Chapter Seven Blue
Chapter Seven
Blue
My therapist’s office is a library that had a nervous breakdown.
Dr. Jay Finch’s domain is a masterclass in organized chaos—if you can call towers of psychiatric journals balanced on coffee-stained
coasters “organized.” Post-it Notes cover every surface like yellow confetti, each one scribbled with reminders that range
from “pick up dry cleaning” to “research sociopathic tendencies in maritime professions.” His desk is an archaeological dig
of half-finished thoughts, fidget spinners, and a sandwich—based on the mold formed—from the Mesozoic Era.
“Blue!” Jay springs up from behind his fortress of academic debris, immediately knocking over a precarious stack of books.
He doesn’t bother picking them up. “Right on time! Well, technically seventeen minutes late, but who’s counting? I’ve been
thinking about our last session and—oh shit, you have that look. The ‘I almost broke my sobriety’ look. Please tell me you
didn’t kill anyone.”
I settle into the leather chair across from his desk—the only clean surface in the entire office—and study the man who’s supposed
to be fixing my broken brain. Jay Finch is sixty-something with silver hair that reminds me of someone who stuck his finger
in an electrical socket, wire-rimmed glasses perpetually sliding down his nose, and a nervous energy that makes you wonder
if he’s the patient here.
“I may have had a minor setback,” I say, crossing my ankle over my knee.
Jay’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas morning. “Ooh, setback! I love setbacks. They’re so much more interesting than
progress.” He grabs a notepad from somewhere in the chaos, immediately drops it, picks up a different one, then stares at
it like he’s forgotten what it’s for. “Define minor. On a scale of one to ‘I broke three years of murder sobriety,’ how minor
are we talking?”
“I didn’t kill anyone. But I wanted to. God, I wanted to.”
“Okay, so that’s actually huge progress.” Jay pushes his glasses up his nose and they immediately slide back down. “Three years clean, Blue. Remember what happened last time? After Peter died?”
“Eighteen kills in two months.”
“Right, right, the killing spree that made you realize you needed help. The one where you lost track of Peter’s daughter because
you were too busy painting the country red.” Jay starts pacing behind his desk, stepping over books like they’re landmines.
“So, what triggered the urge this time?”
“I found Peter’s daughter. The Crow had her. Grabbed her from her apartment, dragged her to some shithole cabin in the mountains.
By the time Hans and I tracked them down, she’d been there for hours.”
Jay stops pacing. “And you didn’t kill them?”
I shift in my chair. “Hans handled it. I watched. Not completely innocent, I know. But at least I didn’t kill. Counted breaths
like you taught me. In for four, hold for four, out for four.”
“Holy shit, you actually used the techniques.” Jay grabs a stress ball from his desk, squeezes it twice, then tosses it up
and catches it. “Blue, that’s incredible. Three years ago, you would have redecorated that cabin with their entrails. What
happened next?”
“I relocated her to a safer environment. In a steamer trunk.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Jay slumps into his chair, which immediately starts spinning in slow circles. He doesn’t try to stop
it. “Relocated. That’s what we’re calling it now?”
“It sounds better than kidnapped.”
“But you did kidnap her.”
“Technically, yes.”
“There’s no ‘technically’ about trunk-based transportation, Blue.”
“She’s perfectly safe at Maison Rouge. Wren is taking excellent care of her.”
“Wren, your housekeeper who used to help you dispose of body parts for fifteen years.” Jay’s chair has completed three full
rotations. “Let me get this straight. You maintained your sobriety even when the Crow had Peter’s daughter, but you still
kidnapped her?”
“Relocated. The urge to kill them was . . . overwhelming. But I knew if I started again, I wouldn’t stop. Just like last time.”
“Right, the post-Peter murder bender. So you let Hans do the dirty work while you what, meditated in the same room?”
“Something like that.”
“And then you decided the logical next step was to stuff her in luggage?”
“There’s something else.”
“Oh good, because this story needed more complications.”
“We hooked up.”
Jay blinks once. Twice. “You kidnapped a woman you slept with.”
“She needed protection from the Crow.”
“So naturally you put her in a trunk.”
“It was a very nice trunk. Antique. Well-ventilated.”
“Jesus Christ, Blue.”
Jay stands up slowly, deliberately. “Blue, I’ve been treating you for three years. Three years since you came to me, covered
in other people’s blood, begging for help because you’d become the monster Peter would’ve hated. And you just told me you
resisted the strongest trigger you’ve faced since then.” Jay stops pacing and fixes me with a stare. “But this woman—what’s
her name again?”
“Saylor Mitchell.”
“Saylor is going to wake up in your murder mansion and think you’re a psychopath.”
“I am a psychopath.”
“A recovering psychopath! We’ve been working on this!” Jay grabs his stress ball from where he’d set it down, squeezes it until his knuckles
turn white. “Here’s what I’m hearing: You maintained your sobriety, but you’re substituting one compulsion for another. You
can’t keep collecting damsels in distress like they’re rare butterflies.”
“They’re not butterflies. They’re people who need help. And she’s not just anyone. She’s Peter’s daughter. The one person
I swore to protect.”
“Help, yes. Kidnapping and imprisonment, no.” Jay sits back down, his chair immediately resuming its slow spin. “Tell me something.
When you look at Saylor, what do you see?”
I think about her voice, smoky and seductive as she sang at the White Note. The way she challenged me in the bar, unafraid. The compass necklace she wore—Peter’s compass. Still wearing it after all these years.
“I see someone who’s about to be very angry with me once she wakes up. And someone who doesn’t know how close she came to
disappearing forever. Which is why I relocated her. Why she needs to stay under lock and key. For her own good. I owe Peter
that much.”
“You’re deflecting. This isn’t about Peter anymore, is it?” Jay stops spinning and leans forward. “Blue, you’re going to have
to let her go.”
“Not while the Crow are still a threat. Brutus doesn’t leave loose ends.”
“Then eliminate the threat without keeping her prisoner. Use those skills you’ve been redirecting. The planning, the strategy.
Be the protector Peter believed you could be, not the killer—and kidnapper—you used to be.”
“I can’t protect her if she’s not where I can see her.”
Jay stares at me for a long moment, then reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a flask. He takes a long pull, coughs,
and offers it to me.
“It’s Tuesday,” he says.
“Your point?”
“My point is that it’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m drinking shitty tequila because my patient just casually informed me he’s
kidnapped someone and doesn’t plan to let her go.” Jay takes another sip. “I need you to understand something. What you’re
doing isn’t protection. It’s possession.”
“She’s not a possession.”
“Then prove it. Let her choose.”
“Choose what?”
“Whether she wants your protection or not. Whether she wants to stay at Maison Rouge or leave. Whether she wants anything
to do with you at all.” Jay caps the flask and shoves it back in the drawer. “Because right now, you’ve taken that choice
away from her, and that makes you the threat.”
The words hit harder than I expected. I think about Saylor locked in the wing of my estate, probably trying to figure out how to escape, how to get as far away from me as possible. The same way any sane person would react to waking up in a stranger’s house.
“She’ll try to leave,” I say finally.
“Probably.”
“The Crow will kill her.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’ll find another way to keep her safe without keeping her prisoner.” Jay leans back in his chair. “Blue,
do you want to be the man who saves her, or the man she needs saving from? Do you want to be the man Peter knew you could
be, or the monster you became after he died?”
Before I can answer, my phone buzzes with a text from Wren: She’s awake.