Chapter 7 Lips
SEVEN
LIPS
NOELLE
He glances over when he hears my slight gasp, his expression pleased. “There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.”
I’m sure he has. “Where’s my purse?”
He doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he gestures with an open hand toward the mahogany coffee table in front of the couch. Like the kitchen, there are two glasses set out on top of it. Unlike the kitchen, they’re both filled with a deep-red, almost purple-colored liquid.
“Come in. Sit with me. Look, I poured us a drink.”
Remembering the article that announced Charles Dutton’s death, I stare at them like they might be poisoned.
“Not cranberry,” Patrick adds smoothly, as though that’s what I’m worried about.
Which, fair… I normally would be when I saw a drink that color, but now that I know what he’s capable of?
That he’s poisoned before? Yeah… I have bigger concerns, including just how the fuck he knows that I hate anything cranberry.
“I wouldn’t do that to you, Starling. It’s from a bottle of red I found in one of the cabinets. ”
He knows. He knows about Evan and Marcus, Dean and Grant… he knows about Charles. He knows about cranberry.
He knows, and I don’t know how.
I don’t know who this man is, why he’s here, and why he’s decided to torment me for another Christmas. I want to escape, but I can’t, and that smug look is all I need to accuse him again: “You took my things.”
“I secured them,” he corrects, as if this is a matter of semantics. “You were upset.”
“I was leaving.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “And that doesn’t quite work for me. If the snow can’t keep you here with me, then I will have to take care of that myself.”
Who does he think he is? “You don’t get to decide—”
“No,” he says, “but I will make sure you don’t hurt yourself running into the aftermath of a blizzard when it’s dark out.”
I gape at him. “By stealing my keys?”
“You can have them back when we’re done here,” Patrick says.
A spark of hope fills my chest. When we’re done here…
that implies that, whatever he wants, if I give it to him, he’ll leave me alone.
I don’t think I’m one of his targets. If those leaves on his shoulder mean that he’s killed for his Family, and I’ve had nothing to do with any of the mafias in Springfield, I don’t think he’s here to kill me.
If he was, he’s had plenty of opportunities over the last twenty-four hours.
No. He wants something else, and I’m not sure if I want to hear this.
Trying my best to look brave and defiant, I cross my arms over my chest and snap, “You can’t keep me here.”
He considers me for a moment, gaze steady.
“I can,” he says simply. “But I’d rather you sit. Talk to me. Listen.”
“I’m not—”
“Sit,” he repeats, and though his voice doesn’t rise, I’m not dumb enough not to notice a direct order. He’s not asking. He’s telling.
My body wants to drop. I want to listen. And that? That terrifies me almost more than everything else.
Patrick gestures to the couch this time, an air of patience about him that, strangely enough, seems to fit this version of him. The man in the sweater with the ruffled hair and friendly eyes, he waits for me to do what I was told like he has all the time in the world.
Fine. Because, honestly, I have no other choice—and I’d bet every last cent I have that he has that gun of his hidden somewhere on him—I sit on the edge of the couch, as far away from him as possible as I can get.
Once again, he points at the poured wine.
“You don’t have to drink it,” he says, “but it might help.”
“Help with what?”
“Understanding what this past year has been like,” he says. “Understanding what I did for you, Starling.”
Starling…
I don’t move. Even as he shifts in his seat, unfolding his legs so that he can grab one of the wine glasses for himself, I stay ramrod straight on the edge of the couch.
He watches me wordlessly for a moment, then takes a small sip from his own glass before saying, “It all started because I saw you crying.”
The words hit harder than they should. I blink, unable to say anything.
That’s okay. Patrick wanted me to listen? I listen.
“It was at the fancy coffeehouse in the East End,” he continues. “You had your computer with you, and those tears… they were angry tears.”
My throat tightens, and because I’ve never been able to keep myself from being completely quiet when I have something to blurt out, that’s exactly what I do as I snap, “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you asked me to watch your laptop,” is his rasp of a reply. “I know you smiled at me like you were embarrassed for needing help. And I know that you gave me just enough time to see what it was you were working on last year.”
Oh. Oh, no. I thought… I would’ve sworn I’d never seen Patrick North before in my life. I still don’t remember his face—and you think I would since, damn it, it’s way too attractive to belong to a man this insane—but I remember the coffeehouse. I remember asking someone to watch my computer—
“That was you,” I whisper.
He nods. Another sip before he sets it back down again.
“Forgive me, Noelle. I was curious. In my line of work… it isn’t often that I get curious.
Dragonflies have their orders, but when I saw those tears…
I had to know what made you cry. And there they were.
The five men on your wish list.” He pauses for a moment, his dark eyes gleaming with vengeance.
“The five men you wanted to see get what they deserve. Trust me, Starling. They did. I personally made sure of it.”
Evan, who crashed on an icy road.
Grant, who drank himself to death.
Dean, who took the coward’s way out when he hung himself.
Marcus, who died at the company retreat.
And Charles, poisoned at the Evergreen & Co. holiday party…
My words are a soft mumble, slipping out without me meaning for them to. I’m not even blurting out this denial, but it escapes even so. “I… I didn’t ask you to hurt them.”
Hurt. As if that’s all this man did. If I can believe him, he killed them—
His lips quirk into another of the amused grins he’s given me since his arrival last night. His eyes stay dark, steady, unblinking… the careful friendliness I noticed before is replaced by a predatory look that is only enhanced by the curve of his smile.
This is a man who wields it like any other weapon, and I don’t know what should terrify me more: that, or the gun he has to be hiding from me.
Both, I think, especially when he gets up from the couch and takes my chin between two rough fingers, lifting my head up, forcing me to look at him as he says almost reverentially, “No, Starling. You wished.”
I stare at him for a long second, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. I’m scared. Fuck, I’m terrified, but I’m also so very turned on that that’s scary in and of itself.
He releases his hold on me. “I’m a Dragonfly.
You saw my tats. I know you know what that means.
I was an enforcer, though I’m semi-retired now.
When I saw your wish list, I had to know more.
Oh, Noelle… I had to know everything. And once I did, I granted it.
Do you need to hear me say it? I killed them, and I did it all for you. ”
I close my eyes, shaking my head, trying not to hear his casual confession.
An enforcer, I can handle, especially if I can believe him when he says he’s retired. But a killer?
No, no, no.
“You’re not a serial killer,” I say at last, slowly opening my eyes again.
The words come out steadier than I feel. Like if I say them out loud, they might become true. Because the alternative? Is that I’m snowed-in with a killer and, no matter the way he’s looking at me at the moment, I could be his next victim.
Only Patrick… he doesn’t react to my assessment the way I expect him to. There’s no anger. No offense taken, either. Not even a denial, though how can he deny it after he’s the one who’s confessed to what he’s done?
Instead, he tilts his head slightly, studying me with that infuriating calm, like I’ve just said something that interests him instead of continuing to be terrified.
I mean, I am. I’m scared shitless, but after what I’ve been through, so long as he’s killing for me instead of killing me, I can play his game while I’m trapped here.
“You plan,” I continue, my voice gaining a little more strength. “Serial killers don’t do that. They don’t slip into someone’s life for a whole damn year, doing what you did. They aren’t able to quote lines from a private journal.”
Because he did. And, shit, I don’t know how, but if this man was able to find out the details behind my wish list and, as judge and jury, decide to execute the five, then it’s probably child’s play for him to get into my journal and, fuck, follow me all the way to the chalet before convincing me that he rented it, too.
As though he knows exactly what I’m suspecting now, Patrick lifts his eyebrows in a way that I take as silent confirmation. I swallow, determined to get the rest of this out before he says another word.
“You didn’t kill a couple of guys randomly. You read my list. You watched. You waited.” My chest tightens as I think about his confession. “You hunted, but not because they were strangers. But because I typed their names into my computer.”
His mouth curves, just a little. It’s not another smile, not really, but something closer to an expression of approval. Like he’s proud I’ve figured out what sort of monster he is.
If I can believe that Patrick means it when he said he did this all for me, he’s my monster.
“You’re a stalker,” I finish.
Patrick exhales slowly, the grin taking on a darker edge. “Oh, Starling,” he says in a low voice, moving closer to the couch so that I understand that there’ll never be any escape from this man. “I can be both.”
The simplicity of how he accepts his brutal nature hits harder than denial ever could. He’s a killer and a stalker—and, for some reason, he’s fixated on me.