Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
THE TASKMASTER
Isat in front of my wall of monitors. Half of them focused on my next player, and the other half were tracking her.
I watched her walk into her apartment looking flustered, and then I listened to her call with what I assume was her bank on the phone.
‘I know I missed some payments, but money has been tight... I can pay my next instalment on the thirty first... I know I shouldn’t have paid the locksmith with my credit card today. ..’
There would be no payment coming out of her account. I wouldn’t charge her, and I’d messaged her using a burner phone to let her know the lock I’d fitted was top of the range. The best on the market.
I liked that I had her number. There was so much you could find out about a person through their phone number.
You could see all their social media accounts, family information, previous addresses they’d lived at, workplaces, passwords and financial data.
If you dug a little deeper, you could use the GPS devices on it to track a person in real time.
Not that I needed that yet. She was still wearing the jacket with the tracker that I’d left in the pocket.
But it was nice to know I had options. Knowing her number really was the key to a treasure trove.
I glanced from her screen to the one with my next player, Gabriel Tolley.
A former social worker who worked his way up to the grand heights of town councillor.
The social worker who led me to the hell that was Clivesdon House and left me there without one single fuck to give.
He never came back, but he knew what he’d done.
He knew there were no formal notes for my admission, either.
He’d sold me into a depravity he thought wouldn’t taint him, because he wasn’t in the room when the deed was done.
But he was guilty. He had blood on his hands.
And right now, he was sitting on his expensive Italian leather corner sofa, watching his obscenely huge wide screen TV and drinking overpriced whisky from a ridiculous cut-glass tumbler.
Life fucking sucked sometimes, but that’s why I did what I did.
To remind fuckers like him that he wouldn’t get away with it.
Karma would come for them all eventually.
The kill list I’d started out with was getting shorter by the day, but it wasn’t lost on me that I’d taken a detour since Miss Walters had flown onto my radar.
Right now, it was two-one to Abigail Walters.
Recently, I’d killed two men because of her, and only one from my own kill list. But I wasn’t mad about it.
They needed taking out. Her neighbour was currently simmering in a vat of hydrochloric acid.
I doubt he’d be missed. None of the others I’d killed were.
Fred Wilson.
Harold Fraser.
Mario Cane.
Paul Masters.
Kevin Anders.
The sick fucker who attacked her in the alley.
Society would call me a serial killer. But I was a serial cleaner. A cleanser of the depraved. I made sure children were safe from sick fucks like them. They wouldn’t harm another kid ever again. Not like they’d hurt me.
I’d heard on the radio in my van that they’d made an arrest for the disappearances.
It made me fucking laugh. They were chasing shadows.
They had no fucking clue who’d done it. And in a way, I was a shadow.
I had no official papers. No birth certificate.
As far as they were concerned, Isaiah James didn’t exist—James being the surname I chose for myself so I could throw away the Dalton name that’d brought me nothing but misery.
After disposing of the inconvenience that was her fucked-up neighbour from my living room, I went online and hacked into the police database to see what I could find out.
They’d arrested Adam Noble, a guy I knew from Brinton Manor, who called himself a fucking soldier of anarchy.
I could spend now until the end of my life taking the piss out of that name that he’d awarded himself, but I had better things to do with my time.
He wouldn’t stay in police custody for long, I knew that. If he didn’t already have a watertight alibi, his wife would give him one. Or one of his minions. And the fact remained; he hadn’t done it. Those were my badges of honour to claim. My kills.
I watched Tolley laugh at some lame reality TV show he was watching, and then I saw Abigail throw her phone down as she fell onto her sofa and said, “I hate my fucking life.”
I knew how she felt.
I also knew I’d take great pleasure in wiping the smug smile off Tolley’s face when it was his turn to find out how fucked up life could get.
I watched her take a box from a shopping bag and then take a fucking teddy bear out of it.
I laughed when I realised it was a nanny cam.
She wanted to catch her stalker in the act, I got that.
I also knew I’d be more effective than a fucking teddy bear cam.
And the next time I let myself in, the bear wouldn’t capture a thing.
She set it up on her bookshelf, then moved from the living room to her bedroom, and after a while, she noticed the stain on the carpet.
The stain I’d left behind. No, I wasn’t lazy or forgetful.
I hadn’t left it there by accident. I wanted to leave it there, a blood stain, a reminder that sins can’t be covered up or washed away.
Something her father needed to remember.
I’d hoped to teach him that harsh lesson by using his daughter, but I still hadn’t decided exactly how I was going to use her.
I couldn’t deny she fascinated me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why.
Yes, she was beautiful. Stunning, in fact.
But it was more than that. There was something about her that drew me in.
Seeing her on her knees, scrubbing at the carpet and hearing her say, “Fuck my life,” made me feel a certain way.
I wasn’t angry, more curious, and something else I hadn’t felt before.
.. I felt a little sorry for her. She looked pitiful on her knees, scrubbing away the stains I’d left behind.
Life wasn’t being kind to her. And even though I didn’t feel empathy like other people did, I felt something for her.
I wanted to reach through the screen and take her from this world into my own.
Study her and find out what made her tick. Keep her like a trophy.
I had my next game set up, ready for Gabriel Tolley.
But maybe bringing her in would be more fun.
I liked watching her on the monitors, but it wasn’t enough.
I wanted to see her in real life. Stand in front of her and look her in the eyes.
I wanted Abigail Walters to know that her father wasn’t the saviour she thought he was.
He hadn’t saved me, and I knew, he wouldn’t save her either.