Empty house. Could be useful.
I run a hand through my hair before hauling open the front door. Rachel is hunched against the side of our black Subaru. Her dark waves are scraped up into a high ponytail, wispy strands left to frame her face, and she's wearing the purple berry lipgloss I like. A novel hangs between her palms—ironically, something by Brett Easton Ellis—though she glances up as soon as she hears the door.
I stride toward her with my hands in my pockets. The evening sun is warm; it makes her cheeks flush and my skin sweat, and its mellow light frames the neat line of houses along our street in the Better Part of the Neighbourhood.
"Rache," I say in a low voice, "you've got to stop coming over like this."
She peers up at me with her blue eyes. "I just miss you sometimes, is all. And you're not busy. You're only in there—"
"How the hell do you know whether or not I'm busy?"
She recoils. "Okay, okay. Sorry. I didn't mean it."
"It's okay." I reach up to tuck her hair behind her ear. My cock thickens at the way her pupils dilate, the sight of her breasts rising and falling to my touch. Annoying or not, she has something special. Something different to the vapid bitches at school. "Listen. Can you come back later? Around eight?"
She gives an eager nod. "Yeah. I mean, I can sneak out, yeah. They'll never even know I've gone."
I raise my eyebrows. "You have a curfew now?" Frankly, I didn't realise her parents cared. They always seem to be of the let teens make mistakes so they can learn from them ilk.
"My mom saw the marks...well, you know." Her gaze drops. Shoulders slump. "She thinks I'm self-harming, so they're keeping tabs on me." A reluctant small pulls at one side of her lips. "They think I'm at the library."
"You are reading."
"Uhuh." She looks up at me through her eyelashes, her breath quickening again. "And learning."
"I'll look out for you at eight, okay?" I trail my fingertips along her bare throat. Wallow in her little sighs.
"Okay," she murmurs.
"So get lost already."
She pretends to giggle; she's nervous that I meant that maliciously.
I do.
"I can't wait for later," she tells me as she walks off.
"Me either."
Self-harm is a beautifully appropriate analogy for what I do to Rachel. And I wasn't lying just then—I can't wait to do it again.
"Aeron!" Mrs Connolly, our senior neighbour, steps out with a watering can and gives me a wave. "Hi!"
I plaster on a fake smile. "Hey, Mrs C."
"I heard you won your last game. We're all thrilled for you!"
"We do our best."
She wraps a strand of white hair around her finger. Jesus. "You take care now! Eat your vegetables!"
She thinks I'm such a nice boy. She thinks I'm walking back into the house pondering football scores and barbecue dinners.
Somewhere beyond her imagining, Rachel Fordham walks half-naked down my driveway, her thighs a grotesque tapestry of blood and cum.
#8
Predator (noun): entity at the top of the food chain. Also referred to as president, monarch, boss or parent
At just past eight o'clock on Monday morning, Leo pulls up in the car I sent for her and Tuija escorts her to the door. I watch all this from the wide stretch of window at the back of my office as news reports flicker across the glass. The ink is barely dry on our paperwork, but SilentWitn3ss is officially mine; by proxy, so is she. And she knows it. Look at her bowed head. Her reluctant steps. She doesn't want to be here, mostly—her pissy little board of directors have no doubt ripped her apart.
But the dirtiest corner of her mind...it does want to be here. Couldn't keep away. That little secret of mine has chewed through her veins, severed arteries, bled its way into her system and blown smoke into the ventricles of her heart. She knows I must keep her close...or dispose of her.
It works both ways. She could be the one to kill me. A pretty girl is never short of alibis, sports fans—forget that and suffer. But if she planned on that, I'm guessing she'd have already pulled the trigger. I trespassed in her apartment and handed her a self-defence motive on a silver platter. Leo has made, for the time being, the twisted decision to keep me. It's delicious.
There is, of course, the Fordham complication. Tommy's reports certainly make things interesting. If I handle Leo right, I can unpick all of this...perhaps while I unpick her.
Did I mention how I'll make a fucktonne of money in the process?
***
I give Leo the morning to settle her team into the half-constructed offices, and then I ask Tuija to bring her in.
"You want some champagne and strawberries to go with that?" she huffs on her way out.
"Play nice, firecracker," I warn. Although I appreciate how she's dealing with jealousy by pretending it's only mock jealousy. At least it's inventive, and at least she doesn't look like she spent the previous night with her face in a bottle of vodka.
Ten minutes later, there's a single, solid knock at my door.