Chapter 17 Tom
Tom
The park was nearly empty at this hour, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across the walking path.
Most people had already gone home for dinner, leaving only a handful of joggers and dog walkers scattered throughout the sprawling green space.
Julia walked beside me, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jacket, her breath forming small clouds in the cooling air.
We’d met up a few times since that night at her grandmother’s house.
Carefully orchestrated encounters that looked casual to any outside observer—running into each other at a coffee shop, crossing paths at the library.
But there was nothing casual about it. I was monitoring her, making sure the seed of darkness I’d inadvertently planted hadn’t gone rogue despite our agreement.
So far, she seemed to be holding to her end of the promise. There were no new killings. She seemed satisfied to meet up with me once in a while and just talk.
But today, I had a different purpose for our meeting. One that made my stomach twist with something uncomfortably close to desperation.
“You’ve been quiet,” Julia observed, glancing up at me. “More than usual, I mean. Is everything okay?”
It wasn’t okay. Nothing was ever going to be okay again.
I was keeping Shay locked up in my basement.
Shay—brilliant, fierce, impossible Detective Sawyer—reduced to a prisoner. The space that had once been my sanctuary was now her cage. She fed on freedom the way flowers fed on sunlight—it was essential to her very nature. She was never meant to be caged.
That’s what I’d loved most about her. That wildness. That refusal to bend.
But she was wilting day after day, like a plant kept too long in darkness.
I could see it in the hollowing of her cheeks, the way her eyes had lost their sharp edge, the listlessness that had replaced her usual restless energy.
She was wasting away before my eyes, and I was the one killing her.
Not with violence, but with captivity. With the slow, grinding cruelty of confinement.
I’d fucked up. Monumentally, catastrophically fucked up.
She’d found out I was a serial killer. Not the whole truth—she believed that I’d only killed three people: Linda Fell, Alfred Thorne, and Martin Baker. The vigilante cases she’d been investigating, the ones she’d been so certain were connected.
But she’d been wrong about one crucial detail.
The only one I actually killed was Alfred Thorne. The rest belonged to Julia.
I had no intention of telling Shay that, however.
I could still see the twist in her expression when she’d realized the truth. Her hand reaching for the knife…
I panicked.
I was ashamed to admit it, even now. I, the one who was always in control, who never let his emotions rule him, who approached everything with cold calculation and careful planning—I panicked.
Felt real, visceral fear for the first time in years.
Not fear of being caught or killed, but fear of losing her.
Of watching her walk out that door and knowing I’d never see her again, except maybe through bulletproof glass during visiting hours.
And that panic cost me everything.
I’d moved without thinking, had grabbed her wrist and twisted. The knife clattered to the floor. She’d fought like a wildcat, all teeth and fury and desperation. We’d crashed into furniture, knocked over the dishes and lamps.
I had hurt her.
Something that I never imagined myself doing.
But it was too late now to feel any regrets.
If I were brutally honest with myself, somewhere deep down, I didn’t feel any.
I hated the way things had unfolded, but if there was a chance I could still keep Shay in my life—no matter how small, no matter how damaged that version of “us” might be—I would take it.
No matter what lines I had to cross or how much she might hate me for it.
Shay had been right about one thing, though. I didn’t have that much time left.
People would start to talk soon, ask questions. She’d miss too much work. Her partner would notice her absence, would start retracing her steps, would eventually find the connection leading back to me. I’d bought myself maybe another week before everything came crashing down.
A few more days to figure out what to do.
There was something my father used to say, back when I was young enough to still listen to him. We become what we fear most, boy. You’ll understand that someday.
I didn’t want to be like him. I’d spent my entire life trying to be anything but the man who’d terrorized my mother and sister, who’d ruled through fear and violence, who’d caged the people he claimed to love and called it protection.
I had lied to Shay. Not about my mother or sister or what had happened to them—that story had been true, painfully so. But I’d lied about the beginning. About how I’d started down this path.
The first man I killed was my father.
It had been survival, pure and simple.
He wanted to kill me. I got to him first.
I’d grabbed the kitchen knife—the same kind of knife Shay had reached for, though I tried not to think about that parallel—and I’d buried it in his chest before he could get to me.
Then I’d stabbed myself in the stomach while I waited for the ambulance to arrive. Made it look like he’d attacked me, like I’d fought back in self-defense. Which was technically true, just not in the sequence the police believed.
I had looked at my mother and sister as the blood pooled around me on the kitchen floor, trying to memorize their faces, afraid that I’d forget them. Afraid that the darkness I’d felt rising inside me as I watched my father die would consume everything good I’d ever known.
It had taken years, but that fear had proven prophetic.
“Mr. Hayes?” Julia’s voice pulled me back to the present. “You seem far away.”
I blinked, focusing on her concerned face. She’d stopped walking, and was studying me with an intensity that reminded me uncomfortably of myself at that age. Always watching, always analyzing.
What would her grandmother think if she knew what I was really teaching her?
Of choosing victims and executing them without leaving evidence. Of becoming something inhuman.
I felt somewhat responsible for this young girl standing in front of me. I’d taken her father away. It made sense that she’d look to me to fill that void, to give her a new purpose and direction.
“Is this… is it about Detective Sawyer?”
I sometimes forgot that Julia had been watching me for years without my knowledge. She probably knew more about me than I’d ever willingly share.
“There might be something I need you to do for me,” I said.
Julia nodded, her expression shifting to something more focused. “Anything. You know that. What do you need me to do?”
We started walking again, moving deeper into the park where the trees grew thicker and the chance of being overheard diminished. The sun was sinking lower now, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink.
The loyalty should have warmed me. Instead, it made me feel cold all the way through.
Because I knew what I was doing—corrupting her further, drawing her deeper into my darkness, ensuring that even if she managed to build a normal life, there would always be this thread connecting her to something terrible.
But I was desperate. And desperate men did terrible things.
“Thank you, Julia,” I quietly said.
My father’s voice echoed in my head, smug and knowing even after all these years.
We become what we fear most, boy.
He’d been right.
I’d become him after all.