Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Tanner
“What happened?” I can feel my face scrunching up in confusion as I stare at Sweet Bee’s scraped knees.
“I fell off my bike this morning.” She shrugs like it’s no big deal, but I don’t like it.
With most people I have to pretend that I feel something, that I care about what happens to them, but not with Berkleigh.
It’s weird getting this sudden feeling of anger that boils in my stomach and makes my heart feel like it’s racing a horse.
Can’t say that I like it, but I’m used to it, I think.
“Did you go down the hill? I told you not to go down the hill, Berkleigh! You’re not good with your balance yet.” I hate that she’s so stubborn, always doing the opposite of what I tell her.
“I do too have balance!” Her bottom lip starts trembling and her eyes get all watery, which means she’s about to cry and I can’t deal with that. It’s too much. Seeing Berkleigh upset makes me insanely angry, which means I want to punch myself in the face for hurting her feelings.
When the first tear breaks free and jumps from her lid to her cheek, I don’t think, I just act. I take two steps forward and wrap my arms around her shoulders, hugging her tight until she stops.
If anyone else tried to touch me, I would step away, maybe even get violent, but Sweet Bee doesn't deserve my weirdness. Besides, her touch doesn’t make me feel itchy and uncomfortable. Instead, it brings calmness to the chaos inside my head.
“I’m sorry, Sweet Bee. I just worry about you.
” Last month, I sneaked over while they were out, and nailed a piece of plywood to her front porch steps.
I mean, she didn’t hurt herself but she could have.
The next morning, her dad fixed them properly.
Nobody knows it was me but I’m pretty sure her dad has a hunch.
“I know. I’ll listen next time. I promise.”
We give each other a tight squeeze before breaking apart. We need to run if we’re going to make it to school on time. And if we don’t, the teachers will call my dad and he’ll beat the shit out of me.
That also makes Sweet Bee cry so I try to avoid it at all costs.
The woman is infuriating. I can’t fucking deal with her antics. For someone who’s spent the better part of her life in some form of schooling, she must have been absent when they lectured on common sense.
Noise at the side of my house alerts me that she has not, in fact, gone back to her own place.
When I lift the blade of the shades at the window facing her house, I realize she’s trying to unlock my trash cans.
It’s useless, but I commend her efforts.
When she gives up and starts puking on top of it, my emotions take a sharp turn from impressed to livid.
I don’t call her out on it because I don’t see the point. Best case scenario, she’d flip me off while emptying her guts.
Fucking perfect.
The woman needs to be disciplined. She needs to be taught that there are rules to life, to society.
Rules and order, it’s what makes the world go round, which explains why her life is a fucking mess on all fronts.
Maybe tying her up and spanking her ass until she starts making rational decisions is all she needs.
And a good fucking. The kind that’s bone deep and life altering.
Between the random men she fucks when her loneliness gets the better of her and the fact her life revolves around her work, I’m not the least bit surprised by the scene outside my window.
A small, satisfied grin lifts the corners of my mouth when I remember that she’s in this predicament because of me.
No, that’s not right. She’s alone and lonely—not the same thing—because she deserves it. Because she put this on herself. That’s what happens to people who stick their noses in other people’s business without considering the consequences.
Hello, Berkleigh. With Love, Karma.
That’s me. I’m the motherfucking Karma.
Just as she’s about to step away from the bin, she stops, heaves, then gives me an encore of her drink choices for the night. From the color spewing from her mouth, I’m confident my trashcan will smell like sour tequila.
Despite my deep-rooted hatred for her, the anger rising like her bile can’t be helped.
I’ve always been a sucker when it comes to her being hurt.
It straight up pisses me off but I ignore it because it’s purely a physical reaction from past trauma.
It cost me over a grand in shrink bills to figure that out.
It doesn’t take a genius to know some douchebag at the club thought he could manhandle her. She may lack common sense but she’s got spirit and fight in spades, which means the asshole got frisky and the most likely scenario is that she tried to shut it down.
Insecure men don’t like rejection.
That motherfucker, whoever he is, caused her pants to be ripped, her lip to look like she’d been mauled by a tiger, and is that a mark on her cheek? Did that fucker slap her?
I know, I know. Why should I care?
Because she's mine to torment. And to be honest, I haven’t done her any harm since high school but I love that all of my efforts have kept her isolated.
This, however, is a completely different story.
Men who hit women because they didn’t get their way don’t deserve the privilege of breathing. End of.
When she drops to a sitting position next to the bins, I debate whether or not to help her back to her house. Serves her right to spend the night out there and wake up snuggled to a family of rodents. Fuck around and find out should be tattooed on her forehead.
Although, if she falls asleep there, every move she makes will set off my flood lights and motion sensor cameras, which will, in turn, fuck with my sleep.
Clenching my jaw, I curse under my breath, resigned to go pick her up and drop her on her own fucking porch, but then I see her moving.
By that, I mean she’s dragging herself onto all fours and there isn’t a single mental image of puppies or wrinkled grandmas that take away my instant hard on at her new position.
Fucking hell, the things I want to do to that ass are probably illegal in forty nine of the fifty states. Nevada knows better.
Somehow, she pulls herself up, closing her eyes and grimacing. I’m guessing she’s just tasted her own vomit. Yeah, sucks to be her.
Slow and steady, she walks—stumbles—back to her front porch and I wince at the way she nearly falls on her face when reaching the second step. Those fucking heels are weapons of mass destruction and she’s about two seconds away from destroying her ankles.
I swear to fuck, if I have to go out there and save her from herself, I’ll make her pay for it. I’ve already fixed those steps once, I don’t want to have to do it again.
Once she disappears from sight, I move to the other window, the one facing our street, and keep watch for a while.
There were blinding headlights along the curb a few houses down, which is odd in this neighborhood. The average age of our neighbors is in the ball park of seventy and they haven’t seen two in the morning since Reagan was president.
For the next fifteen minutes, I keep guard just in case the guy followed her home, but it’s all quiet as usual. Berkleigh’s lights have been out long enough that if he wanted to make a move, he would have already tried.
With a gut feeling reminiscent of my wartime situations, I decide to stay up and prep for tomorrow’s mission. That way, I can keep watch for a while longer…just in case.
I remind myself that it’s not about her, it’s about keeping the whole neighborhood safe. Clearly, the sleazeballs are out and they’ve got their sights on Berkleigh. Our little corner of Blue Hills Grove doesn’t need to be the focal point of the media because crime hit the quiet parts of town.
I don’t need that kind of spotlight on my life. It’s inconvenient, at best, and…yeah. No need for that shit.
With my attention divided between any odd noises coming from outside and the research I’m doing on the hours of video footage I set up this past month, I get all the details down for my mission.
I’m going alone, as usual when it comes to my work for the DOGs. I’m in sniper mode with orders to kill a dangerous target guilty of kidnapping, torturing, and raping two young girls. He then laid them out in the woods in some ritualistic pose with slashes across two arteries.
The videos are interesting, to say the least. Obviously, any normal person would find them shocking and vomit inducing, but I’m not normal.
I don’t get off on this shit. Not the raping nor the killing of innocent people, but the rituals of serial killers tell a whole fuckload about the men.
I say men because, statistically, less than ten percent of serial killers in the United States are female. Studies show that the leading explanation has something to do with paraphilias—atypical “turn ons”—that are largely attributed to the male population.
People don’t wake up one day and decide they’re going to act out the worst side of human nature. That shit starts from the get go, at birth.
This guy I’m chasing tomorrow shows all the signs of schizophrenia, like the voices in his head were very loud and persuasive. It’s written in the way he positions his victims with the praying hands and halos made from branches.
But that alone doesn’t make a serial killer, that’s ridiculous. It’s the accumulation of unbalanced neuro-chemicals in the brain, and with a high addiction to dopamine combined with some traumatizing event during childhood, that could—still most often not—create what society deems a monster.
I know because I’m one of them. My only saving grace is that the military saw me for who I am and used my special skill set for their benefit for the better part of ten years.