Chapter 7: : Chapter 7

“You should be happy,” I say as I drag a chair to the security glass, its legs grating against the concrete floor with a piercing whine. I lower myself onto the clinical steel, bracing my forearms against my knees. “Jack was set to kill you in a matter of days. He’d probably slice you open, maybe even take some of your bones. If you meet all his discerning criteria, he might even do it while you’re still alive.” My eyes widen with theatrical flair. I even add a spooky ‘oooh’, twinkling my gloved fingers toward my captive.

The man on the other side of the glass sputters and sobs.

I sigh and rest my chin on my folded fingers as I regard my sniveling captive with a gentle smile. He’s handsome without being hot, athletic without being strong. Like a substandard tennis player. Maybe a golf wannabe. His big brown eyes shine with tears and I have a sudden urge to lick his cheek, to taste the fear on his skin.

“What I like about you, however, is that you fit my criteria too,” I say. “Not that it would have mattered if you didn’t tick all the boxes on my shitbag list. Right now, Jack is enough of a shitbag for both of you.”

“Let me go, please. Please. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” My captive presses his hands to the glass, his expression a delicious mixture of sorrow and terror. “I won’t go to the police. I’ll go somewhere else, whatever you want. I’ll leave town. I’ll make myself disappear.”

I give him a pout and a furrowed brow. “Trust me. You’re safer where you are.” The unspoken ‘for now’ lingers at the edges of my widening grin as I lean back in my chair and study the man behind the glass. “Colby Cameron. Frat boy pussy slayer extraordinaire. The Candyman, isn’t that what your loser friends call you?”

“No, I don’t—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I snarl, erupting from my chair to smack the glass with both palms. “I know all about you. I know all about your kind. I’ve been studying your species for a decade.”

I tamp down my menacing, feral glare, closing my eyes as I draw my dark waves over my shoulder in a soothing stroke. I tug gently on a thick strand as a steady exhale slips through my lips. When I open my eyes, my saccharine mask is back in place.

Smiles sell, baby!

“Did your friends know how you really got so many girls into your bed? It wasn’t just your all-American charm, was it. It wasn’t that cute face of yours. It was the little something extra you’d slip into their drinks. A sweet drop of sedation from the Candyman.” I swipe my latex-covered finger across the glass and turn away. “I think your friends knew what you did. Why else would they give you such a fucking stupid nickname.”

I walk away from the glass cage, heading past the stainless steel gurney in the center of the room, past the photos and notes taped to the concrete walls, past the table of implements chilled by the air from the whirling vent in the ceiling. I stop at the chest freezer and run my touch across the pitted white surface as it hums beneath my fingertips. “Like I said,” I whisper to the secrets in the cold box. “I know your kind. I have survived your kind.”

A blast of icy air caresses my hands as I open the lid of the freezer. Goosebumps stipple my skin and I think of Jack. Once upon a time, for a pivotal moment, his presence brought a blessed kiss of cold across my skin, a balm for the pain that burned like a flame in my chest. I thought if I could find him, if I could be near him, that it would always be that way. I believed that Jack was the only one who could numb this suffering. If I could create an environment where we could both thrive, then maybe I wouldn’t be so alone anymore. But that was just a naïve dream. In reality, little by little, he’s only made it worse. He’s stoked my rage into an inferno that simmers beneath a fragile shell, the lick of its molten heat too close to the surface for me to contain any longer.

There’s only one thing left for me to do now.

Make. Jack. Suffer.

I reach into the freezer and pull out Mason’s lower leg, keeping my back to Colby for a long moment as I examine the crystalline flakes clinging to the hairs on the gray, bloodless flesh. I almost feel bad about Mason. It’s not as though he met all my criteria, but I did what I had to so I could keep Jack under my control. That said, Mason wasn’t squeaky clean either, judging by his porn interests in underage girls that I found when I went through his laptop to wipe his evidence.

I sigh, flicking the frozen skin of Mason’s calf. “Have you ever heard of the Silent Slayer, Mr. Candyman?”

Colby is silent for a moment as he puts the pieces together. “I… I n-never killed anyone.”

“I know that,” I snarl, turning to face him with the severed leg in my gloved hand. Colby’s gasp becomes a wretch. He turns away and vomits, bile spattering against the lower edge of the glass. “Christsakes. The toilet is only a few steps away, Colby. I’m not cleaning up after you.”

I watch for a moment with my lip curled in disgust. I’m used to this now, men puking. Pissing themselves. Even shitting their pants. I imagine I might get the unholy trilogy from Colby the Candyman.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” I say, waggling the leg around before dropping it onto the gurney with a thunk. “I think you’ve heard of the Silent Slayer. But I bet you never heard there was one person who survived his killing spree. They kept that out of the press, for once. Though I think you might be able to guess who that sole survivor was.”

I spare only a brief glance toward Colby as I move to the table of implements and select a scalpel and a pair of tweezers to take back to the severed leg. My focus turns to the toenail of the first phalanx as I grip it with the tweezers, working the sharp edge of the scalpel into the membrane that adheres the frozen keratin to the flesh until it begins to loosen.

“He wasn’t all that different from you,” I say, freeing the toenail from the skin and dropping it onto the edge of the gurney before I proceed to the next phalanx to lift another toenail free. “I was young. Seventeen. I didn’t know there was a serial killer hunting girls like me. People like the Silent Slayer were nightmares who didn’t touch lives like mine. He was just a dark phantom. Until he was real. Until he had drugged me, until he entered my home. Until he sunk his blade between my bones as my parents lay dying right before my eyes.”

“Please, please,” Colby whines when he finally stops heaving the contents of his stomach across inappropriate surfaces. “I just want to go home, I’m begging you.”

“How many girls have said the same thing to you? How many have begged you to take them home?” I ask as I drop the second toenail onto the table. I spare Colby a quick glance over my shoulder before returning to my work. “You’re a predator. You’ve gotten away with preying on women for so long that you probably don’t even worry about getting caught anymore. You thought that you could slide through life unscathed. But you know what? You’re not at the top of the food chain. You’re what we call in biology a tertiary consumer. Like a snake. Or a coyote.” I swallow a sudden burn in my throat as I pull the third nail free. “There are wolves out there, Mr. Candyman. And they can’t wait to gobble you up.”

“I c-can’t…I’m not…I’m not a bad guy—”

“You know, everyone fears the wolf. But do you know what the wolf fears in the kingdom of the wild?” I ask as I lift another toenail free and drop it to the table with a tick. “The lynx.” Colby blubbers behind me with quiet sobs. “I know, right? Most people wouldn’t guess a lynx. They look so snuggly, all plush fur and snowshoe feet and those adorable little black tufts on their ears. Super cute.” I pry the fourth nail from the frozen toe with a faint, wicked grin. “But a lynx will sneak into a wolf’s den. It will kill their pups. Their pregnant females. Even the full-grown males, when they get them alone. A lynx will flip a wolf on its back and gouge its stomach or neck, and then leave it to die. A single lynx will never challenge a wolf pack. No…it will bide its time. And when you least expect it,” I say as I lift the final toenail free and set it down among the others, “that’s when they emerge from the snow and the shadows. That’s when they kill.”

I grasp the leg by the ankle and return it to the freezer before gathering the toenails into a small Ziplock that I slip into the interior pocket of my jacket, tossing my gloves in the trash next to the table of implements. My gaze rests on the wall of photos and notes and I pull a picture down, the scene so familiar that the physical image is hardly needed, its details burned into memory. I slide it into my pocket next to the bag of souvenirs as I turn to face my captive with a grin. When I saunter toward the glass, Colby backs away, those delicious tears dampening his thick lashes and sliding across his skin.

“Jack is the wolf who hunts you. But guess what I am?” I press my hands to the glass and give Colby a shrug to go with my devious smile. “If the wolf never stood a chance against the lynx, what good do you think your begging will do?”

We regard one another for a long moment before I turn and stride toward the fortified steel door. “Clean up your vomit, Mr. Cameron. There are towels in the rubber container under your bed. I’ve got my own messes to attend to.”

I leave my little den to the melody of Colby’s pleas and protests, the first door slamming shut behind me with a thud that echoes up the concrete stairs. When I arrive at the second door, I pick up my rifle from where it leans against the wall and key the code into the pad to open the lock, entering the hidden cellar of my off-grid hunting cabin.

My dog Cornetto raises his head from his place where he lays guarding the threshold to the cabin as I enter the main floor, joining me to sit at my side on the worn sofa as I lay the Savage 110 across my thighs. I take the photo from the pocket where the toenails lay hidden. It’s one I took myself with a long-distance lens, a picture of Jack the year before I came to West Paine University. He’s in profile, his hands buried deep in his pockets as a bitter wind lifts his short dark hair from his brow. Jack is looking across the single acre of land that the university had managed to provide for his research with a threadbare grant. That was before I came along. Before I secured an additional forty-eight acres of field research space. Before I rallied for funding to build new labs and teaching facilities. It was from the days when every step I took closer to my quarry still felt like a wonderful challenge, a tactical move across a chessboard.

My father’s words come back to me. “There’s a saying you need to remember, Peanut,” he would tell me every season, no matter the prey we tracked. “Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they’re in the game.”

This is not a hunt, not anymore. Even if Jack finally understands he’s in the game, it’s not a sport.

It’s a reckoning.

I trace a finger across Jack’s face, an ache flaring beneath the thin, cracked crust of rage that’s built up over the years since this moment was captured. It never really bothered me much that he didn’t remember me the first time we officially met. There was disappointment, sure, but it wasn’t a strike deep enough to wound my heart. But everything since is different. Each of his hits has felt purposeful. Each venomous bite has burned hotter in my veins.

And it’s not just that I didn’t deserve the kiss of his poison.

It’s what he meant to me, despite each strike.

Jack was the person I emulated. Someone who could crush the breath from an enemy while still navigating a successful life in society, his dark secrets hidden from view. I wanted to be like him. In control. Impervious to the cruelty of time. Powerful. And I wanted to give Jack what he had given to me; a way to thrive in the absence of light.

So, I threw myself into my studies. I crushed each degree in as little time as possible, studying endlessly until I was top of my class. I signed up for every field school, seized every opportunity. I turned my hunting skills on those men who deserved it, cleansing Ashgrove and then Westview from the detritus of civilization one mediocre soul at a time.

And when I finally got to West Paine to create a safe haven for both of us, Jack rejected me at every turn.

I need to find a way to make him suffer. It’s the only way I’ll finally let go. Maybe then I can rebuild the oasis I’ve created at West Paine and embrace its sun and shadows on my own.

I take Jack’s trophy lighter from my pocket and flick the lid open, striking the flint wheel to bring the flame to life. It feels wrong to set the edge of the photo to the fire, but I do it anyway. I let it consume the paper until it scorches my fingertips, and only then do I let it go, dropping the burning photograph to the worn planks at my feet. My boot grinds the fire and ash into the floor and then I leave my cabin to drop Cornetto safely at home before I drive to the Bass Research Fields.

I text Dr. Cannon when I’m parked to let him know I’ve arrived, and he responds right away, though I know he won’t come around to check on me. The search party had nearly finished a sweep of the grounds when they alerted Dr. Cannon to an animal behaving strangely within the farmlands adjacent to the research grounds. It was an empty-handed search anyway, of course, and most people seem to have left. There are a few cars in the parking lot but I don’t see anyone as I remove the rifle and my pack from the back of my Land Rover. I don’t enter the building, I don’t look at the windows of the labs. I just walk toward the fields with my head down, searching for signs of my quarry.

The fifty acre plot of the Bass River Research Fields isn’t a huge space to roam, but it is full of wooded patches and creeks and fields, surrounded by a mix of farmland and sparse forest. Plenty of space for creatures to hide and roam, to build dens and raise young. With the abundance of easy food for scavengers, many of those creatures stay close and aren’t hard to find if you know where to look. And it doesn’t take me more than twenty minutes to spot what I’m looking for.

I set my blanket down on the crisp, frosted grass, still within view of the research labs at my back. I lay down on my belly and adjust my scope, but I don’t take the shot. I just watch for a while, letting the cold and the quiet wash over me, allowing the knot of regret to twist tighter around my throat as I follow the solitary beast in my crosshairs.

“You shouldn’t be out here, Dr. Roth.”

I huff a breath of a laugh, but I don’t look up from the view through my scope.

“You think I would take the risk without permission? In broad daylight? With a fucking rifle? You must still think so little of me, Dr. Sorensen.”

I hear the smile in Jack’s voice when he speaks, as faint as that grin might be. “I meant there’s a probable killer on the loose. You shouldn’t be out here alone. For appearances.”

“Rifle, Jack.”

Jack stops next to me, his worn Blundstones halting in my periphery at the edge of my waterproof blanket. For a long moment there’s silence between us, just the sounds of birds and the rustle of grasses to fill the gaps in my patience. I’m sure Jack is weighing the potential benefit of kicking me in the head against the possibility of being shot in the balls. But, surprisingly, he doesn’t move to take the risk.

“You weren’t with the search party,” Jack says instead.

“Nope.”

“Why would that be?”

I shrug, not taking my eye from the scope. “I had more important shit to do.”

There’s a quiet moment where I think he’s going to admonish me for not making an appearance at the search, but the silence stretches on with no cutting remark from Jack. “You’re not in camouflage,” he observes instead.

“No. I won’t need it today,” I reply, my voice low and smooth and quiet, like a solemn prayer in an empty church. “And hopefully I’ll scare away anything sane enough to notice.”

I glance up at Jack. His eyes are caught on the horizon where my scope is aimed, his gaze is roaming across the landscape as he searches for my quarry. When I follow the line of my scope I can see her in the distance. Head down. Tawny fur. A broken stride.

“CBF-14,” I say, shimmying to the left on the blanket. I open my palms around the rifle, looking up to meet the question in Jack’s eyes. “Take a look.”

Jack doesn’t step closer, nor does he remove his hands from his jacket pockets. He just turns his head to give me an assessing, doubtful look from the corner of his eye. “You want to give me your weapon, Dr. Roth?”

“Shooting me in the head on the campus grounds is hardly your style. If you wanted to kill me, which I’m sure you do, you’d prefer something far more private and…intimate…than that.” I fold my bottom lip between my teeth when Jack’s gaze falls to my seductive, knowing grin. A dark giggle bubbles in my throat as his eyes narrow, his pupils devouring his silver irises until only a thin band of color remains. My smile turns a shade more wicked in reply. “Why do you think I wear my hair up with that plum-colored shirt with the bow collar on the days when I want to annoy you the most, hmm? You know, the one with the decorative little frilly bit right here?” I ask as I turn my head to expose my throat to the cold autumn air, twinkling my fingers along my skin.

“I loathe that shirt.”

“I know. It’s the built-in ligature. So close to strangulation, and yet so far. Such a tease.” I force my brief laugh to sound more sardonic than it feels as I shuffle an inch or two further to the left and offer the rifle once more. “Come on. I won’t bite…this time.”

A crease flickers between Jack’s brows. For a moment, I think he’ll just walk away, leaving some cold and cutting words in his wake. But he steps closer instead, his eyes not leaving mine as he kneels next to me, their cool, metallic glimmer burrowing into my soul until the moment the rifle is firmly in his grip. My smile fades away as the scent of vetiver rises above the smell of crushed, cool grass and damp earth. Jack lays on his stomach next to me, propped on his elbows, looking just as natural with a rifle in his hands as he does with a champagne flute and a pristine black suit at a gala event.

“Where do I look?” Jack asks, his attention falling to my lips for the span of a fleeting breath before he nestles the rifle to his shoulder and focuses on the horizon.

“On the rise, to the right of the pines,” I reply, gathering the frayed ends of my scattering thoughts. A swirl of regret is all that’s left when I follow the barrel of the gun. “A coyote.”

Jack nods, his right eye trained on the scope, his left squeezed shut. “I’ve got it.”

“Her, not it,” I correct, but gently. “What do you see?”

“A coyote.”

I roll my eyes. “You obstinate fuck. What do you—”

“She seems disoriented.” I almost choke on my saliva at the hint of amusement in Jack’s voice. I look over in time to catch a vanishing grin, but he doesn’t pull his gaze from the scope. That smile fades into something more serious as he watches the animal struggling in the distance. “She just stumbled. She’s injured…no, she’s sick.”

“You sound sure. Why?” I ask, though I already know he’s correct.

“Her body language. Her head and ears are down. She seems like she’s…reacting to something. Not us? Not our scent?”

“No. The wind is favorable to our position. Even if it carried to her, I doubt she’d run.”

Jack shifts his attention away from the coyote. His piercing intellect lands on me with the weight of a blade. I try to push a wall up between us, but I feel his scrutiny in every cell of my body. Jack doesn’t just look at me, he looks into me.

“Did you come from a hunting family?” he asks as he surveys the details of my face.

“Yes. My dad. He started taking me with him when I was ten.” An ember burns in my chest, the lick of flame coating old scars in heat. Jack looks at me as though I’ll elaborate, as though a simple question or two will cause me to just spill all the details he hasn’t earned. Even still, the past feels like it’s crawling up my throat, begging to be let out. “My dad took me hunting because I wanted to go. I didn’t have a shitty childhood, if that’s what you’re digging for,” I say, tearing my gaze away, though I can still feel him watching me. “It was picture perfect.”

My whisper seems to hang in the air before the wind carries it away. The coyote in the distance tilts her head as though listening, but I know she can’t hear us. She shakes her head and bares her teeth at a phantom foe.

“What’s her name?” Jack asks.

I want to say CBF-14, but I know he’ll call bullshit. “Sunny Bunny.”

I can almost feel Jack gathering his limited self-restraint, and I think for a moment that he might throw the gun across the field. “Sunny…Bunny…?”

“Yep. Just Bunny for short, of course. Or Buns. But I knew you’d hate her full name even more.”

“I don’t know, Buns is pretty bad.”

A weak smile flickers across my lips at the distaste I see in Jack’s expression when I dart a glance his way. It’s deeply satisfying to catch the way he crinkles his nose as though he’s swallowed something bitter. He passes the rifle back and I find Bunny through the scope, settling into the comforting weight of the weapon, the trigger cold in the autumn air.

He never rested his finger on it.

I glance in Jack’s direction to find him watching me with more interest than I expected. “The first time I saw her was on a bright summer day. She caught a young hare,” I say as I turn my attention back to the canid in the distance. I shrug. “It wasn’t just the weather, or the prey. The longer I watched, the more I realized she had a spark about her. A kind of goofy disposition. Hence, Sunny Bunny.”

“I thought wildlife biologists were supposed to remain dispassionate about their research subjects.”

I roll my eyes and sigh. “Of course you would. It’s okay for the illustrious Dr. Jack Sorensen to be passionate about a bunch of cold bones but God forbid anyone else feel something remotely fervid about their work,” I grumble.

I’m quiet for a long moment as Bunny turns a wobbling circle, and I realize that there’s nothing I recognize of her anymore, nothing remaining of the soul that’s left only fur and flesh and marrow behind. A sting burns deep in my chest, in my eyes. I blink, keeping my gaze honed on the coyote. “No. I’ve studied Bunny for three years. I am not apathetic to her at all, Jack.”

We fall into silence as Bunny looks down at the grasses waving in the wind like tiny banners. She trots a few steps before stumbling to a stop and shaking her head, her jaw hanging open and her tongue working in her open mouth as she tries to swallow. Jack’s head tilts as he watches. Bunny’s behavior is notably strange, even from this distance and without the benefit of the scope. “Rabies?” he asks.

My finger caresses the curve of the trigger as my heart seems to drop in my chest, its weight too heavy against my bones. “Yes. I was informed about an aggressive coyote that was killed on Mitchell street a few weeks ago. It was tested and came back positive for rabies. I put vaccine bait in the fields, but I guess I was too late. Maybe I didn’t put enough down. I should have done another round, but I let myself become caught up with other…priorities,” I admit, resisting the sudden urge to glance at Jack.

The quiet threads around us, pulling tight, knotting in my throat. Silence never bothers me when I’m alone in the field observing the behavior of wildlife. But when I’m with other people, the quiet often gnaws at me, scraping at my mind, an itch across my thoughts. It’s like an entity, like a living hole that begs to be filled before my imagination can drag me somewhere I don’t want to go.

“No cutting remarks, Jack?” I ask, feeding the void when it starts to consume me. But truthfully, I’m also surprised he hasn’t taken the opportunity to slice me down for my self-admitted mistake. “I’ve watched Bunny for almost as long as I’ve been here at West Paine. Of all the lives here, hers is my favorite, and I just told you that her suffering is my fault. Nothing to add?”

Silence. Bunny stumbles in the distance.

I swallow as my finger flinches on the trigger.

“Come on,” I whisper around the knot that constricts my vocal cords. “You know nothing would make you happier than to twist another knife.”

Jack’s silence crystallizes beneath my skin, burning my flesh like the touch of ice. My eye stays on Bunny as her tongue lolls in her open jaws.

“Fucking hell, Jack, just cut me down already—”

“Kyrie—”

My shot stops him short, the power of the blast echoing against the creek embankments. Bunny falls into the grass and doesn’t stir.

“Good enough,” I whisper.

I sling my backpack over one shoulder and my rifle over the other as I rise, not looking back as I stride away to recover another soul.

One I never wanted to take.