normal people don’t know that sort of thing, Flynny.
Yeah, well, I hear the voice of my dead sister in my head—how’s that for normal?
The light shifts on the next frame and I pause the video. I zoom in on the shadow in the mirror and adjust the exposure until the image becomes clearer. It’s still blurry but I pull up a photo of Senator Claren and put them side by side. He’s older, and clean shaven now, but it’s definitely the same guy.
“Tell them how much you love this. Tell the camera how much you love being our slutty little?—"
I cut the sound off. The voices in that video belong to dead men, I made sure of that, and Senator Claren is going to join them.
I screenshot the still with his reflection and print it off, along with a photo of him smiling, his arm around a disadvantaged kid he sponsored. Strategic good deeds that hide a multitude of sins.
I get up from the desk and move over to what Lachlan’s dubbed the Stalker Wall. Surveillance photos of eight different men are tacked to the wall. I spent weeks tracking each of their movements, learning their routines, uncovering their crimes, before I wrapped my hands around their necks.
In the center of each grouping of photos is a portrait style snapshot. Seven of those photos have a red cross cutting through them.
I grab my marker and draw a fresh cross over the photo of Garret Sleet. Then I move over to a blank section of the wall and stick up the photos I just printed of Senator Claren.
I’m not sure Hope would be very happy if she saw this board, if she knew what I was doing in her name, but the memory of her voice is blocked by the men staring back at me. Violence sings in my blood, it always has, but what these men did is a different kind of cruelty and the brutality of it buries her.
I stare at the photo of the senator.
