7. SPIDERS AND WEBS

7

SPIDERS AND WEBS

RYDEN

I woke up with a curse. My bedside clock showed I was late for work. Cursing again, I got up and marched to the bathroom. After a quick shower and an equally quick breakfast, I was off for work. I parked my car in my usual spot and walked into the massive building, rubbing a finger against my head.

Sleep came later than usual last night, and now my eyes were burning like the bottom of hell. The woman was becoming more than a bother.

My phone pinged. My chief editor must have smelled me from the tenth floor.

Nat: Meet me as soon as you come in.

Sending her a quick reply, I walked into the waiting elevator. The woman next to me was drinking a steaming hot cup of coffee that smelled heavenly. I’d give anything to have that coffee. As if she could feel the hole I was staring into her coffee cup, she turned to me and smiled, pushing the coffee in my direction.

“You look like you need it more.”

“I should say no, but my head’s killing me, and I need that coffee. I can pay you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to.” She smiled kindly.

“Thank you. I work on the tenth floor. If you ever need something—”

“I know who you are, Mr. Sinclair. Keep doing the good work.” The elevator halted on the sixth floor, and she walked out, giving me a wave. When I reached the tenth floor, I walked straight to Natalia’s office.

“There’s a new story if you want to look into it.”

“I’m still working on the girls with the tattoos,” I said with a scowl. Three months, and I hadn’t found a single thing that could be used.

“You’re not going to give up?”

“I can’t. I’m not wrong.” Once I became obsessed with something, it was hard to put it out of my head.

She narrowed her eyes. “Even the cops concluded that it was two random, unrelated cases, Ryden. They arrested the first girl’s stalker."

“I don’t believe it’s unrelated, Nat,” I said with a frown.

I had been hitting obstacle after obstacle ever since I started to investigate this case, but I wasn’t one to give up so easily.

“Shit, Ry.”

Natalia and I joined DDE together. She became the editor-in-chief when I turned down the job. She allowed me to chase my own stories, stories people tended to forget after a while.

I couldn’t forget. I wouldn’t forget.

Sympathy would turn into curiosity; curiosity would slowly morph into obsession. I’d forget everything else and spiral into the darkest corners of my mind. When I finally caught up with the monsters I was hunting, I had to kill them to stop the obsession.

“Don’t fall into that rabbit hole again. Not too deep,” she said, her eyes reflecting concern. “I know how you get, Ryden. You… you lose yourself to this obsession. Find a damn hobby, for your sake and mine.”

I wondered what she’d say if she knew about my hobby. She might spontaneously combust. Natalia was the most upright, moral person I had ever met.

“I’m good, Nat. There’s something that connects them. I’ll find that thread, and then I’ll find the fucking spider and his web.”

“Jesus Christ, Sinclair,” she said with a huff. “Do whatever you want. But give me something soon. We’ve been using resources on these two girls for a while—resources we don’t have.”

“You know I—” I stopped when the door opened. I could smell that cologne from a hundred-mile radius. I gritted my teeth. Fucking Thatcher.

“You’re always chasing ghosts, Sinclair. Maybe you should have started one of those paranormal shows, you know, where they go to a haunted house and…” Thatcher Perry said as he entered the room.

I shot a piercing look at the man, wishing my eyes had the power to kill. Every time he opened his mouth, there was an intense urge to silence him, to smother him until he stopped breathing.

Thatcher was a sycophant and a sleaze—a man who flaunted his wealth in every shirt worn, every word uttered. He was hired because his father, a significant investor and a board member, pushed for it.

Thatcher’s first job was to antagonize me. He just couldn’t accept that someone else was winning; someone else was at the top.

“I know. Ghosts are better than the ones I’m chasing,” I said. He looked at me like I had lost my head. And you should be fucking dead . Sometimes the desire was so strong, but I hadn’t hunted so close to home yet, and killing Thatcher would surely draw the cops’ attention in my direction.

My hatred for Thatcher was widely known around the office. I shouldn’t have so freely expressed my hostility toward him. If only I had kept my feelings a secret…

Natalia sighed. “Get going then. I’ll ask Aaliyah to cover the new beat, and Sinclair, take a fucking break. Really.”

The last time I took a break, I killed Matthew and got caught by a woman. Yeah, I’d rather not take another break anytime soon.

“Thank you, Nat,” I said before walking out. I went to my messy cubicle and sat down, staring at the large corkboard filled with grim photographs of Sofia Martínez and Nikki Singh, along with an array of case notes scattered everywhere. Red threads stretched in different directions, but they all remained disjointed, never reaching a common point.

Detective Rosario arrested the man who supposedly killed Sofia—her stalker. But three months after Sofia’s death, Nikki Singh, a high school student, was found hanged in a parking lot of an old theater. Some junkie found her, and he had the common sense to report her death. The tattoo on her neck was the first thing that caught my eye when I studied the crime scene photos. The same rune on Sofia’s neck was also tattooed on Nikki’s, but her tattoo was more elaborate.

The tattoo was a small triangle and circle knotted together, with an eye in the middle and three runic symbols in its corner.

It was rough and amateurish. I visited my tattoo artist and some of his friends. They all said the same thing: the tattoo was done by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.

What are you? An emerging serial killer who is also a bigot? What do you have against these girls?

“Did you find anything new?” Shayna, my photographer, asked as she sat down on my desk.

“Nothing, except they’re both immigrants whose parents settled here a few decades ago. What do you think?”

“I think you’re right, boss,” Shayna said.

“Hell, I hope I’m wrong this time because if I’m not, these won’t be the only two deaths,” I said with a frown. “But I know there’s a point where everything converges. I’ll have to find that soon before he kills again.”

“I know you’ll find it. Do you need anything from me?”

“Not today. I’m leaving to meet an old friend. She’s a behavioral psychiatrist with the FBI.”

“If you need anything, I’m here, boss.”

I nodded, grabbed the bunch of files from my locked drawer, and pushed them inside my backpack.

“You’re going out? Again?” Thatcher asked, sipping his iced tea.

He’d bring a container of it, which was specially prepared for him by his chef. He never missed an opportunity to show us how he existed on a different level from the rest of the vermin that inhabited the office.

Fuck him.

I wasn’t filthy rich, but I wasn’t dirt poor either. I just let him assume whatever he wanted.

“That’s my job. They don’t pay me to sit at my desk for a whole day.” Thatcher’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything as I entered the elevator. There was a smug smile on his lips that rubbed me the wrong way. I let out a growl when the elevator door closed.

“Fucking piece of shit. I want to say fuck it and kill you. Right here, right now.”

But fuck, I couldn’t.

“Ryden, here,” Laura waved when I walked into the coffee shop. “It’s been too long.”

I never spent more than a few minutes with her. I had to double-check my expressions and words when I was with her. She was a forensic psychiatrist, for fuck’s sake. It was her job to catch men like me.

“Hey, Laura, how’re you and the kids? How’s Jay?”

“They’re all good. How are you, Ryden?”

“I’m good. I need to pick your brain.”

“Yeah, the murders of the two girls. Go on,” she said, pushing a cup of coffee in my direction. “Medium caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso, right?”

“Do you have the pictures?” I handed them to her, and her face contorted. There was a slight wince before she composed herself. “What do the detectives think?” she asked as she pulled out the pictures, studying them carefully. “Brutal. Sloppy, but there’s no DNA evidence. So, the unsub is still being careful. How do you think these cases are related?”

“Here. The tattoo on the back of Sofia and Nikki’s necks.”

“I can barely see Sofia’s tattoo,” Laura said after she studied the photo for another minute. “But you’re right. This isn’t a coincidence.” Her eyes were somber as she studied both photos. “The unsub just started killing, but there’s a degree of meticulousness that’s amazing for a beginner. There’s no hesitation in the way he treats his victims. The scars, the physical abuse—it indicates a deep-seated rage. It also suggests premeditation. The unsub didn’t just wake up one day and want to go hunt teenage girls. It’s not a crime of passion. This is calculated,” she said. “This couldn’t be Daiken.”

“I thought as much.”

Her brows knotted together as she looked at the gruesome pictures again. “The lack of hesitation could be indicative of a high level of confidence… ego? Or a sense of righteousness in the killer’s mind. The killer’s emotions were… all over the place. They’re just exploring the boundaries of their capacity for violence. Experimenting. You’re right to worry about it. If Sofia and Nikki were killed by the same person, catching them now is the only way you’ll stop the unsub.”

“But without a pattern…” Even though it killed me to admit it, Detective Rosario was right.

“Without a pattern, it’ll be hard to apprehend him. Three or more. Three or more,” she said, tapping her fingers against the table. “I hate that part of the job.” Laura sighed. “I think it’s time you put it away. People are beginning to notice, and the nice barista has been glaring at us for ten minutes.”

I collected all the photos and shoved them back into my backpack.

“How do I convince the DPD to look further?” I asked with a frown.

“You know you can’t, not until you find more evidence.”

“But I don’t want to wait for him to kill again.”

“I know, but you have to. You’ve no other choice here.”