CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
He slammed his fist on the desk. Papers scattered. Files he'd organized that morning now lay in chaos across the floor.
It had been perfect. Every detail planned.
Every variable accounted for. And then it all went to hell.
He hadn’t even witnessed the climax of his grand design, deprived of the satisfaction of seeing Rebecca engulfed by her ultimate fear.
The fire, which was meant to be his ally, had betrayed him, proving too wild, too unpredictable.
The police would find her car. Her phone. Her ID. Evidence he hadn't meant to leave behind.
And then what?
They’d track him?
Was there anything on the subject’s phone that could give away his identity? Or had she deleted all traces of their conversation as he’d demanded?
‘All for nothing,’ he said as he paced around his office.
He caught his reflection in the window; a bent nose, scratched forehead, dried blood below his bottom lip.
The reflection staring back at him was a man teetering on the edge of his own abyss, because he’d foolishly fallen prey to a common oversight in psychological research.
His self-perception had been distorted because he looked at himself in a rose-colored mirror.
He’d been too confident, and it had nearly cost him everything.
He needed to think, to plan. The police were no doubt closing in. He had underestimated the fire's capricious nature. Fire, he realized, was a fickle element. It refused to be tamed or controlled. And control was vital. Without it, the experiments were meaningless.
His gaze fell to the desk, to the list of potential subjects.
Ten names, each one carefully researched.
Fears cataloged, routines memorized, and vulnerabilities mapped.
But now, doubt poisoned his confidence. Had he been too ambitious and blinded by his own hubris to see the flaws in his plan?
He had not intended this to be a long-term experiment because he was under no illusion that he could keep this up for a considerable time.
This whole venture was a modern-day Stanford Prison Experiment, of which the results would be published after his death.
The psychotherapy community would shun him posthumously, but his findings would be deemed invaluable regardless.
The Milgram Experiment, Harlow’s monkeys, Unit 731.
They had all been unethical projects that ended up shaping the world’s understanding of human behavior.
His fear experiments would slot right in.
The original plan had been four experiments and no more.
It would be enough to test his theorems, reduce the effect of random variability, and increase the integrity of his findings.
Four trials would be enough to validate the data, but with this recent setback, he might be forced to extend his series.
He had to compensate for the fire's unpredictability and regain the meticulous control he prided himself on.
This additional experiment would not just be a recovery of his plan, but an enhancement.
It would be a chance to delve deeper into the psychology of fear and understand it in ways no one else ever had.
This time, he would leave nothing to chance. He would refine his techniques.
As he looked over his list of potential subjects, a name caught his eye.
He’d narrowed his list down to ten suspects, only a handful of which would be chosen. But the name that seized his attention was a new addition, and if he took the plunge and pulled this one off, he could do something no one had ever done before.
The thought electrified him. Imagining the moment of realization, the dawning terror in his subject's eyes, it reignited a fire within him.
The first two experiments had been a thrill unlike any he had known before.
But this time, he craved more. He wanted to immerse himself in that moment completely, to savor every nuance of their fear, to feel it pulse through him like a living thing.
The new subject was a wild card, but it added an exhilarating edge to his plans. The uncertainty, the unpredictability, it was a gamble, but one that promised an unparalleled reward.
He pulled the list closer and fixated on the new name. It had walked into his life and almost begged him to play with it. It would take some preparation, but he'd sourced rats, dug graves, and started fires.
How hard could it be to find a few needles?