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It wasn't until I got into my room, and used the leg of the ironing board from the closet to wedge under the door handle that I felt like I could take a deep breath.
And what did that breath end on, you might be wondering?
Not a string of angry curses.
Nope.
It was a pathetic, soul-deep sob, one loud enough to make Yogurt whimper and run toward me, nudging her nose at me as I buried my head in my hands as the tears I'd fought back earlier came back with a vengeance, pouring down my cheeks, coming from a bottomless well deep inside.
I'd given this man a chance. I'd let him in. Into my body. Into my home. Into my life. Into my mind and soul. I'd let him into the fantasies for my future.
I never let anyone in.
And the one fucking time I tried, this was what I got as a reward?
A fucking uncaught serial killer?
There was no way it was a coincidence, either.
Somehow, someway, this man had found out I was starting to be onto him. Then he'd wiggled his way into my life. To what end? To make me undermine my ideas about the serial killer in the first place? To distract me? To kill me too?
And, what?
Was it all fake?
Every lingering glance, all the stories, all the tortured looks in his eyes?
What about the OCD?
Was that made up too? Did he do it because he thought it would make him seem less threatening, that it would soften me up, appeal to some innate feminine urge inside to help, to ease, to soothe?
In an instant, the tears in my eyes dried as something other than hurt and disappointed hope flooded my system.
This was much more useful to me, too.
It was pure, undiluted, burning fucking rage.
At being used.
And manipulated.
At being made to be a fool.
Was he laughing at me in quiet moments? After he fucked me into unconsciousness? Did he sit up and gloat over how he got the better of me, how he coerced sex out of me, how he got me to believe he was something other than who he actually was?
What a lying, conniving, evil piece of shit.
No wonder he was so careful when telling me details about his life. Where he worked. Who he worked with.
I didn't know the man's goddamn last name.
Was Finn even his real first name?
I'd had no reason to question that before. Who would give you a fake first name, then keep the charade up this long?
Psychopaths, that's who.
I'd shared my life, my body, my self with a psychopath.
Oh, and what really boiled my blood was that he'd done it to someone who was supposed to know better. I had studied the signs. I knew how predators manipulated and coerced. I was supposed to see the red flags waving all around. That was the whole point of being so invested in true crime as a woman, wasn't it? To learn to better protect yourself? To make it less likely you would be a victim to one of these shitheads?
"You know what, Yogurt?" I said, patting her wide head. "We are going to make this right."
I'd never wished before that I could be evil and cold-blooded, that I was the kind of person who could exact a permanent kind of revenge. I wasn't the kind of person who could plot a murder. Sure, I thought I was capable of ending a life in self-defense—hell, everyone was in the right situation—but I couldn't plan to do it.
I didn't want to be that person.
But the kind of person I was happy to be, though, was one who could bring you down in a different way. A way that might end with you spending the rest of your miserable life behind bars, eating slop, trying to avoid getting shivved in the yard.
That was the kind of woman I was.
"Let's get him, girl," I said, pulling myself off the floor, drying my cheeks, and starting to pull my equipment out of my bag.
This time, though, I was smarter.
I'd never shared details with anyone about the serial killer case. Which meant he'd somehow managed to track me through my search history or online traces of me. I guess all that "I don't really go online" shit was bullshit after all. So I bought myself a VPN to protect myself as I climbed onto the hotel bed, and got to work.
I didn't come up for air for hours. I might not have done so until Yogurt needed to go out if it weren't for my phone screaming in my purse.
Dread welled up in my system as I made my way across the room, realizing I should have turned the phone off to begin with. Of course he would call.
But it wasn't Finn's name on my screen.
It was Blake's.
"Blake, hey, I can't really talk now. I'm working on a case."
