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Geoffrey laughed, leaning back with lazy amusement. “I just told you—can’t. I can’t explain a crime I didn’t commit. The police tried that game too. I told them the same thing.”

“Why did you stab the other men?” Lake asked, trying a different angle.

Something dark flickered across Geoffrey’s face as he straightened. For the first time, I saw the murderer lurking beneath the urbane surface. “Because they didn’t deserve to live another minute.”

I refused to let the chilling words cow me. “Why? What had they done?”

His gaze locked onto mine, sharp and searching, slid across to Lake, and then snapped back. “They disrespected me.”

“How?”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you’re not journalists? You ask as many questions as they do.”

“I’m sure.” My throat was dry. “How did they disrespect you?”

Geoffrey gave a weary sigh. “Various ways.”

“If we start with 2015, your first victim was Christopher Vine,” Lake stated. “What did he do?” Lake had clearly done some of that research he professed to enjoy so much.

A fond smile curved Geoffrey’s mouth. It might have been sweet if Christopher hadn’t been in his grave for a long time, and Geoffrey hadn’t been the one who put him there. “Ah, sweet Chris,” he said. “Goddamn, he was pretty. Have you seen pictures?”

Lake nodded stiffly. “He was… very handsome.”

“Just go along with whatever this nutter says.”

It was good advice whether he meant the thought for me or himself.

“The trouble with being that pretty,” Geoffrey continued, “is he thought I’d put up with him playing around. That just because he was a ten, and I was—well, let’s be generous and say a seven back then—that he could treat me however he wanted and I wouldn’t complain. Which I did. For a while, anyway. But it festered. Every time he cheated, it was like another layer of skin being scraped off until I was one big pulsating nerve. Can you blame me for snapping?”

When neither of us answered, Geoffrey laughed.

“Why a car park?” I asked. “Why not somewhere more… intimate?”

“The hunt,” Geoffrey answered without missing a beat. “It would have been too easy at his place. Or mine. A car park had risks. And risk is…” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Exciting. A two-for-one. I got rid of him, and got to enjoy myself at the same time.”

There was a torrent of sweat beneath my armpits now, my nervous system not coping too well with a discussion so close to home. Geoffrey leaned forward, the nearest guard glancing over but saying nothing. He crooked a finger at me.

Against every instinct, I leaned in. Perhaps he was going to confess. That was worth a couple of minutes of discomfort.

“Do you want to know what it feels like?” Geoffrey murmured. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No,” I said, voice tight. “I just wanted to know about murders before 2015.”

“It’s a rush,” he said, “to know you have all the power and they have none. The first time I stabbed someone, I thought there’d be more resistance. More force needed.” My breathing turned shallow. I couldn’t look away. Was he talking about me or Christopher? “Depends on the knife, I suppose. Mine was sharp. I made sure of it.”

A dull pain bloomed in my back, radiating outward.

“It’s a cliché, I know,” Geoffrey went on, “but it really was like a knife through butter. Though maybe that doesn’t work when you’re actually talking about a knife.” He chuckled. “I’ll think of something better next time.”

I was back there. The gloom. The pressure. The fall. Wetness. Pain. Hopelessness. Like the nightmare, but awake, unable to escape. No prison guards. No Lake. Just me and Geoffrey, and his poisonous words.

“The blood surprised me,” Geoffrey said. “I expected it to be slower.” I was going to be sick. “I wore gloves after the first time. I discovered I don’t like getting blood on my skin. Too sticky. Too red, too…”

Concrete against my cheek. Cold. So cold. Blood was sticky because I could feel it on my hands as it pooled beneath me, spreading until I wondered how my heart could still beat when there was more outside my body than in.

“Enough!” Lake snapped.

The spell broke. I shoved my chair back, the sensation of freeing myself from Geoffrey Ryhill’s hypnotic stare like wrenching a boot from mud—sucking, resisting, trying to pull me under again.