Chapter 24 Abi
ABI
It’s torture, waiting for nightfall.
I haven’t seen Nameless in a while. A week, maybe. But I also haven’t gone looking for him like I did the night he made me come on the dais.
The night I knelt in front of him and worshipped his cock.
But tonight, I wait for him, sitting on my front porch as the sun sets, drinking a Coke instead of a gin and tonic. My hands shake as I bring the glass to my lips, making the ice clink. I’m not sure I’m more afraid he’ll show up, or more afraid that he won’t.
Darkness falls across the yard, cloaking the cemetery and then the sunflower patch.
The street lamps switch on. I scroll idly through my phone, half-watching the videos that Penelope sends to the group chat.
They’re all animal-themed, the way they are with her.
Otters holding hands and whatnot. But my mind isn’t on cute animals right now.
Something cracks in the yard.
I set my phone down and stand up, blinking into the darkness. “Hello?” I call out. “If that’s you, I want to talk.”
For a moment, the only answer is the sea wind. I go up to the banister, squeezing my glass tight. “Are you there?”
I feel stupid, calling out to the darkness like that. But then one of the shadows moves. A figure steps forward, and my breath tightens.
It’s him.
He steps right up to the edge of the porch light and looks at me through his mask. Seeing that twisted, leering face sends a shiver of heat between my legs.
I squeeze my glass tighter.
“You did it again,” I say softly.
“I did.” His gravelly, rough voice works under my skin. I take a sip of my Coke to calm myself. Then I grin sheepishly at him and say, “It’s just soda.”
“Good.”
Heat blooms inside my clit. I try to ignore it. I can’t do that again. Not with him. He’s a murderer.
“Can we talk out here?” I ask.
Nameless tilts his head, and at first, I think he doesn’t understand the question. But then he says, “Safer to talk inside. There are people around. Not like before.”
I peer out at the dark and wonder again how he could possibly know that. The night feels empty to me.
I shouldn’t let him in my house. I should go inside, lock the door, call the police.
I don’t do any of that, of course. I just step backward over the porch and push the door open.
Nameless steps into the light, big and imposing in his dark clothes. My eyes drip, unbidden, to his gloved hands, and my clit pulses.
I go inside. He follows, his steps heavy against the wooden floor. When he swings the door shut, my breath catches. When he locks it, lust flares in me again.
I will myself not to look at the viewing room.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asks.
I stare up at him, feeling dizzy. I’m not sure what to do, really. Should I invite him upstairs to my living room? Should we stay down here in the funeral parlor, which feels more like a neutral territory?
Should I take him to see the body?
That thought startles me. I shove it aside.
“You were following me,” I say, setting my drink and my phone down on the entrance table, next to the stack of pamphlets. They still have Uncle Vic’s face on them, smiling pleasantly at the camera. I flip the whole stack over and look at Nameless.
“You know I watch over you,” he says calmly.
“No.” I shake my head. “During the day. You were following me. Neptune’s Adventure? Really?”
His chest lifts, like he’s taking a deep breath. When he doesn’t say anything, I keep going
“You saw me go there, didn’t you? With Rowan?” I tremble a little, saying his name. “Promise me you won’t—hurt him.”
I can’t bring myself to say kill.
Nameless watches me, and I wish, suddenly, that I could rip that mask off and see his face. To have a sense, however vague, of what he’s thinking.
“Rowan is the man you were with,” he finally says.
“So you were following me,” I say. “Why would you—do that at some place I was just at? Don’t you know that Kaplan—” I stop myself, hearing the way the panic rises in my voice.
“The Rosado sheriff already doesn’t trust me,” I say stiffly.
“Because of what happened when I was sixteen. And if death follows me—”
“Death isn’t following you,” Nameless rasps. “It was a terrible, terrible accident.”
“It was not! And we both know it!” My voice trembles. “Who was it, anyway? I was so fucking afraid you had killed Rowan—“
“I’m not going to kill Rowan,” Nameless says. “And the victim doesn’t fucking matter. What matters is the message. Did you find the message?”
“Of course I did!” I spit out. “Why are you doing this? Why me?”
The question hangs in the foyer. Nameless steps toward me with his heavy boots. I don’t run away from him. Not even when he touches me, sliding his gloved hand around my neck, spraying his fingers across my cheek.
“That thing you did when you were sixteen,” he says softly, tilting his masked face toward me. I’m frozen in place, a deer about to be hit by a speeding car. “I thought that would make you someone who could understand.”
It’s suddenly hard for me to breathe. Your dark.
He does see it, the rot inside of me. But I’ve suppressed it for ten years, and I shake my head in protest. “It wasn’t the same,” I say tightly. “It was an accident. I panicked and—”
“All my kills are accidents, too,” Nameless interrupts.
I jerk away from him, anger flushing in my face. “I’m not a killer!”
It feels hollow, though. It’s always felt hollow when I say that, and I’ve said it a lot, especially back when the investigation was going on and I was a terrified teenage girl. But I know the truth sitting in my heart like a black diamond.
It wasn’t an accident.
“You’re not a killer like me,” Nameless says, dragging me back to him. He runs his thumb over my lip, and I resist the urge to drag it into my mouth, to suck on it the way I sucked on his dick a week ago. “I know that. But you still—you understand something about killing, don’t you?”
I stare at him, trembling. Yes, I answer in my head, but I don’t say it out loud.
“It’s all right,” Nameless says, shifting his body closer to me. “You can tell me. You know I won’t betray you.”
“I—” My mouth is too dry to speak. The words can’t catch hold there. And I remember being sixteen and seeing the stairs through the veil of my tears, my body screaming in pain, and I thought, I can push him, and it will be over. And then I did.
Nameless brushes his fingers down my cheek with a soft, gentle patience. “Say it, Abi,” he murmurs. “You know what killing feels like.”
“It was self-defense,” I manage to choke out.
“I know.” Nameless wraps his hand around the back of my neck, making me shiver. “What did I say? I know you’re not like me.” He presses his head to mine, the rubber of the mask cool against my skin. I can smell him, dark and musky, and my body floods with heat.
“But you still know what it’s like, to feel that power.” Nameless tightens his fingers against my neck. “And that’s why I choose you, Abilene Snow.”
Then, before I can react, Nameless picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. I cry out, startled by his sudden show of strength, but he grips my waist tightly and carts me off down the hall.
“What are you doing?” I cry out, trying to twist around to see where he’s taking me.
“I want to admire my handiwork with you,” he says calmly.
It takes a second to register what he’s saying. His handiwork.
A strange, distracting heat flares in my core. I feel like I should protest and scream at him to stop. But I don’t. Instead, I relax against him as he pushes open the doorway leading to the work area. And then he’s carting me down the dark corridor toward the examination room.
He knows exactly where to go, I realize, chills rippling down my skin.. He knows his way around.
He’s been inside my house before.
It’s another realization that should disgust me, but instead just floods me with a hot, terrible sense of flattery. I press my hands against his back, my thoughts a confusing tangle wrapping around a single core truth:
I want him.
Why do I want him?
We arrive at the examination room, and he drops me to the floor but keeps his arm hooked around my waist to hold me close. I like it, the feeling of his firm chest against my back.
“Unlock the door,” he rasps into my ear, his fingers splaying across my belly.
I do, even though my hand trembles as I press in the code. I can feel him watching me, but I don’t try to hide it from him.
The lock pops open, and Nameless shoves in the door, making the examination lights flicker to life. Everything is clean and bright and sterile.
“Where is he?” Nameless asks.
I twist around in his embrace, trying to look at him. His mask tilts down. For a second, I see the gleam of his eyes, burning straight into me.
You can stop this, I think, but I don’t fucking want to.
“Cabinet seven,” I breathe out.
Nameless releases me and walks over to the refrigeration unit and pulls out the drawer. I laid transparent plastic over the body after my autopsy, a show of respect. Nameless yanks it off and lets it flutter to the ground.
The red of the victim’s ruined skull is striking against the silver of the examination room.
Nameless looks down at the body and runs his gloves along the cold, mottled flesh. I stare at him, shivering, waiting for his next instructions.
He looks up at me. The mask leers.
“You were right,” he finally says. “I followed you to Neptune’s Adventure.”
Blood pounds in my ears. “Why?”
He stares at me for a long time before he answers. “Because you’re the focus of everything I do, Abi. I always want to be near you.”
It’s the last thing I expect him to say, and it knocks me breathless
“I want to protect you,” he continues. “Not from someone like Rowan Han—”
He stops abruptly, like he can’t even get Rowan’s name out. My insides twist around. “Please don’t hurt Rowan,” I whisper. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
Nameless looks at me through his mask. Then he hooks his finger, beckoning me to come over.
And I do, like I’m on a fishing line, like he’s reeling me in. As soon as I’m close enough, he yanks me up to him by the waist and positions me so both of us are facing the body.
It feels different, looking at it with him.
“Do you know who that is?” Nameless growls in my ear.
I shake my head.
“He was there,” Nameless says, his voice ragged. Rough. “At the same time you were.”
I stare at the torso and think back to my report. Young Caucasian male. Early 20s.
“He insulted you,” Nameless says.
I jerk away from him and look up at his mask again. No, not his mask. His eyes. Trying to see him. Neptune’s Adventure had been somewhat busy. It’s summer, after all, peak tourist season. I play through the faces of everyone who had been there. Not trying to find the victim.
Trying to find my killer.
Nameless grabs my wrist and pulls me up to him, then grabs my chin, directing my gaze down at the body. “He insulted you,” he says darkly. “Insulted your friend.”
Rowan.
“And you killed him,” I whisper.
“Yes.” Nameless jerks me to face him, and the roughness is surprising but not unpleasant.
Neither is the presence of the body.
Or, the most terrible realization, the fact that the body only exists because of me.
“That’s why you killed him,” I whisper.
Nameless nods. Then he brushes his hand over my hair, smoothing it away from my face. I can see his eyes searching mine. They aren’t as dark as I thought; they look hazel in the glaring light of the examination room.
“Why did you destroy his face?” I ask.
“I wanted to be here when you found out who he is,” Nameless responds.
Then he reaches up, his eyes never leaving mine, and lifts his mask to show me his lips.
Did I see that mouth at Neptune’s Adventure? I imagine him hanging off in the shadows, watching me. Faceless except for his red tongue slipping out to lick his lips as I moved to each station, laughing with Rowan. It’s all I can see of him—his mouth, his eyes. The rest of him is hidden.
I can’t grasp onto an image, even though the idea of it, him watching me in the sunlight, sends hot prickles over my skin.
“You wanted to be here?” I echo. “Why?”
But Nameless doesn’t answer.
Instead, he kisses me.