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I push off the seat and grab my bag, heading to the locker room to shower and change. I strip my clothes and stand under the lukewarm spray, telling myself I’ll get used to showering in a facility.
With three of my previous targets murdered, the detectives might even have already declared it a serial killer case. That will bring on more heat. Eventually, they’ll narrow their scope enough that one of my identities will pop up on their radar.
Someone will come asking questions.
I constantly ask myself what Blakely would do. I need her fearless mentality right now, that clear-headed focus that cuts right through all the emotional bullshit to find the answer.
I turn off the shower and towel down, knowing that, even if there was a way to stall, I just don’t have any more time.
The longer I have these feelings, the longer they sync with my mind and personality. I’m no scientist, but somehow I figure time will only make it harder to reverse the damage.
It might even be too late now.
Regardless, I have to try. There was a moment, one single instant where I thought Alex could see reason. He let me go. He burned his experiment to ash. He admitted his guilt over the lives he’d taken.
There was a moment in that dark room when sanity shown through.
I don’t know what’s happened to him since, but an unhinged person doesn’t strategize and execute a plan of this capability. Either his actions back at the cabin were a part of a larger scheme, or something inside him has changed.
As soon as the thought strikes, I breathe a curse. I’ve been so obsessed with finding him, with correcting my own brain, that I didn’t even think of him making the connection between Ericson’s murder and his treatment.
Back at Devil’s Peak, I convinced Alex that he had failed—that I was still the same unfeeling psychopath he’d brought to that cabin in the woods. His failure, coupled with my rejection, sent him over the edge. At least, that’s how I took his clock-smashing, cabin fire meltdown.
Maybe he truly wanted to set me free. To let me believe he died in the fire.
Until the news of Ericson’s murder hit.
What I didn’t count on was his deduction that—with that fucking scientist brain of his—the reason why it had happened in the first place.
It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t self-defense.
A heightened moment of uncontrollable emotion took hold of me, and the only outlet was to put a switchblade into the vile bully in an alley.
An action taken in the heat of the moment.
Psychopaths don’t commit crimes of passion.
I leave the studio with a new trepidation chasing me through the city.
London was wrong. Alex won’t find me; he’s alreadyfoundme. He’s been watching me this whole time, studying me, analyzing his subject.
Every time I felt eyes on me and questioned my sanity, he was there.
He’s been trying to recreate the outcome and prove it was a success by subjecting the highest profile psychopaths on my revenge roster to the procedure.
He’s been so close to me this entire time.
And he’s been leaving bodies in his wake. He’s been failing. He can’t replicate his outcome with me.
If I want him to show himself, I have to force him out of the shadows.
I have to threaten the one thing he desires the most. His successful subject. His proof the treatment worked.
Me.
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PHYSICS
