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Carter is a good guy. It would be better if I didn’t hang out with him long enough to gut him during one of my waking nightmares.
“Because you get on my nerves,” I spit the words out. “Because I don’t like you well enough to enter into some kind of stupid serial killer partnership. I made a deal. I honored my side of the bargain. I kept my promise to help you get revenge. That’s it. It doesn’t mean we braid each other’s hair and paint each other’s fingernails now.”
He’s just staring at me. I need to pound this into his thick skull. “You wear cheap cologne, you use bad grammar, and you stink like a toilet.” If I’m offensive enough, he’ll just give up and go away.
He just snorts in annoyance and downs half his cup of coffee. “I don’t like you either. And I’m talking about working together, not dating, asshole.”
“I’m not even a good partner. In case you’re too thick-headed to notice, I’m losing my fucking mind,” I say to him. “I’ll screw up at some point and drag us both down.”
Carter should be insulted, but instead he smiles. “After today? That was a high I never want to come down from. I’m willing to take that chance. I told you when I first met you, I’m a man with nothing to lose. And you? What else have you got to live for? Either help me or go back to your castle in the sky and drink yourself to death.” He stands and carries his dishes to the sink.
“Why exactly don’t you likeme?” I say with annoyance. “I dress impeccably, I’m brilliant, and I excel at everything I do. What is there to dislike?”
“The fact that you say things like that.” He waves a dish towel at me. “I’m not your maid. Bring the fucking dishes to the sink.”
And just like that, I’ve got a partner.
But it won’t last long.
Because without Tamara, I feel like I’m dying. Without Tamara, I don’t really care that I’m dying. This is just something to do to pass the rage-filled final days.
A week later, I’m back home, looking through my list of potential kills. I managed to convince Carter that we need to wait a few months before we grab his late-wife’s boss. It’ll be too obvious otherwise. He’s eager to get back to work. He’s taken to this with an admirable and alarming ferocity. A man like him needs a purpose in life.
I’ve started taking prescription sleeping aids. I manage to catch a decent night’s sleep every two or three days now.
I still have nightmares, but the meds seem to help a little.
I wonder if I should try to track Tamara down. She’s completely off the grid these days, not using the ID I gave her, not using her real name either. Last I knew, she had taken a bus to Illinois. I’ve forced myself to refrain from searching for her. It’s brutally hard. The need to know what she’s doing, how she’s doing, is like a constant itch I can’t let myself scratch.
Is she dating someone else?
I’d kill them. I’d carve them to pieces.
No. That’s not fair. I relinquished my claim on her. She can live her life any way she wants to now.
Fuck fairness. When have I ever even claimed to be fair? Being fair is for the weak.
With a mighty effort, I force myself to concentrate on my list again. I work on updating my information, reviewing where these assholes are and what they’ve been up to. And I see that one of my subjects, a millionaire who is addicted to kiddie porn, has been shot to death in his own home. Nothing was stolen, no sign of forced entry, police have no clues.
A faint warning bell sounds in my head, but it can’t mean what I think it means.
Uneasy, I move on to the next name on my list.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
TAMARA
Springfield, Illinois…
It’s a beautiful spring day.
There’s a man lying at my feet, bleeding out on the sidewalk.
People are running away from me, ducking behind mailboxes and cars, screaming. People are staring at me through the glass storefront windows, mouths making enormous Os of shock and horror. They’re looking at me like I’m a monster.
They don’t know what kind of man he was. I imagine they’ll find out soon enough, when they see the evening news.
Jonas Coulter was a social worker. He was a pedophile. He hired a fancy lawyer and managed to get the charges thrown out because he wasn’t read his Miranda rights, and even got his job back.
