Chapter 33 #2
It’s far more complicated than that, but it’s not a stretch to assume they chose to give me a nickname that’s closely related to the reason for the names of many things in my life.
I am the harbinger of death. A reckoning that comes in the dead of night.
And I don’t believe in subtlety, getting the fucking omen itself inked into my skin.
“To answer your question,” Skyler says when he can stop laughing about the silliness of my serial killer name, “If it just so happens that you decide to slice them up and put them on display, I have everything we need for that, too. Leo on Tate are on call down the road.”
“How long do we sit here?” I ask, thinking about how it’s not just us waiting around, but presumably an entire team that works behind the scenes to make me a far more terrifying entity than I could be on my own.
He leans his head back, “Until everyone in the neighborhood is asleep.”
“Then why are we here so early?”
After a beat, he laughs, “It’s like fucking take your kid to work day. We’re here now because no one notices the rumble of a car at the time of day everyone is getting home from work, but one appearing at midnight is unmistakable in a neighborhood this quiet.”
“So what do we do while we wait?” This sounds like torture.
“You usually watch Brigit,” he offers the obvious answer. “And I do my part of searching through anything I can find on the computer.”
Watching her is far less entertaining now that I can actually spend time with her.
This, almost being within her vicinity, isn’t even close to enough anymore.
I spend way too much time wondering when I’ll get to see her again, what I can take her to do. I’m determined to find her a sparkling drink she enjoys.
It’s like having a new muse.
Pulling up the cameras at my house, I get my eyes on my pretty little muse. I may have been nice enough to keep cameras from her bedroom, but that’s to say nothing of mine.
My heart flutters at the thought of all the fantastic footage they would have captured this morning and this afternoon. Fuck, I’m gonna be watching those over and over again when I’m alone.
The second I finally slid inside her warmth, the moment she cried out from the fullness and clung to me, her sharp nails digging into my back, recorded for me to see over and over again.
Can’t exactly watch those with Sky right beside me, but they’ll definitely be getting a few watch-throughs with Brigit over the coming weeks. She can see how fucking beautiful her face is when she comes while I bury my tongue between her thighs.
For now, I’ll have to make do with simply watching her sleep. Passed out in my bed. In my clothes. Smelling like my shampoo and soap.
I feel like a fucking caveman, possessive pride swelling in my chest as I see how sleepy and content she is in the safety of my home.
“She out?” he asks absentmindedly, doing something on his laptop that I’m not even going to try to decipher.
“Yeah.”
“Good,” he breathes out. “It’s better that she’s been fucked into a coma. You don’t want her up worrying about all this.”
“Should she be worried?” I ask.
His fingers click away for a few seconds.
Then, “Nah.”
But there’s an undercurrent of hidden nerves in his voice. Even he’s not sure I’m capable of doing this without something going terribly wrong.
“Oh, by the way,” he adds, grabbing his phone and holding it up for me. “This is the name of the guy you killed in her apartment.”
“Aidan Foley,” I repeat the name out loud, wishing there was a fucking grave for me to piss on. “Is there something significant about him?”
“Nope. His record is spotless, he works— well, worked— for a private security company, he’s been to Mingle a few times, and he died in your girls apartment a few days ago,” he spells out the past of the man we disposed of with the same nonchalance I’ve seen him use to order extra fries.
“But Brigy wanted the name, so I got it for her.”
“Should I text her?” What a stupid question, but something about navigating our new relationship makes me nervous. I have no idea how to go about this. She’s asleep in my bed, for fuck’s sake, and I’m not sure if I’m allowed to text her or not.
“I don’t see why not,” he replies, continuing whatever he’s doing on the computer. “No one is tapping into either of your phone’s and I can have them corrupted and wiped within seconds if I need to.”
“Right now?”
His typing stops.
“Yeah, right now. I installed an app on her phone when I had it the other night,” he shrugs. “Her computer, too.”
“And mine?”
“We installed it on yours before you got picked up,” he explains. “The only shit left behind were useless contacts and a few phone calls so it wasn’t obvious that it was scrubbed.”
I honestly don’t understand how he continues to do all of this and stay a step ahead of everything. If it weren’t for him operating, there’s no way I could do all of this.
I shoot off a quick text to Brigit, switching over to watch her again. Her phone lights up on the bedside table, but she doesn’t wake, sleeping right through the buzzing and little chime.
“Damn,” Skyler leans over to peek at her, “You really did a number on her.”
He’s not wrong. There have only been a few times when she’s managed to sleep through notifications on her phone. Usually, she’s such a light sleeper that the only way I managed to sneak through her apartment was due to my uncanny ability to be completely silent.
But she’s sound asleep now, nestled in the warmth of our sheets.
Waiting through the next few hours is only a tiny bit better than actual torture. Even watching Brigit sleep becomes monotonous, surrounded by the nonstop clicking and whirring of Skyler’s computer.
I must drift off because before I know it, Sky’s hand lands with a hard thud on my chest, waking me and bringing me back to the task at hand.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “What time is it?”
“Just after midnight.”
“Why did you let me sleep so long?” I rub the sleep from my eyes, focusing on what I have to do.
He chuckles, “It’s not unusual for you to nap while I do the boring shit. But there’s nothing interesting on any of the computers, so if he’s as sick as Steele says, it’ll all be physical copies.”
Stretching out my legs, the quiet rumbling of adrenaline starts bleeding into me again.
As I silently ease out of the car door, sneaking around to the back of the house and plotting which window to break into, something within me feels at peace.
It’s sickening to feel peaceful in the face of committing this kind of crime, but if it brings justice to even one victim, it’ll be worth the cost on my soul.