Chapter 10
CHAPTER
TEN
“Delilah.” Dr. Bronwin’s stern tone sliced through the air as soon as Rowan stepped back against the wall. “I heard you had quite the adventure before your appointment yesterday.”
“Those poor officers,” Delilah said innocently, smiling and leaning back into her chair. “They didn’t know the way. Got a bit turned around.”
“Can you explain to me why you neglected to tell me that during your last visit?”
“You neglected to ask.”
Rowan coughed in a failed attempt at covering up her laugh. A mistake considering it resulted in both of them turning their focus, however briefly, to her. Delilah’s victorious gaze lingering for a second too long. Bronwin sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose before speaking again.
“I’d like to start off by discussing why you felt the need to manipulate and threaten your guards into a detour?” Bronwin asked, clearly having already been informed of the entire situation.
Rowan hadn’t found anything in her search of Delilah’s room—or of Delilah herself—the previous day, and she still couldn’t figure out how the hell Delilah had gotten any information about Brinks.
She could have spoken to Brinks, manipulated him into telling her information…
He might be naive enough to fall for it, to believe her.
“How else was I going to see her after she abandoned me?”
“Why do you feel she abandoned you?” Bronwin asked evenly, leaning into accepting Delilah’s obsession head first and scribbling a quick note in her notebook before looking up to catch Delilah glaring at Rowan.
“I was told that Rowan would be my guard. My… escort to the sessions. Then without warning, she’s not.”
“I see,” Bronwin murmured, taking down more notes that Rowan was dying to read. “So if there was a warning, you would have felt happier or more assured?”
“I’d be happier if that didn’t happen again.”
“We thought it best if—”
“We?” Delilah cut her off sharply, anger radiating from clenched fists and a hate-filled gaze. Bronwin straightened in her chair, holding her chin high and pretending like she was entirely unaffected as she faced off with a pissed serial killer.
“You met the hospital director, Adele. She and I discussed your progress and we thought that it might be beneficial for you if there was someone else you could be around.”
Attempting to placate Delilah by pretending the change was for her, very obviously, did not work. Delilah whipped around in the chair, setting her piercing gaze on Rowan instead.
“Did you know about this?”
Rowan met her gaze evenly, waiting until the silence dragged uncomfortably on—long enough that Bronwin prompted her to answer, giving permission Rowan didn’t need, before she uttered a single, “Yep.”
Tension crackled through the air. Delilah’s fury was palpable, coating Rowan’s senses in a delicious mix that she could easily become addicted to.
There were other emotions there too, plain on Delilah’s face, battling for dominance.
It was more expressive than Rowan had seen her yet.
Rowan kept her hands clasped in front of her, calm, composed, waiting for what Delilah would do next, which reaction she’d settle on.
“Was it something I did?” Delilah asked with a deceptive pout. “Did you like my show too much?” A smirk played on her lips, anger gone in an instant. It was overtaken with the need to nettle Rowan. The need to provoke a reaction that Rowan refused to give.
She wasn’t at all surprised that Delilah had reverted back to that. Had brought that up after everything.
“What show, Delilah?” Bronwin finally asked, breaking the terse silence that made it clear Rowan was not about to answer. She looked between the two of them with narrowed eyes, but Delilah didn’t look away from Rowan. She didn’t even acknowledge her therapist.
“Rowan?” Bronwin snapped, demanding an answer.
“No idea.”
“Liar,” Delilah hissed. “You check the cameras from nine to ten every morning. You told me that.”
Rowan shrugged. “I said between nine and ten. I’m only in there for a few minutes to make sure everything functions properly.” Another lie. One that hit its mark entirely too easily.
Delilah abruptly tried to stand, her cuffs clanking loudly against the metal arms of the chair as she was yanked back down. Her face was red and her body shook with unbridled rage. Rowan watched her, learning the new side of Delilah, studying her.
“Delilah,” Bronwin cut in. “Would you like to explore this anger that you’re feeling towards Rowan right now? Do you want to kill her?”
Rowan frowned, looking from Bronwin to Delilah.
She’d never even considered that to be an option, Delilah wanting her dead.
Despite Delilah being a serial killer, she’d never thought this obsession would be of murderous intent.
Delilah pursed her lips, her gaze running over Rowan hungrily, and Rowan knew in that moment that she had not misinterpreted Delilah’s wants. This obsession was purely lust driven.
One corner of Delilah’s lip curled up. “Not yet.”
“How do you view this relationship?” Bronwin asked, frowning.
“There’s nothing here that she can give you as her job is solely to escort you to and from therapy.
You say you don’t want to kill her yet, but she doesn’t fit your typical victim requirements.
So what do you feel makes her so different?
What are you hoping to get out of this?”
Delilah’s eyes narrowed at the word victim, matching Rowan’s raised hackles about being referred to as such. “And what are my ‘typical victim requirements’, doctor?” Delilah all but spat.
Bronwin took a deep breath, tamping down her obvious frustration at Delilah’s continued refusal to answer her questions.
“Well,” she started calmly, “given the case reports, and what we’ve already discussed, your typical requirements are men with a history of sexual abuse.
You choose pedophiles and rapists and then…
Well, you mutilate them. Torture them until they can’t survive it. ”
Delilah beamed, her anger nowhere to be found now that Bronwin was talking about her. The tone Bronwin used was neutral, but it looked like Delilah was still accepting her words as praise anyway.
“Rowan,” Bronwin continued, “has no history of abuse and she’s not a man. Which leads me to wonder if it’s situational, since she’s your main connection in here? Or do you feel you may be misconstruing her authority over you as something else?”
“No history of abuse?” Delilah asked innocently. “Was she not in the marines for ten years?”
“How did you—”
“Military involvement does not equate abuse,” Bronwin interrupted, holding up a hand to silence Rowan.
“She’s killed people.”
“As a hazard of the job.”
Delilah shrugged as if to say it was one in the same. “Or for her own personal enjoyment.” The words lingered in the air, having stunned Bronwin into temporary silence. Delilah took that as permission to continue. “Tell me, Rowan, how old were you when the first person met your bullet?”
Rowan froze. Fifteen. It was on the tip of her tongue. But that wasn’t what Delilah was talking about, was it? Besides, that was technically not a bullet.
“You don’t need to answer this, Rowan.” Bronwin cut in before Rowan could formulate a response. Then she addressed Delilah. “You’ve clearly found her military records. You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” God knows how she’d get her hands on them since they’re supposed to be classified.
“Twenty-three,” Delilah confirmed, staring at Rowan as if that number just didn’t add up in her head. For a second, Rowan thought that Delilah might argue it right there, but she didn’t. Instead, she continued, still staring at Rowan like she was a puzzle to figure out.
“Three years into your service. Ten years younger than I was when I made my first kill.” Delilah smiled, a little self-deprecating. “I was a late bloomer.”
“Would you say that’s why you want to know Rowan?” Bronwin asked with a soft tone. “Are you experiencing a feeling of jealousy around a belief or concern that you started ‘late’?”
Delilah scoffed. Bronwin raised an eyebrow and hazarded another guess. “Are you seeking a sense of connection through a perceived shared history? You are smart enough to know that killing in the line of battle and killing for enjoyment are not the same.”
A smile played at the edge of Delilah’s lips. “Rowan knows why.” She cocked her head and studied Rowan. “She just needs to put the pieces together.” Delilah turned back to Bronwin, smile gone from her features. “I’m done discussing this,” she announced with a note of finality.
Bronwin’s jaw twitched, but she only nodded and wrote something else down in that notebook then folded her hands in front of her.
“In that case, let’s continue with where we left off after your last session.
You seem to have a pattern, as we’ve mentioned before, of going after pedophiles or abusers.
But you said something the previous session”—she flipped through her notes, squinting at the scribbles before continuing—“Your fifth kill wasn’t ‘vetted through your usual means.’ Would you like to expand on this vetting process further and explain what you meant by that? ”
Delilah lit up, turning so that more of her body faced Rowan than it did Bronwin. “I like butch women,” she said, gaze boring into Rowan with intention. “Someone made a shitty comment to a woman I was… enjoying. I didn’t like it. So I killed them.”