Chapter 4
SAM
We slept in my queen-size bed together last night, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Ezra had tossed and turned until he’d pressed against me.
His arm had wrapped around my hips and he’d snuggled so close I felt every one of his ribs.
He was too skinny, and somewhere deep in my mind, I decided I was going to fix that.
I got up earlier than usual and dealt with some morning chores before I made toast. I reasoned that it wouldn’t upset his stomach because, if I hazarded a guess, he didn’t eat much. Ezra walked down the stairs just in time, with the toast popping the moment he entered the kitchen.
I waved at him in greeting.
He yawned, jaw cracking. I cringed at the sound. “Good morning.”
Passing him the toast on a plate, I gestured to it when he gave me a confused frown, then made a gesture toward my mouth. “Food,” I mouthed.
“For me?” As if eavesdropping, his stomach growled loudly. He flushed a pretty red and fell onto a seat at the dining table. He took tentative bites, but I wasn’t sure if he was afraid the food would disappear from between his fingers or if he thought he might vomit if he ate too fast.
I took the seat beside him and tapped his arm. “Yum?” It took me two tries mouthing the word before he understood.
“Yeah. Real great. I can’t remember the last time I had toast.” He licked his lips.
I reached into the pocket of the coat I’d slipped on earlier. It was a Friday, which meant I had work today and I was ready to go. Pulling out the notepad I carried with me, I wrote out my thoughts.
Started you off with dry food. Didn’t want you to be sick.
He grinned. “Good idea. I don’t think my stomach could handle much else. Though, I ate whatever I could find in the garbage of restaurants on bad nights. You’d be surprised what they throw out.”
No, I wouldn’t. My parents used to own a burger joint.
I’d mentioned their waste to them when I was a teenager and suggested taking it to the homeless, but I got nothing but hostile laughter in return.
My mother had muttered something about the homeless being cockroaches.
I’d learned back then when to drown out her filthy hate speech.
If it wasn’t about the homeless, she’d start on homophobic and racist rants that made me embarrassed to be her kid.
When Ezra finished, he brushed his hands on his clean sweatpants. The soiled pair from last night was still in the hamper in the bathroom. The thought of what I’d done with him made my stomach twist and neck heat up.
I didn’t know what had come over me. I didn’t lie to him.
I wasn’t gay, or at least, I wouldn’t exactly call myself that.
I didn’t know what I was. I’d only had one girlfriend and she lasted a few months.
We’d had sex, but it was very clinical and I didn’t think she enjoyed it.
Neither of us did. I hadn’t touched another person like that before last night.
I’d moved on instinct, the urge to touch him becoming so strong that all I could do was listen to the sinful whispers in my head that coaxed me into touching his dick.
I didn’t tell him any of that, though. I didn’t know who Ezra was other than a homeless man who’d been beaten. His bruises had deepened in color overnight, with the swirl of murky purple and sickly green dark against his pale skin.
I ran a thumb over the bruise on his cheek and it made him wince away from me. “Hurt?” I mouthed.
He touched his face gently, the pads of his fingers caressing the obviously tender flesh. “Yeah. I kept rolling on it last night. It’s fucking painful.”
Do you think you have broken bones?
I’d already asked him the question before, but that didn’t stop me from worrying. They’d hurt him and I wasn’t going to take any chances. If he needed to go to the hospital, I’d take him there in an instant. We could come up with an excuse.
Ezra stared down at my writing for a long moment, then shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think so. I’ve had a broken cheekbone before. It’s not painful like that.”
I almost asked him how he’d been hurt previously until I remembered it wasn’t my business.
Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?
I underlined “sure” twice.
He snorted and brushed his long brown hair out of his eyes. “I’m homeless. Do you think I can afford a doctor?”
I pointed at myself, but he shook his head fast.
“I don’t need one. You can stop fussing.”
Interest piqued inside me. He answered too quickly with a kind of worried desperation I understood. When I was a teenager, I felt the same way. Were you abused, too, Ezra? I didn’t ask.
I need to go to work today. Will you be okay on your own?
His eyes widened at the words and he narrowed his gaze on me. “You trust me?”
I cocked my head in question.
“I’m homeless. Your house—” He peered around the dining room. “—is nice. Why would you leave me alone? Aren’t you worried I’ll run to the cops?”
No, and that scared me more than leaving a murder witness in my house. I answered with a shake of my head, then smiled. Brushing a finger over his jaw, not too hard so I didn’t cause him pain, I leaned in a little closer.
“I trust you.” The words hurt, but they were worth the pain to see his surprised smile.
“Your downfall,” he teased.
I laughed. My coworkers always shifted away from me when they heard the sound, and I’d learned not to socialize with them. I was there to earn money and that was it. I never liked people much in the first place, which is why my connection to Ezra was surprising on many levels.
Unlike others, Ezra merely laughed with me and nudged my shoulder with his own. “What do you do anyway?”
Lab tech.
“Ah. That explains why you’re good with all the blood and stuff, right?”
I winked at him and rose from the chair. I took his plate to the sink, then filled my travel mug with coffee. I felt his gaze on me the entire time and forced down the desire to go back over to him, maybe kiss him like I’d thought he would do to me last night.
“Do you have plans?”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “When?”
“I mean, do you have plans to do it again?”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant this time. Kill. He wanted to know when I was going to kill again. The morbid curiosity on his face made pride swell inside me. I’d never expected to meet someone who wanted to know these things. Everyone else would’ve run to the police by now.
“Maybe.”
He flashed a smile.
“Come on, tell me.”
I shook my head and walked back over to the table.
Are you still hungry? I don’t have much food but can give you money to buy some.
He stared down at the notepad, chewing on the corner of his bottom lip. Then, he looked at me again, hesitancy in his eyes. “I haven’t shopped inside a grocery store in a long time. I wouldn’t know what to buy.”
Anything you want.
I grabbed my wallet from the kitchen counter. Handing him my credit card, I smiled at the shock that passed over his face.
“Dude, you have a lot of trust. You should really be careful who you give your credit card to.”
If you steal from me, you’ll be my next victim.
It was the truth and I saw that he knew it, too, by the way he swallowed visibly. “Yeah, good point. No stealing from you.”
I patted him on the head. “Be good,” I mouthed, exaggerating the last word.
“I’m not a child,” he muttered.
I made a sound of amusement and took one of the spare keys off my keyring. Passing it to him, I pointed at the front door and made turning gestures with my hand.
“Front door key. Got it.” His tongue swiped over his bottom lip and I couldn’t help but follow it with my eyes. Pink and wet, how would it feel against my dick?
I shook my head and grabbed my backpack with my work gear.
With a wave, I headed to the front door and locked it behind myself, half out of habit, but also because I didn’t want him to go shower and forget.
Even though I lived in a nice suburb full of families and middle-class seniors, no one was fully trustworthy.
I was an example of that. My neighbors had no idea who lived next door to them.
Except, according to my brain, Ezra could be trusted—a strange revelation that could get me into a lot of trouble if I wasn’t careful.
Eleanor Summers stood in her front yard, layered in thick winter clothes, including her favorite pink beanie with a yellow duck, and a steaming coffee cup clutched in her gloved hands.
She was in her seventies but didn’t look a day over fifty.
The one time I’d asked what her secret was, the answer had been wine.
With her gray hair coiled in a bun with strands hanging out, she still only appeared half awake.
“Hello there, Sam!”
I waved at her and grinned.
“It’s cold this morning. Quite the storm we had last night. I thought I heard screaming but realized it was just the wind.” Eleanor took a long sip of her coffee and made a noise of contentment. “I do love winter.”
I didn’t. I hated it because it made things so much harder when it came to taking down a kill. I nodded at her.
The storm last night meant we had another six inches of snow and the hard work I put into my driveway yesterday amounted to nothing.
Usually I’d make the time to shovel the snow out of the way, but my Land Rover meant I didn’t need to, I could drive right over it.
When I looked up at my bedroom window, Ezra was staring down at me with a thoughtful expression.
This was the second time I’d caught him contemplating me, and like last night, a spike of pleasure zipped through me.
I liked him looking at me with those hazel eyes because there was something deeper in the stare, a strange sense of excitement at seeing me work.
“Who’s that?” Eleanor asked, attention locked on Ezra in the window. She’d turned her body fully toward my house, eyebrows knitted in confusion and coffee forgotten. She’d always been a gossip.
A range of answers came to me. Cousin. Brother. Friend. I didn’t use any of them, though.
“Boyfriend.” My voice sounded scratchy and the one word made my throat burn, but I felt the need to say it aloud.
She turned wide eyes on me. I don’t think she’d ever heard my voice before. “I didn’t know you were gay.”
Neither had I until Ezra came along. I didn’t label myself as gay, though. I didn’t know what I was. He’d come into my life last night as an unknown entity, but I had determined that he fit inside my house nicely. For now. I blamed loneliness. It was a beast.
I shrugged at her and smiled again before I went to my Land Rover Discovery, which was parked in the garage beside my house. After reversing the large SUV, I drove to work, which was a fifteen-minute trip at the most.
Zinc Laboratories conducted all sorts of experiments, from testing blood cultures for doctors to trialing new and exciting authorized treatments on willing participants.
I helped different departments, depending on who needed me the most. Today I was with the blood testing crew, which meant I was doing most of the work while the pathologists pretended they were busy.
They got the money and recognition while I handled the mess.
I didn’t mind much, though. I preferred to be out of the limelight.
Keeping a low profile helped with my extracurricular activities.
The bosses didn’t know me and that made me unrecognizable if anyone came asking questions.
The weirdly shaped white building was in the east side of New Gothenburg in an industrial part of the city.
Factories of all types were dotted around the area, with their tall chimneys reaching for the sky, smoke billowing from them.
A few years back, one of the billionaire owners of a plastics company hit on his personal assistant.
When she rejected him, he fired her and sent men to beat her up.
The courts deemed there wasn’t enough evidence and he was let off with a slap on the wrist.
I’d added his name, David Tamper, to my list, and a few months later, I’d fed his body to the pigs at my cousin’s farm. Dalton was one of the three people who knew what I did. Ezra now made four.
Once I had the SUV parked, I strode inside, past security where I had to swipe my badge, and into the elevator which took me to the third floor.
As soon as I made it through the glass doors, I grabbed my white lab coat and slid it on.
I got to my desk before Louisa, the closest thing I had to a friend in this place, came bouncing up to me.
She had her sandy blond hair tied at the back of her head today and a new pair of black-framed glasses sitting on her nose. These ones were nicer than her old pair, with flowers on the temples.
“Hey! So, funny story . . . .”
It was never a funny story, but I nodded to encourage her anyway.
“The boss is on a rampage and it’s kind of my fault.” She laughed nervously.
I sighed. Today was going to be a long day.