19. Loren

19

LOREN

I enjoy killing people. Myro and I talk about it a lot because he worries about my humanity. I have no remorse, regardless of who I kill. There are no mercy killings; no mercy at all. Honestly, I enjoy hearing them beg and knowing that I hold the fate of their lives in my hands.

It makes me really happy when they call me a psychopath and I can correct them with an accurate diagnosis. The looks on their faces usually stay with me while I'm cleaning up, leaving me with a smile.

Killing isn't personal for me. Myro used to conduct some experiments by giving me details about the target to see if I responded differently for different circumstances—murderers, assailants, rapists, traffickers, drug smugglers, etc. The short answer is no. Sometimes, if I found something particularly offensive, I drew it out, but usually by watching them bleed out from a single laceration. The time that comes to mind most readily is the one that drowned a litter of puppies because they thought they were too ugly and no one would want them.

It wasn't because he'd been abusing his son for fifteen years. Not because he'd run over his son's leg and told the hospital he fell out of a tree. Or because his wife mysteriously died when the kid was three.

None of that bothered me. Just drowning puppies.

Yeah… I don't know how my mind works. Logically, I know I should have been bothered by the bulk of his file. I suppose the fact that it doesn't, means the part of me lacking empathy is strong.

Watching their lives drain away while I kill them. Cataloging their fear and how it progresses throughout my time with them. Anger, bargaining, desperation, acceptance. A lot like grief, but all with a heavy backdrop of fear.

I won't say it's exhilarating. It's fun, sure, but I don't get a burst of endorphins or anything. Everyone has their hobbies. Mine just takes lives as if they're ants.

There has only been one life that has been personal—Daniel. Even that wouldn't have been if it hadn't been for Oakley. When Noah told me about him, it wasn't personal. Had this man been harassing Noah, I think it would have been very different. But he was abusive to Noah's boyfriend's brother. There was enough removal of close ties to me that the reason was irrelevant.

Noah wouldn't call for a spider's death. So if he was calling to ask me for help with a person, clearly they weren't good people. I recruited Imry to help me—after listening to Myro warn me about telling people what I do.

I don't tell people. I didn't even tell Noah. Assuring someone that I will protect them isn't admitting to murder. Making them understand that if they ever need something that they should tell me, isn't confessing that I'm a cold-blooded killer.

Noah is a smart man. He simply read between the lines. To be fair, he didn't ask. He simply told me a story that upset him and dropped a name. I kept him updated on progress that I felt was important—like the fact the name he gave me wasn't real. That was important to have in case this man showed up in the boyfriend's brother's life again under a new pseudonym online or something.

Arguably, I can claim to have done a good deed!

And since we're making arguments, I can also say that about taking out Daniel. Imry found no less than thirteen victims in Daniel's past. He wasn't even counting Oakley since Oakley got himself out before it got to that point. But we're talking assault victims, abuse victims, and there were even some sexual violence victims in there.

If you ask his victims, I did a good thing. If you ask most of the world, I did a good thing. The only people who would disagree are those who feel that every life is sacred and all that bullshit. Those same people who believe that they should be able to dictate how one lives, what rights they have to their own bodies, who they're allowed to love, etc.

Hypocrisy at its finest.

I bet if I killed those people, no one would complain.

Today is the first day I'm scoping out a target since Oakley came into my life—Daniel aside. I'm slightly stressed. Not because I feel like Oakley isn't safe, but because I like to be present every moment that he's awake. I want his every minute. I want to make him smile and laugh and watch him blush.

I'm not sure if Myro is trying to temper my obsession or if this contract is out of his depth. Unlike me, Myro struggles with some contracts. His empathy is strong, so the list of transgressions needs to be brutal or hit on something that he finds particularly awful.

While I don't always understand which of his triggers flip the switch and allow him to murder someone, I've examined the list of wrongdoing that this contract gives, and I don't see anything particularly upsetting. There are no drowned puppies. Or skinned kitties. No plucked birds.

Hmm. I'm seeing a pattern here. I don't like animal abuse. That's good to know.

I think Myro's biggest issues are concerning the particularly abhorrent abuse and assault of women and children. Then again, there have been a couple that had neither and he didn't lose sleep over it, so he's just a puzzle I haven't worked out yet.

After the brief conversation with my father the other night, I've stopped watching Oakley sleep. It means I get less sleep, if you can believe that, because I hate not knowing if he's sleeping peacefully. Imry says asking him to set up a video feed facing his bed at night is pushing some boundaries that I shouldn't cross in our relationship yet.

At least he said ‘yet.' Hopefully that means at some point, it'll be appropriate to ask. I feel like it's a small ask, anyway. I just need to know he's sleeping okay, and nothing is bothering him while he sleeps.

Grudgingly, I agreed to take a look at this contract so I walked Oakley to school, kissed him outside his classroom, and gifted him a little rock that I had my brother paint for me last night and told him I had to deal with a contract today so I'd see him this evening.

Walking away knowing that I won't see him in an hour, but closer to six hours was surprisingly difficult. I had half a mind to call Noah and explain this weird dislike and reluctance to leaving him for a long period. Is this what love feels like? Has my sociopathy evolved to include such things with specific people involved?

Love or not, it's only the promise of the possibility of watching someone's life fade before my eyes that convinces me I can leave Oakley for a little while. Just a while. Then I can kiss him later and I'm pretty sure it'll be the very best day of my life so far.

After a day of scoping out this guy's routine, I've had enough. It's not like I've been entirely able to concentrate on this task because I know Oakley's out of school and has been for a bit. This particular target is dull as fuck too. I've been trying to remind myself that Daniel is dead. He no longer has an obsessive stalker creep.

Except me.

I smirk because I'm not even sorry.

Turning my car around, I head back toward home. There's a lot of traffic for some reason, so I'm moving downtown slowly. Oakley told me this morning he'd be at the museum for a few hours after school for a project. His class has been out for an hour, so I decide to head there.

When I'm stopped in the middle of the road, scanning the crowd, my gaze spots something in a dark alley. Something bright. Like a highlighter.

My gut clenches as I stare at it. I try to reason with myself that it's not what I think it is. Oakley's backpack has no place in a dark alley.

When traffic begins to move again, I pull off the road and park in a convenience store parking lot around the corner. There are always a few knives in my car. Not my favorite one, but there are several options. I strap one to my calf, then lower my pant leg and slip a folding hunting knife in my pocket before getting out.

They're unnecessary. I miss Oakley, so I'm simply seeing things. That's it.

When I get out of the car and lock it, I dial Oakley's phone. It rings and rings and rings before going to voicemail. I try again.

It's fine. It makes perfect sense that it's on silent mode because he's in the museum only a few blocks further down the road. I can practically see it from here. This isn't his backpack!

But as I turn into the alley, my gut clenches. There's no way I can mistake it. I've been staring at it for a month as I tailed him.

Glancing over my shoulder, I reach into my pocket for the knife and flick it open. Then stop over the backpack. It's unopened. Dropped haphazardly on the ground. Picking it up, I sling it over my back and then study the surrounding ground.

The alley is remarkably clean. A strange kind of clean.

I remain still for a minute, straining to hear anything other than the road noise behind me. Which is oddly dulled even a few dozen feet away. But I can't hear anything.

Logically, taking into account the direction the backpack is facing and that it was clearly abandoned quickly, I move further into the alley and remind myself that this doesn't mean anything. Maybe his backpack was stolen, and someone realized he doesn't carry much in it. But I can clearly feel his tablet. Surely that wouldn't still be in there.

And this damn thing is highlighter colored, it sticks out like a neon light. If it was stolen, it would have been thrown into a dumpster. Not tossed into an alley.

The further I move, the less I hear. It's stupidly quiet. Very inconvenient. I'm trying very hard not to be pissed that I wasn't with him today. Fuck the stupid contract. What if Oakley needed me and I was wasting my time taking out someone else's garbage?

I pause when I hear scraping. It takes me a minute to locate the direction of the sound and I have to change my trajectory. I come upon a phone. When I click on the screen, I'm greeted with a picture of the six people who live across the road and a notification of a missed call from me.

Pocketing it, I move a little quicker. An unsettling feeling that I'm not entirely familiar with creeps up my spine. My hands shake. The knife I have gripped tightly in my hand feels slick while my body feels cold. A dark pit forms in my stomach, making it difficult to swallow. There's darkness licking at the edges of my vision as I hyperfixate on the sound ahead.

When I round the corner, the world shrinks to a single pinpoint. The furious grip on my knife becomes crushing. The opposite hand clenches so tightly, my nails dig into my palm. My nostrils flare, and everything inside me fills with fire as I surge forward.

Oakley's limp body is being pulled by a rope around his neck. The man doesn't know I'm there until I'm practically on top of him. He spins, swinging a long knife at me wildly. Stopping it is easy as I slam my wrist into his, causing his knife to fly from his grip.

He's already dropped the rope as he turns to face me. Perhaps he sees that I'm completely out of my mind right now because his eyes widen and he turns to run. Too bad for him, one of us is being driven by a blind rage and unfortunately for this fucker, it's not him.

I see very little of the next several minutes as I drive my knife into his gut and tear it up. When he tries to scream, I slam the tip of my blade through his trachea and out the back of his neck. I keep him on his feet as I continue to filet this fucker until he's been dead for a while.

It takes several more minutes to get myself under control enough to drop my knife and get to Oakley. There's blood everywhere. I'm covered. Oakley's covered. The man is… unrecognizable.

Dropping to my knees, I gently pull the rope from Oakley's neck. He's breathing, but barely. My hands tremble as I look around me, unsure of what to do now. I need to get Oakley away from here. I need to get him… somewhere. But he's covered in blood, and I don't know if any of it's his.

Wiping my hands on my pants, which does very little to clean them off, I pull my phone out and call my brother. The phone struggles to connect in the alley, but eventually, the call goes through and Myro answers.

"I need your help," I blurt.

"What happened? What did you do?"

"I won't be taking any more contracts," I say. "Hurry. I don't know if he's going to live and I'm going to lose my mind if he dies, Myro."

"Where are you?"

I'm entirely unfamiliar with my own tears, so it takes a minute for me to figure out that's what's happening right now when my eyesight gets strangely distorted and blurry, like I'm underwater.

While I know I need to look around for any kind of indicator about where I am, my eyes remain glued to Oakley's face.

"You have to find me," I insist. "I don't care how."

He curses. "Don't move. Can anyone see you?"

"I don't know. There are windows. I think."

Nope, can't even look up long enough to confirm that.

"Listen to me, Loren. Are you listening?"

"Kind of. Like fifty percent."

He snorts. "Put your first two fingers on Oakley's neck. Right under his chin, but to the side. If his chin is twelve o'clock, press them at one-thirty."

I switch my phone to the other hand and do as Myro says.

"You'll have to press into his skin. Not so hard as to hurt him, but you need to find his pulse."

It takes several attempts. To be fair, I know how to find a pulse under normal circumstances. Those being any other time when Oakley doesn't have claw marks and a nasty bruise around rope burn on his neck. Eventually I find it. It's faint, but there's a chance that's just me because my hand's shaking.

"He's alive," I whisper. "Hurry up, Myro."

"I'm on my way. Tell me what else you see. What are his injuries?"

I listen to my brother as best I can, taking inventory of Oakley and relaying what I see. This is how he finds me when he pulls a car into the alley with Voss in tow.

Voss immediately vomits. He doesn't do well with blood. There's likely a lot of it.