10. THE STRANGLER

10

THE STRANGLER

YARA

“ G ood morning, Doc.”

“Morning, Miranda. Large black and white mocha with dark chocolate drizzle and light whip, and a banana muffin.”

“Of course,” Miranda said with a smile. Hot Cuppa was one of my favorite places, and I visited it every morning. Miranda already knew my coffee order by heart. “Extra dark chocolate drizzle just for you, Doc.”

“Thanks, Miranda,” I said, taking the cup from her. Coffee was fucking life. I wouldn’t survive without it. I finished the mocha and muffin, sitting in my car before driving to work.

Later that evening, after a quiet day at work, I drove toward the underground poker club Millicent frequented every Thursday and Saturday—The Mirage.

The exterior was nondescript and rundown, with cracked bricks, faded paint, and a rusty metal door. A flickering neon sign, barely legible, was the only indication of any life within. Only those who had passwords could enter past the security.

The scent of smoke lingered permanently in the air surrounding the club. I sat in the shadows, waiting.

Millicent enjoyed parties, gambling, drugs, and men, and she used helpless girls to line her pockets. She was just as predatory as Victor. She was the reason these girls had turned into women they had never dreamed of. She didn’t kill them, but she was the reason their dreams were murdered.

Ah, there she is.

When Millicent walked inside the club, I drove toward her home. It took me a few seconds to pick the lock and walk inside. Kasey Thompson had told me a lot about Millicent’s life, and it had helped me slowly, and carefully build a backstory.

I opened the closet, looking for something I could use to frame her.

My lips curled when I found exactly what I was looking for. Grabbing the restraints and leather shackles with a smile, I quickly chucked it into my backpack before moving toward her kitchen. It was clean, untouched. Borrowing a knife from the rack, I slipped out of her house, locking the door behind me.

“Enjoy everything while you can.”

It was around two in the morning when I finally reached home. I was too fired up to sleep. Quickly changing into a comfortable old T-shirt that smelled like Katelyn—sometimes I wore Kat’s T-shirts to feel closer to her—I sat at the long teakwood table and opened the box of reheated pasta with a sigh.

My father had once used this table to play pretend family when my mother was alive. He’d force us to sit together and eat. Every bite of the food would feel like rubber and glue. It’d get stuck in my throat, but I had to swallow it down. I knew what would happen if I broke the illusion of the happy family my father wanted to create.

At first, I wanted to destroy the table, but some twisted part of me wanted to hold on. It was a reminder that I had once lived my life according to someone else’s rules, and I’d never again do that.

Only my rules mattered now.

Opening my laptop, I searched for the articles written by Ryden.

“You understand them, because you’re one of them,” I whispered. “But not exactly one of them. You’re better.”

He had written a series of articles about the Six O’Clock Killer. The madman sent a package with a riddle to the detectives of DPD exactly at six o’clock, just an hour before he killed every fucking time. Detectives Patel and Murray caught him a year ago, but I wondered if it was somehow Ryden’s doing.

The story that caught my attention was the one he had written on The Strangler.

My nostrils flared in distaste when I thought of that asshole.

I had been hunting him for four years. Every time I thought I was getting somewhere… he’d find a way to slip away through an invisible hole.

The Strangler’s MO was strangling his victims with a garrote, leaving behind love letters tied around the victim’s neck with colorful silk ribbons. No DNA had ever been found in or on any of his victims.

“But I’ll find you, and then I’ll cut you into a million fucking pieces and feed your flesh to pigs.”

Maybe then the whorl of rage within me would go soft, and the sharp pain would fade away.

I had killed three men. And then I met Katelyn. She taught me how to live, showed me a way to look past the darkness into light. She became my best friend, family despite knowing the distorted beings in my head. And he took her from me.

Wiping my eyes, I pounded against the table until I felt the pain radiating from my knuckle to my arm.

“You stole my Katelyn from me, and that’s why I’ll claim your kill as mine.”

He’d be my absolution, and I’d be his executioner.

That was our destiny. Four years. Tied together by a thread of fate that just couldn’t be untangled until one of us ended the other.

There wasn’t any way around or out of it.

“I’ll come for you, you bastard. You just wait for me. I’ll hunt you down and watch you bleed to your death. Maybe then, the demons will finally find peace”

The next evening after work, I sat in my car, staring at Ryden’s office building. I had no dead bodies I had to talk to today, so I decided I’d leave early and spend a few more minutes indulging in my new obsession.

Tapping my nails against the steering wheel, I watched as Ryden walked out of the building with a gorgeous woman who looked like she had just stepped out of the pages of Vogue. She was beautiful, and the way he smiled at her told me that this smile wasn’t a pretense.

“Who is she, Ryden Sinclair?” I whispered to myself as the woman said something, making him smile once again.

He was always smiling in the photos available on the internet, but that smile was different from this one. That smile was fake. He hated smiling for the pictures. He’d rather smile at them. Mock them with a sense of superiority, reveling in his secrets, jeering at them for being utter fools.

I didn’t have to search hard to find the woman. It was Natalia Porter. Ryden’s chief editor and co-worker. Maybe even more.

That could become a problem for what you’re planning.

If I want to do this, no one will be a problem.

He walked to his car, and she took her own. Hoping they weren’t going to the same location, I followed him.

He parked and stepped out. For a fleeting moment, his gaze drifted to the woods—the same woods where he chased me a few days ago. I still wondered why he spared me that night. It wasn’t merely because I caught him off guard. I was good, but not that good. He chose to let me go.

I hid in the shadows and watched as he walked toward his home. He opened the door and turned around as if he could hear my heart pounding in my throat. The man looked like a fucking angel against the backdrop of the setting sun and dancing shadows. Angel of Death. Attractive. Illegally so. His body was made to force a woman into committing sins she wouldn’t normally think of—even innocent women.

He walked in, quickly locking the door behind him.

“Who else knows your secret, or am I the only one?” I rubbed my chin as I continued to wait for that single curtain he would open exactly at seven forty. On the dot. Then he’d pour himself half a glass of red wine—I was sure it was an expensive one—and look down on the world from the top, his shirt unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, his raven hair messed up.

The curtain opened. My pulse raced when I saw he wasn’t wearing a shirt today. My mouth went dry as he stood there, enjoying his wine. My eyes lingered on the tattoos on his arm and his chest… and then he turned around, making me gasp. The detailed tattoo on his back made my heart skip a beat.

It was breathtaking and melancholic. Like beautifully broken poetry. Wings, half destroyed as though someone had brutally taken a saw to them, stretched from both sides of the scapula. Feathers, burning orange and gold at the edges, cascaded down his strong back in a sinuous trail.

Fuck.

The need for this man was burning so bright that I dreamed of him every night. In those dreams, he touched me in ways I wanted him to, tasting my desire for him, taking me to dark, deranged places.

Despite the longing to just march up to him and tell him what I was, who I was, I sat there in the comfort of my car, tapping my fingers against the steering wheel.

“You look like a mistake, Ryden,” I muttered under my breath. “But I know you won’t be the worst one I’ve made.”

Getting to know Ryden Sinclair , ripping off the masks he had kept in place… these new routines made me calm for a while, but when the demons woke up, thirsting for something else, I couldn’t ignore them anymore. It would be like claws against my skull, against my bones.

I didn’t know how to stop them, not completely. I had learned ways to put them to sleep for days, weeks, and months, but eventually, I knew they would always wake up. The respite would go away, and the voices would tear me from the inside out.

First, I’d hear the soft scratches, and feel the pressure until my whole body became burning with it. The need. Fire. Hunger.

The voice would start as a whisper until everything else was drowned out by the echoes of the screams in my head. Everything would be beyond my control by then. I had to give in. That was my only option. Only blood would help.

It’s time for your hunt.

I had to find Victor Bane and end him.

It is time.