7. The Shadow

THE SHADOW

I couldn’t have Ava go chasing after Liath. So I removed Liath’s voice message from her phone.

And I only felt the smallest amount of regret when I activated her phone’s microphone while she was in the dean’s office and heard her devastated reaction to the missing file.

Only the teeniest amount of guilt when none of the adults would believe her.

I thought that would be enough.

But my smart girl didn’t stop.

In fact, it seemed to egg her on.

It only took a few days of digging through decades of newspaper articles for her to make the link between the missing girls.

The “runaways.”

I promised only to watch Ava from afar. But she was being such a nosy girl.

And I had to stop her from investigating Liath’s disappearance .

Which meant I had to keep an even closer eye on her.

“The old system is over here,” Ebony’s young PA said. I’d forgotten her name already. “If you’d like to follow me.”

I gestured for her to lead the way.

She shot me a coy smile over her shoulder as she sashayed to a door at the end of the hallway in the back part of Ava’s mansion.

Even though I knew Ava was in her Media Law and Ethics lecture for the next two hours, I still glanced up the winding marble staircase for a flash of her dark hair, listened out for her breathy laugh and the patter of her light footsteps.

“Mr. O’Leary?”

I snapped out of my thoughts and focused on Ebony’s PA who was holding open a door for me.

Inside was a service room, a water boiler in one corner and various electrical panels on the walls. All the house’s security cameras and alarm system ran through here, monitored by the security box near the front gate.

The PA unlocked the security control panel for me from a small key around her neck.

I set down my tool bag and wiped my hands on my coarse workman’s uniform, the Celtic Guard Security badge positioned proudly on my chest. “Thank you, miss.”

My fingers itched to get into this wiring.

Soon every inch of this property would be under my control. Not just Ava’s bedroom.

She placed a hand on my arm and it took everything in me not to snatch it away.

A dimple popped out in her pale cheek as she smiled at me through her lashes. “Please, call me Siobhan. ”

I pretended like I didn’t notice her flirting and turned to the panel, knocking her hand off me and effectively dismissing her. “I’ll let you know when I’m done, miss .”

She made a little huffing noise, then her heels clicked away on the marble flooring.

Installing the new system, my system, took little time. Wiring it up so that it also broadcast to my computer took a little longer.

By the time I finished, I knew I had a little less than fifty minutes to finish up here and get back to campus to rejoin my darling Ava.

Plenty of time.

I replaced the panel, sure that my extra work wouldn’t be noticed unless a real security professional were to inspect it.

I left the utilities room and closed the door behind me, my tool bag over my shoulder.

“Miss, I’m done,” I called into the hallway.

“Who’s that?” Ebony’s voice called out from one of the open doors.

I froze in place.

I hadn’t heard Ebony come in.

I sank back against the wall so that I was out of her line of sight.

I wasn’t sure she’d recognize me. But better safe than sorry.

Through the door, I could just make out Siobhan leaning over Ebony’s desk. “The security man. Yes, of course, he was vetted. Did you want to talk to him before he goes?”

Shit.

I tugged my cap farther down and rummaged around for a dirty rag that I could smear over my face .

“Miss?” I called into the office. “Could you point me in the direction of the nearest bathroom?”

“Yes, of course,” Siobhan whispered to Ebony before calling out, “Upstairs, right, and third door on the right.”

“Much appreciated, miss,” I said before hurrying up the grand staircase above the black-and-white marble tiled floor.

Instead of turning right, I turned left.

I stopped at Ava’s bedroom, glancing around before entering it silently.

The day outside was gray and dreary and it gave the room an impersonal dullness. More luxury French hotel suite than a young woman’s bedroom.

Whatever warmth had been there when I spied from outside was clearly because of Ava herself. When she was gone, it seemed every trace of her left as well.

Hopping up onto her armoire, I removed the cover of the air-conditioning vent and frowned at the camera staring back at me with a single glowing red dot.

I replaced the camera with a better one and took my time fiddling for the best angle.

I hopped off and dusted off my boot prints from the 18th century French antique.

I kept an ear out for footsteps on the landing as I installed a camera in Ava’s bedside lamp.

Ducking inside Ava’s en suite bathroom, I installed yet another camera.

Then I plucked a pair of black lace panties from her laundry basket.

Bringing them to my nose, I inhaled deeply. Ava’s musk flowed through me like a heat wave and I was instantly hard.

I couldn’t sort this out now.

I’d been up here for long enough.

I pocketed Ava’s panties and slipped out of her bedroom.

I heard that sharp rasp of heels on the staircase and I darted across to the third door on the right.

I flushed and turned on the water for a full twenty seconds before I stepped back outside.

Just as Siobhan turned the corner at the top of the stairs.

“All done,” I said, rubbing my dry hands on my pants. “I’ll email my invoice.”

Siobhan remained with one hand on the wainscoted wall and one on the baluster at the top of the railing, blocking my retreat down the stairs.

An additional button was undone on her blouse, a spray of perfume still damp over a vein pulsing rapidly along her throat.

“I finish work in twenty minutes,” she asked. “Maybe we could go for a drink and you can tell me all about the good work you do.”

Inclining my head, I said, “Duty calls. I’m afraid.”

Her dark eyes looked me over and she tapped a bloodred nail against the wood. “Another job?”

Ava flashed into my mind and I couldn’t help but smile. “Another woman.”

Siobhan shot me a hungry smile. “I can share.”

“I can’t,” I said. “Share. That is.”

Siobhan ran her tongue over her teeth. “Lucky girl. Girlfriend?”

I fingered Ava’s panties in my pocket .

Already I could imagine them wet with my cum, my shuddering cock entangled in the lace, Ava’s round ass in her plaid miniskirt up there on the big screen as she kicked her legs back and forth on her bed, oblivious to me watching her every move.

I grinned. “Future wife.”

If Ava’s neighbor had been a good man, I’d have come up with a reason for him to vacate his house so soon after moving in.

An invitation from a very important Saudi prince to vacation in Dubai for a month, an important contract he had to negotiate for weeks in person in Hong Kong, or a disaster at one of his office buildings in New York that he had to personally oversee.

I wasn’t a complete monster.

But I’d been right there, watching from behind one of those big hawthorns that lined her street when Thomas Peterson met Ava.

When he dared to do what he did.

When he sealed his fate.

His moving vans were parked all over the street, blocking her driveway so that she had to park her Mercedes down the street and walk to her house, her giant leather Chloe Marcie tote weighed down with books.

Headlights shined everywhere, their yellow glare crisscrossing the road like prison search beams. Movers shouted and grunted as they banged heavy, ostentatious furniture down the ramps from their trucks .

Mr. Peterson, easily differentiated from the rest by his velvet maroon smoking jacket and ascot tie, yelled at a mover handling a statue of a naked woman.

“Do you know who sculpted that? I’m not sure you could even begin to try to pronounce it. And you’re just smearing your dirty hands all over it?”

He turned toward two men carrying a heavy-looking wooden chest of drawers and continued his arrogant barrage.

“Good God, man. Careful! That’s an eighteenth century Chippendale. Do you know how much that cost? Do you think your year’s wages could even put a dent in reimbursing me if you damage it?”

Ava visibly stiffened, clutching her tote to her side as she weaved through furniture toward the small side gate.

Mr. Peterson’s demeanor instantly changed when he spotted her. The way his eyes flashed reminded me of when a hunter spotted an innocent fawn in the bush.

He straightened and smoothed down his hair.

My hands tightened into fists and I had to stop myself from leaping out from my hiding place.

Ava hurried toward the side gate cut out of the ivy-covered wall, but he stepped into her path, causing her to come up short.

“Why, hello there,” he said, his voice as slippery as oil. “Who do we have here?”

He made no qualms about leering at her. He was used to a world where everything was for sale. Including women.

My vision started to bleed red as I imagined all the ways I would make him pay for disrespecting my woman .

“Excuse me, I’m trying to get past.” Ava went to move around him, but he stepped in front of her again.

“Not very neighborly,” he said, narrowing his beady little eyes, anger slipping into his voice.

I couldn’t see Ava’s face but I could imagine my girl glaring back at him. “Excuse me, neighbor , you’re in my way.”

She strode past him toward the gate.

“So impolite,” the soon-to-be dead man said, following at her heels, his eyes roaming up and down her body, “I’m just trying to be nice .”

“Then kindly leave me alone, old man. You aren’t entitled to my time.”

His face went red.

This time he grabbed ahold of her arm, trying to pull Ava toward him. “You snobby little cunt.”

He fucking touched her.

Anger flared up in me so quickly that it almost took my breath away.

Fuck my promise.

Fuck staying in the shadows.

Ava was in trouble.

My fingers reached automatically for my knife, and I pulled my black hood up over my head, ready to step out of the shadows.

A tiny part inside me warned that there were too many fucking witnesses.

But I didn’t care.

Nobody disrespects my girl.

Nobody touches Ava.

But before I could step out, Ava wrenched her arm away.

“Touch me again and I’ll sue you for sexual harassment.” Ava pointed to the box positioned on the wall above them. “Wave to our security cameras, neighbor. ”

His gaze flicked up to the security camera on the wall over the gate.

He scowled, his features screwing up into an evil mask.

I froze, my breath caught in my throat, ready to leap out and stab him in the face.

But he stepped aside, letting Ava get to the gate.

I dropped my knife back into its sheath. For now.

Pride made my chest swell.

My girl handled it all on her own without me needing to get my hands dirty in front of her.

Such a good girl.

But I could hear the catch of fear in her breath, could see the panic in the way she slammed the gate shut behind her with a clang and hurried away, her arms clutched over her chest.

Deep down, she was asking me to protect her . Even if she didn’t realize it.

Her fear was my permission.

The way he held on to the railing and leered at her ass through the bars as she hurried up the pathway to the house was the nail in his coffin.

You don’t have to be afraid , I promised her. He won’t touch you again.

Her safety was my absolution for the sin I was about to commit.

Later that evening, the hallway ahead of me was dark and silent.

I made my way through, each step placed carefully, as I hunted my unknowing prey .

I paused at the door, open a crack but in darkness, from where I could hear a wet repetitive sound coming.

With a gloved hand, I pushed it open, slowly so as not to make a sound.

Thomas Peterson was at the window in the dark, holding a pair of binoculars, with his silk pajama bottoms bunched around his ankles, his sickly pale legs, thin as twigs, bare as they shook.

“Take that dick, bitch,” he grunted under his breath, panting as his hand pumped himself with a frenzied impatience. “Little fucking whore.”

His pale ass, half-covered by his pajama top, clenched.

I knew the layout of Ava’s neighboring mansion well enough that this window was directly opposite hers.

He was watching Ava .

I remembered how she had looked on the hidden camera when I’d checked up on her from my roaming “office” in the back of my white unmarked van just before I broke into Thomas Peterson’s house.

She had been sitting cross-legged on her bed with her panties visible beneath her miniskirt, bent over her laptop as she chewed at the end of a pencil.

Totally unaware she was being watched.

Unaware that this vile creature was desecrating this sacred sight.

My blood boiled.

I might have roughed him up a little bit, locked him down in the basement, but he just signed his death warrant.

This was the final nail in his coffin.

My only concern now was doing it in a way that wouldn’t cause too much noise .

I didn’t want to scare Ava if she heard her new neighbor screaming his head off.

Unmoving in the doorway, I surveyed the half-unpacked bedroom suite. My skin crawled at the sight of the object on the dresser.

But then the dark irony descended on me.

Perfect.

With silent steps, I advanced to the dresser where I plucked up a ball gag. It swung at my side as I continued on, coming to a stop just behind Peterson’s back.

I snatched ahold of him by the hair and cut off his frightened yelp by slamming the ball gag against his teeth.

He fought as I buckled it behind his head, but he was pitifully weak. Bullies who prey on the innocent always were.

“That’s for talking to Ava,” I hissed in his ear as he cried against the ball gag.

I slammed him against the glass window, his hot breath snorting out of his nostrils forming a fog.

He was shaking his head as he looked back at me from over his shoulder.

I grabbed his right hand by the wrist where he held the sill.

All I could see was his fucking hand on Ava.

His fucking eyes on Ava.

I was the only one who was allowed to touch her.

To watch her.

She was mine.

And he defiled what was mine.

He had to die.

But first he had to suffer .

I pulled a knife from my thigh sheath—one I named Sweeney Todd—and chopped at his hand.

His scream of pain and horror bubbled around the ball gag. His fingers clutched uselessly at the glass, tears streaming down his pale, unworthy face.

You know, it was actually quite difficult to saw through a wrist.

My large sharp knife made easy work of the surrounding skin and muscle, the tendons snapping as my blade cut through like butter.

But cutting through bone was harder than you’d think.

Especially when the knife was now slick with his blood.

And the disgusting pig was squirming to get away from me.

It would have been easier with a cleaver, but I didn’t have one on me. And I didn’t think to stop by his kitchen on the way here.

“Hold still,” I grumbled, blood making my grip on the knife slip.

I had to use a sawing motion.

The air stank of urine as he pissed all down his leg. Drool dripped from his mouth, hanging in long beads from his chin.

His hysterical shrieks were quite loud, despite the gag. I glanced through the window to check if Ava had heard anything, but she was still bent over her laptop.

Thankfully, he passed out within seconds.

Pussy.

Silence fell upon us apart from the squeaking sound of metal on bone.

With him unconscious, I repositioned myself over him and used my knee to hold down his forearm. This made it easier to put my whole weight into it.

The hand at last fell away from his forearm.

I took my knee off his forearm, his bone sticking out like a horror show, the blood soaking into the carpet.

It’d be a bitch to get out. I’d have to replace that carpet.

“That’s for touching Ava.”

I tossed his right hand aside into the nearby fireplace.

But I wasn’t done. Yet.

I wiped the back of my bloody hand across my forehead and slapped his face. “Wake up.”

He went from motionless to screaming and thrashing in seconds.

He lifted his amputated arm and stared with wide, almost childlike eyes at the fountains of bubbling blood.

I grabbed him by his flaccid dick and my blade cut through his flesh like butter.

“That,” I said, “was for looking at Ava.”

I tossed his shriveled cock into the fireplace next to his charred dismembered hand.

Sir Peterson let out a shriek like a banshee, garbled by the gag.

The sour stench of vomit filled the air as he retched out the side of the gag, choking.

He’d bleed out, if he didn’t suffocate first.

I almost felt bad for the bastard, bleeding out on the floor, handless and dickless, choking on his own vomit, lying in his own piss and shit.

But any pity or mercy I may have had for him was shattered the moment he touched Ava. The second he made her feel afraid .

I wiped my hands on his silk shirt as best I could before standing.

It hadn’t been the cleanest of retributions . But then again, I wasn’t aiming for tidy.

I left him twitching like mangled roadkill and went to the window where he had been standing.

Sir Peterson’s binoculars lay on the floor where he’d dropped them.

I snatched them up and turned them over in my gloved hands. They were high-powered military grade zoom binoculars.

I raised them to my eyes.

In the mansion across the sloping lawn, Ava was climbing off her bed. I watched as she lowered the needle onto a record.

I couldn’t hear the music from here but I knew from memorizing her record collection that she loved old-school jazz.

I opened up the live stream to her room on my phone and “Big Spender” by Shirley Bassey crooned through the speakers as she swayed her hips and unbuttoned her shirt.

High up on dainty tiptoes in black knee-high socks, she twirled around before tossing her blouse onto the bed.

I drew in a deep, steadying breath as she wriggled her skirt over her shaking hips. Her round ass bounced in sweet white panties as she jumped around, hands seductively overhead.

Anger filled my veins with fire as I spun toward Peterson, ready to make him suffer.

But he wasn’t moving. His eyes were wide-open and blank, staring at the ceiling .

He was dead.

Fuck. I killed him too quickly. Once again, I’d let my emotions run away from me.

Dammit. I wished I could bring him back to life just to kill him again.

He’d obviously chosen this bedroom to be his master room because of the view. Straight into Ava’s bedroom.

Disgusting pervert.

I was the only one allowed to watch her.

I was the only one allowed to touch her.

And one day soon, I would be the one to claim her.