Chapter 7

Pulling into the same spot we'd just vacated, I smirk as I put the car in park. The way he gives in to me sometimes and holds steady at other times always keeps me on my toes. I live for it.

Once I'm out of the car and headed into the scene, I tighten my jacket against the cold. February in Crows Hollow is frigid, without murders lingering in the air.

"Here you go, ma'am," a man says, handing me booties.

I take them from his hands and walk up the steps, leaning against the doorframe as I tug them over my heeled boots. I recall what Neo said about keeping my senses open during these scenes.

Turning, I scan the crowd gathered at the tapeline, checking out each before moving on to the next. No one seems off to me, but I'm also not Neo. His gut is rarely wrong, but we're not the same.

I've just begun my journey into the inky depths of life beside him.

He's too recognizable to stroll into a crime scene, so here I am.

A tingle goes up my spine as if I'm being watched.

As if I'm prey.

My hackles rise, and I turn around, scanning once again.

I narrow my gaze, and no one is eyeing me. I chalk it up to my tiredness, turn back, and march inside.

Much like the other scene, there's a blonde female on the floor, her tongue in a jar, and the word killer scrawled across the outside.

I find the word he'd chosen funny and shake my head.

"Agent Black," Detective Clark drawls with a yawn following.

"Still haven't gotten that coffee?" I ask.

She nods. "Wore off hours ago. I was just falling asleep when I got the call."

"Mmm, same," I lie.

"Same scene, different victim, hm?" I ask.

She nods but points her pen towards the couch. "Other than that, yes. Identical."

I look up to where she's indicated, finding another female dead on the couch, eyes full of fear.

I cock my head. "Mother?"

She sighs. "Yes. Sarah had been released to her mother's house on early parole."

"What was her charge?" I ask, crouching and looking Sarah over.

Fear still etches her rigid face, and her eyes are wide open. I've noticed that he has a thing about leaving them open.

"Vehicular manslaughter," Detective Clark says, reading off her phone. "She was the driver when her car flipped into a ditch. Her best friend died."

I whistle. "Lost her best friend and her life all in the blink of an eye."

"Yeah," Julieanne agrees. "Time hasn't been good to her on the inside, either."

She's not exaggerating. Sarah Smith looked to be in her fifties when I heard one tech say she was only thirty-eight.

"She got out early?" I ask Julieanne. She looks at her phone again. Likely, she already knows the answer, but as tired as we both are, she doesn't trust her memory to be accurate.

"Why yes, she did. Two years early. Overcrowding and good behavior," she recites.

My eyes study over the body, looking for anything and everything that I can tell Neo. Any deviation in how he killed, other than the mother being targeted. She was likely in the way.

She's on her back, arms outstretched and palms facing upward. But a lifted floorboard has one finger tilted enough to show a red fingertip.

"You got a set of gloves on you?" I ask Julieanne.

She nods, grabbing some offered to her by a passing CSI.

I slip my hands into them and then turn Sarah's hand over. Only the ring fingernail on her left hand is missing. It's been perfectly plucked off as if it never was.

"He took her fingernail."

"Fuck." She covers her mouth. "What could the significance be?"

I shrug, shaking my head at how meticulously he'd removed the nail. "It was postmortem. There's no bleeding around the nail bed. And it doesn't seem as if she fought him."

"He took a fucking trophy," she breathes.

"Seems he did." I stand and stretch my back, ripping the gloves off and tossing them away in a trash bag that'll leave the scene when the police do.

"What do you think it means? Did the Butcher take trophies?" Julieanne rambles as my phone vibrates in my back pocket.

Working it out of my pants, I shake my head at her. "I don't think he did," I say.

Though, I can ask him tonight.

The thought makes me snicker inwardly, and I scold myself to get my shit together.

It's Neo who's texted.

Keep your eyes open for a man giving booties out at the base of the staircase. He's not listed or photographed in the Crows Hollow PD's database.

I remember the tingle in my spine, the feeling of being watched. Striding toward the door, the sound of my heels nearly overtakes the pounding of my heart in my ears.

"What is it?"

"I need some air," I call back robotically, veins thrumming with excitement at the thrill to come. I love the hunt—I love the chase, too—something I didn't know about myself before I met Neo.

When I get outside, the box of booties sits on the bottom step, and the man is nowhere to be found.

An officer slips some over his boots as I descend the stairs. "Did you see where the man who was holding those went?"

He looks up at me, smiling when he sees a pretty woman in a nice suit. It doesn't matter that we're at a murder scene; he's going to make a pass at me.

Little does he know the man I have at home will pull his body apart and laugh as he does.

"Excuse me? Who?" he asks, stepping up the one stair separating us.

Now, he's got the high ground. He looms over me like he's won something.

Fucking men.

I give him a saccharine smile. "The man that handed me my booties. He was standing right there." I point. "Did you see where he went?"

His hands lift and hold on to his utility belt—a show of power.

One that's futile. The knife hidden at my side would be through his throat quicker than his hand could pop the button on his gun's holster.

"No. But there are a few officers in the back looking to see if the killer dropped anything on the ground when he left. He might be back there. Anything I can help you with?"

I let my sweet facade drop, face deadening. "Unlikely."

He scoffs and backs away as I make my way down and around to the side of the house.

Officer Nitwit hadn't lied. When I get into the back, a few officers are looking in the bushes. Light snow crunches under my boots, and I try to stay hidden.

Once in hiding, always in hiding.

There is a small shed in the left corner of the fence line, and something about it calls me to it.

I move unseen through the shadows that veil me, tightening my coat in the front against the frosty wind. Once I open the shed door, I turn on the flashlight app on my phone.

"We already cleared that building!" a male's voice calls, and I startle, turning and flashing my light on the group of officers headed back to the front of the house.

"Alright. I was just double checking," I call back.

"Fucking FBI bitch," one of them grumbles. Their laughter follows them back to the front.

But before I can turn around, I'm tugged inside the shed, and the doors shut.

With its illuminated flashlight, my phone hits the floor, and whoever occupies the space with me kicks it to the back of the room, where it lands near a shovel.

My first instinct is to grab my knife.

But like Neo taught me, he'll expect me to draw a weapon immediately. He'll be ready for it.

So, I don't make a move.

I wait.

A male steps into the beam of light from the moon shining through the window behind me.

"I've been waiting so long for this moment."

My brain tries to compute his words but can't.

Waiting for me?

The moment drawls on,and a skittering nervous energy now lives in my belly.

"You're not the Butcher," I say when I can't think of anything else.

I only hope that once he's unarmed and unaware, I'll be able to pull my blade and get the upper hand on him.

"And you would know," he spouts back, menace in his tone.

It's so much like Neo's that my nipples harden instantly.

Guilt wafts through me, and I swallow against it.

He steps closer.

There's a spiced scent: his cologne. He's tall, has dark hair, and what looks to be dark eyes. If I recall correctly, he's muscularly built, but his face is unassuming enough that he didn't throw up any red flags to the police detail surrounding the scene.

"Why would you be waiting for this moment?" I ask, curiosity winning out.

"I've been obsessed with meeting you since the moment you shot my friend in that club. I watched you, how you drank in his death as if it gave you his essence. As if killing him blessed you with abundance."

My brain scurries back in time, remembering the night he's referring to—how Neo had handed me a gun. How I'd shot a man I still don't know the name of. How Neo fucked me to death in the alleyway…

I shake from the thought as wetness pools between my thighs.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do. And don't worry. I'm not here for revenge. I'm here for what's mine."

What's his?

I laugh nervously. Fuck, I can't let him hear that. Neo taught me well, and I thought myself the master of my emotions. But my fear is palpable in the room, so much so you can almost taste it.

"And what is it you think is yours?" I ask, hand twitching as I fight the urge to get my blade too soon.

He presses forward, and I step back.

My back hits the glass of the window as he leans down.

His beautiful face hovers close enough to see the malice in his nearly black eyes. The lines surrounding his mouth lift as a smile curls his lips. "You, my deadly flower. You are what I've come for. You're mine."

I'm too thrown off to think straight. His presence is pressing down from above like a ton of bricks, like he's burying me alive in it. I can't breathe. I can't think.

I can't recall what I'm supposed to do in this instance.

Confusion and electricity dance together in my brain, rushing through my veins like a sickness.

Like a fucking disease.

"I'm not yours," I finally say, lifting my hand slowly and steadily to the hilt of my knife.

He tsks. "You are, oleander."

A poisonous flower?

It's beautiful but deadly. Yeah, that's me. At least the new me.

It throws me off the split-second he needs to regain his upper hand because that's when I feel the prick at my neck.

"What did you do? Get off me," I slur as the room darkens further, and my body feels heavy.

"Sleep, oleander. When you wake, I'll have figured out how to handle you carefully enough not to be spurned by your leaves."

I try to speak. My lips grapple for words that won't come as the room spins.

Neo!

The world goes out of focus.