Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
LIAM
If I were a more jovial man, I’d have a skip in my step heading to Kat’s house. For the past two weeks, everything’s settled into a twisted version of domestic bliss.
Kat and I do mundane things together, like watching TV and laughing at stupid adverts. We fuck and whisper sweet nothings in the dark. Even my mask feels like some symbol of our unhinged normality when we’re together.
She still hasn’t admitted to loving me, and I can’t blame her, as I’ve never been lovable. But I feel it when I’m with her.
Even home feels more like a home with my new cat friend. He was a bit wary for the first few days, but now he acts like he owns the place. With the way I’m spending money on him, I’m going to need to fight again soon.
And I don’t know if that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
I might have to try to get a normal job or something. But who has time for that when you’re being a full-time bodyguard for the woman you adore?
The alley greets me like a homecoming, my pulse quickening at the near closeness to my girl. I’m only a few steps into the brick walkway when I stop dead.
A note on the door, pinned with a hunting knife piercing through it.
Fuck, he was here, and I wasn’t.
My stomach’s in my mouth as I approach it. The envelope is the same thick card, but this time it’s not addressed to Kat.
There in red letters is one word.
Liam.
Not the name I go by now, but my real name. A name very few people know, and no one from beyond the days in the cottage.
My stomach lurches, and I feel like I’m going to lose my lunch.
He knows my name.
It’s not just about Kat. It’s about me too.
I yank the blade free with my sleeve covering my fingers.
It’s an expensive, well-made piece. The handle is bone, and there’s a deep red crust at the point where the sharp blade meets the bone.
Not a knife grabbed from a pocket in haste, it’s been selected as part of the warning. Like he intends to hunt us both.
I take the note from the envelope and scan the bright red letters.
We are the same, you and I, and I hate that you escaped when I didn’t.
I read it twice. Each word comes with a punch of guilt.
We are the same.
I stand in the alley trying to catch my breath and slow my whirling mind. Things have been so good with Kat that I consider hiding the note and keeping her from worrying. The promise I made her not to lie hits me, and I close my eyes, set my shoulders, and knock on her door.
She opens it then takes a seat at the table, patting the one next to her. My oversized shirt hangs off one of her shoulders, and she sets both hands around a steaming mug. The second she sees my face, she puts it down.
‘What happened?’
I set the note on the table and the knife beside it.
The colour drains from her sweet face, and she glances up at me with those baby blues full of fear. A note’s one thing, but a knife is a whole new level of threat. Then her eyes narrow and she sets her mouth in a firm line. Reading the note, she sighs.
‘This was on my door?’
‘Yeah, the knife pinned the note to it.’
She sets it down and rubs at her temples. ‘He knows who you are.’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
She looks up at me, and I can see her mind whirring. Using one finger, she flips the knife over before spinning it on the tabletop. ‘He’s been watching both of us.’
‘That’s how I read it.’
‘What does he want?’
‘It has to be one of the other boys.’ I pause and sit down beside her. ‘He’s angry I escaped, and he was left with men like my dad. He wants justice, and I’m to blame in his eyes. Everything he’s been through is rotting him from the inside. Like it did with me, until you.’
I think of Pete’s crotchless body. It still rots me, even now.
Her thumb traces the edge of the paper without looking at it. ‘Someone who was there. Young enough that no one would have listened to him, or he told himself they wouldn’t.’
‘And he’s mad at both of us.’
‘I know.’ She exhales slowly. ‘Our bubbles burst, huh?’
Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I tip my head onto hers. ‘We’ll get him.’
‘While our bubble’s burst, tell me about what happened with the policeman. I saw a news article about torture… and fire.’
Damn.
‘He deserved it.’
‘That and more.’ I turn to face her, expecting her to have been far, far more disgusted with me.
‘You really don’t hate me?’
‘Liam, I fucking love you. The darkness is part of you and me. They made us like that.’
‘You.’ My heart aches. ‘Love.’ I feel like I might pass out. ‘Me?’
Kat tilts her head a little and gives a smile. ‘Every single part. I always have.’
And like it was information I should have known, and not that upends everything inside me, she goes back to talking without a second’s thought.
‘You were careful though, right?’
‘Yeah, gloves, mask, no cameras. Resisted spitting in his face. Thoroughly sanitised my equipment before disposing of it far from the scene.’
‘You made him suffer, right?’
‘He cried like a baby. Begged for his life.’
‘He’d been doing to others what was done to me, and he wasn’t going to stop.’ My jaw tightens. ‘And I extracted all I could from him.’
‘Good,’ she says.
‘That’s it?’
‘I wish I could do it to all of them.’ She meets my eyes and gives the most saccharine smile. ‘I mean it.’
I’m still stuck on the fact that Katherine Elliott loves ME.
She breathes out through her nose. ‘Did the names he gave you help at all? None were the boys, were they?’
‘All dead ends as far as your stalker goes. Especially with this last note. He was too fast to be any of the older men, and I don’t think any of the adults bothered with my name; they used much less pleasant names.’
‘We need to find him,’ she says.
‘Yes.’ I broach the one guy who knows where she lives and is the right age. ‘What about Darren?’
‘No… not Darren,’ she says. ‘I’ve never let him in my house.’
‘But he knew where you lived. He could have come back. And for a few weeks there was nothing… right after you let him down.’
‘You saw that?’ Her nose crinkles in the cutest way.
‘I’m always watching, Kat. Well, almost.’ I glance down at the knife. Not often enough clearly.
‘The notes went quiet after I told him to stop pushing for more. Nearly two weeks.’
‘Right after.’
She stares at the table. ‘That could be a coincidence.’
‘It could be.’
‘He’s not from around our way. He’s from Liverpool.’
‘People lie about where they’re from. And people abusing kids will likely travel outside their own area for access.’
‘People do.’ She picks at the handle of her mug. ‘We’d need some kind of proof, because I really don’t get that vibe from him. He’s nice.’
‘I’m not moving on him. I’m saying we observe him.’
I lift a strand of her hair from her shoulder and twist it around my finger.
‘I also think we should tell your roommate.’
She shakes her head.
‘Kat—’
‘No.’
‘Someone’s put a knife in her door. She deserves to know there’s someone—’
‘If I tell Ellie I have to explain everything. Why I’m dating a masked man. Why I know you, what happened that summer.’ She looks at the knife. ‘I don’t want her to know about that side of me. She might leave me.’
‘Or, she might surprise you.’ She doesn’t know that I know Ellie, and know just how supportive she can be. Maybe not about my recent blood-tainted activities, but the past? She’ll understand.
‘Plus, I don’t think he’s after Ellie. Just me. And you. She’s not been pestered at all. And she’s so happy at the moment. It’s almost half term and the long weekend and she always goes home then.’
‘There’s a hotel we could get you in, just for a few weeks until I find him…’
‘No.’ The finality leaves little room to argue.
‘You’d be safe.’
‘I’d only be safe if I didn’t go to university, and I have no intention of failing my final year.
’ She looks deadly fierce, and pride wells in me.
Still that same girl beneath it all. ‘I don’t want to hide from him.
I want to find him. I want to know who he is and what he actually saw and why he spent fourteen years letting it fester before he decided to make it our problem. ’
There she is.
‘We need something to help us find him.’
‘Then we find something concrete.’ She reaches across and turns the knife so the handle faces me, a strange gesture. ‘This looks unique, maybe it’ll help.’
I pull out my phone and take a few pictures, finding a maker’s mark on the handle.
‘I’ll see what I can track down, but for now, keep it here. Just in case.’