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A figure towered over us both, a gun in his right hand. I couldn’t see anything because he was backlit, but he looked vaguely familiar.
”I told him not to run,” the man said. ”But it doesn’t matter. Family special, huh?”
It took me a few seconds to recognize him.
”Archer?”
Before I could duck out of the way, he was hitting me on the side of the head with the back of his gun.
There was no time for questions.
The Orchid Strangler had me in his claws.
The Orchid Strangler IV
She'dbeenahappycoincidence. I liked him at first, of course; he was exactly my type, young, handsome and eager. He took instruction well and he didn't say anything to anyone at work about our entanglement.
But then I found out that his sister was the one working to uncover the identity of the Orchid Strangler.
He'd let it slip after a long night together; he mostly kept information about Sofia to himself. Sam was intensely private and that was one of the things I liked most about him, other than how good he was in bed.
But when he mentioned his sister's name, I felt a spike of fear in my chest. I'd been careful, of course, but there was always a chance that someone would find out. And if Sofia was on the case, it was only a matter of time before she connected the dots and came after me.
I tried to ignore the feeling of dread that settled in my stomach every time I thought about her. But as the days went on and Sofia's investigation heated up, I found myself becoming more and more paranoid. Every time I saw a news report about another victim or heard a siren in the distance, I couldn't help but wonder if she was getting closer.
That's why, when Sam showed up at my apartment late one night, I knew I had to act fast.
I'm sure my expression was one of utter shock and confusion. I didn't know what to say—I couldn't even believe what I was hearing.
”She started calling you the Orchid Strangler,” he said again, his voice thick with emotion. ”Please, please, you have to stop.”
His words hung in the air as I processed the magnitude of what he was saying. I had put so much effort into covering my tracks and now it was all unraveling before me. There was a sense of inevitability to it—it was like a boulder rolling down a hill and no amount of effort would be able to stop it.
I knew that if Sofia continued on her mission, she would eventually discover who I really was and put an end to my reign of terror once and for all. No. Not terror.
That would be how people would see it; they couldn’t understand.
I was a cleanser. An exfoliant. A needed touch to clean up the face of the city.
Without me, Orlando would always be ugly.
Because they wouldneverunderstand, I had to get rid of her. My work needed to keep happening, but only in the shadows. Explaining would be pointless. Sam didn’t understand, but he would have never turned me in.
I knew where his sister lived. I wanted to get him more involved; I would send him flowers, information about the blight, tell him why they needed to be gotten rid of. Officer Sam Reyes sat near me, nodding solemnly, and never doing a goddamn thing.
But his sister was going to take things into her own hands.
I knew that if she died, then no one would ever know the truth about who I was or what I had done—and that was too good an opportunity to pass up.
”I can't keep a secret from her, Archer,” Sam said in a thin voice.
I looked up to meet his gaze.
There were tears in his eyes as he pleaded, but I knew what I had to do.
I had to kill her.
And I had to get rid of anyone who stood in my way.
