I handed him over twenty dollars.
“How about a couple extra dollars for some pizza?”
“Craig, what the fuck? You can’t tell me you have nothing!”
“Please! I haven’t eaten properly in days!”
“I don’t believe this.”
I gave him another twenty and started the engine.
“Wait, I can see you again, right?”
“Right,” I said looking straight out the front of the windshield.
I sped away from the curb leaving him standing there.
“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw he was waving after me, his mouth spread wide into a smile I used to love so much but now detested.
Chapter Three
Lincoln
“Where the fuck is she?” I said to myself as I drummed my fingers along the counter.
“Trouble in paradise?” asked the cop.
“I hate that phrase. It’s cheap.”
Berger shook his head in disbelief.
“Shut the hell up, doc and get that pole outta your ass. Why do rich guys like you gotta hate stuff all the time? Nothing’s ever good enough for you.”
He pressed his fingers to his head and dabbed at the viscous blood that was sticking to the bandages.
“Anyway, where’s that girl of yours? She’s a real cute thing, ain’t she?”
“Don’t talk about her like that!”
A shooting pain shot up the side of my face and I realized I was talking through clenched teeth with my jaw pulled tight. I took a deep breath and turned my back on him.
“So…” Berger said as he shuffled in his restraints. “Are you not going to tell me what this sick place is? Or are you waiting until the moment just before you kill me? It’ll be our little secret right at the end when you’re looking into my eyes, enjoying every second of watching the life fade from me. Just like with all the other girls.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “That sounds more like making love.”
He spluttered out a laugh.
“You must be pretty romantic.”
“Only with my favorite victims.”
He fell silent. I turned round to see him rub his bloodshot eyes. Sweat lay thick and cool across his forehead as he licked his lips.
“I knew you were the Ripper.”
“The Ripper? Is that what they’re calling me?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. The Ripper. It sounded so melodramatic. So… cheesy.
“So you’re saying it’s you?”
“Look at you,” I said as I walked over to him. “You’re tied to thewall in an underground laboratory inside a mountain and you still think you can interrogate me like a cop. You don’t have the upper hand anymore.”
“I am a cop!”
“No. Right now you’re just an unfortunate guy who got lost while off duty and found himself as a trespasser on my property.”
His eyes widened and a look of panic crossed his face. It told me everything I needed to know.
“You thought I wouldn’t guess you were here snooping around without anyone knowing? You dumb bastard.”
Defeated, he rested his head against the wall. I watched him for a moment as he struggled with his emotions. A shadow seemed to fall across his gray eyes like a wintery Atlantic wave. Then he glanced away. I knew that look, that posture, that sense of giving up. They all had it when they realized there was no way of getting out of here alive.
“You’re gonna kill me anyway,” he said. “May as well do it now while I’m injured. I’m easy prey.”
I still hadn’t decided what to do with him. The more I stared at him, the more exciting I found the prospect of killing a man, especially a man of the law. My fingers began to twitch as though they had a life of their own. Without realizing, I walked over to the cabinet by the computer and ran my fingertips over the vast array of sterilized instruments.
They all seemed too pure and delicate to push into the flesh of a brute like Berger. He deserved something less subtle, like a sledgehammer.
“Hesitating, doctor?” he asked, his voice gruff and course.
“I’m just deciding.”
Looking over the top of the counter, I could just about make out the top of his bloody head as he rested against the wall. Could I really do it? Had he actually done something wrong? His only crime was knowing too much and that never normally met my criteria.
The girls from the house, they’d hurt people, hurt children. Berger had saved them, had tried to stop it all from happening. If only he hadn’t burst into my house then maybe we could have formed an alliance. We could have helped each other and brought an end to all the pain and suffering.
“I just wish you hadn’t been against me,” I said as I picked up a scalpel.
I ran it along the back of my hand and felt its sharpness as it left a thin ribbon of blood across my skin. Berger watched as he tugged at his restraints, a last futile attempt at breaking free. I was disappointed in his lack of fight. I’d always imagined that if it came down to it, I’d have to fight him inch by inch but with his confidence in the gutter and his head still bleeding, he was weak.
I placed the scalped back down in the drawer and sat on the floor across from him. Now we seemed more equal.
“I just wish you’d come to me rather than come at me. You understand?”
“No,” came his curt reply. “I don’t understand a thing other than you’re a psychopath.”
That hurt. Psychopath… It was a word that conjured images from classic, blood soaked movies. I wasn’t one of them. Those people didn’t feel a thing whereas I felt too much. I believed in what I was doing. Killing wasn’t just for fun. There was a purpose, an obsessive need to keep people safe.
“I’m a guardian angel,” I said, moving further forward.
We were face to face on the cold floor. I could smell him over the antiseptic, sour and soiled as he lay in his own crusted blood.
“Guardian angel,” he spat. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“No. I’m perfectly sane. Saner than you would believe.”
“You kill people.”
“I only take them away to stop them hurting…”
He narrowed his eyes with curiosity.
“Stop them hurting… who?”
He was playing me. There was no way he didn’t know who or what I was talking about. It was an open secret. Everyone in this whole city who wore a suit knew damn well what I was talking about.
“Don’t fuck with me,” I said, reaching into my pocket.
He watched as my fingers searched my pocket for a weapon and braced himself.
“You know as much as I do what Judge Kennedy does, what your chief does, what all those disgusting fucking pigs do when they turn up and ask for that old witch Phaedra.”
His mouth dropped open.
“You’re saying… You’re saying the girls you murdered, they were all involved?”
I held his gaze and gave a slight nod.
“Killing them was my way of protecting this town but it’s not so easy, is it? Whenever one dies three take their place. They’re vermin. Dirty damned parasites.”
He began to shake.
“You can’t go around killing criminals! Where’s your faith in the law?”
“I have no faith,” I replied. “Not when your boss is as guilty as the rest of them.”
A look of terror flickered across his eyes. Lifting my hand out my pocket, I lurched toward him and he stumbled back. There was a flash of silver as something metallic grazed his face. Then I flicked the knife up and slashed away at his restraints.
He was free but dumbfounded and stared at his wrists.
“I’ll let you live,” I said. “But from now on you’re on my side.”
He clutched his wrists and rubbed where the rope had burned his skin.
“Don’t count on it,” he said. “You gotta tell me everything.”
About The Aut
hor
Brooke Kinsley has been in love with words since the day she took her first breath. She loves writing steamy, sexy stories with very strong guys who fall deeply in love with the women they flirt. Coffee and wine inspired her stories and she thinks every person should partake in! Brooke lives in Quebec, Canada with her boyfriend. When she's not crafting stories, she's probably playing with her two cats.
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Jewels and Panties (Book, Four): Twisted Love Page 7
