Twelve hours later, I was bundled up, hidden in the bushes of a local park. I was physically fine. Wayne had stabbed downwards, catching my pelvis bone and not damaging anything in the process. This made him the least competent stabber I had ever met. There was nothing to the torso, if he had stabbed straight in, he probably would have gotten a kidney or intestines or at least something. Even an upward angle would have done some serious damage to internal organs. However, the MRI had shown a chunk of bone floating around from where it had been taking out by the point of the knife. He hadn’t even been lucky enough to break the knife point off when it hit bone.
Gabriel had been nice enough to call me. Of course, he had yelled at me for most of it. I wasn’t following directions and blah blah blah. He stopped when I mentioned the tattoo and my reasoning of not putting Rachael up against a psychopath her first time out. He’d mumbled something about the talk we needed to have and hung up.
After that, I had changed into the warmest clothes I owned, which wasn’t saying much since I hadn’t replaced most of my lost wardrobe in the previous months, and been dropped off at ten pm to see if I could catch a serial killer putting out a pile of bones. I hated the cold and it wasn’t exactly the warmest March on record for Missouri. There was still snow mounds in places.
Since arriving, I had seen a man walking his dog and not carrying anything that would allow him to have a bones with him and a group of young thugs looking for a place to get high. They had moved quickly out of the park once I jumped up from my hiding place. I was not the type of person you wanted to meet on a dark street or in a dark park.
There was noise coming towards me. I held my breath and waited. After about a minute, a woman in jogging clothes with earbuds in and music so loud I could hear it went past me. I stared at her back until it disappeared.
“We should hand out T-Shirts to people that say ‘Volunteer Victim!’,” I said into my comm unit. “Some woman is jogging at three in the morning, in a park where bodies are routinely found, and her music was so loud, she wouldn’t have heard me even if I had shouted at her.”
“Maybe she’s a psychopath who can take care of herself,” Fiona offered.
“Doubtful,” Caleb answered. “I’ve had a couple of joggers over here too. I think they just ignore the danger with the mindset, it won’t happen to me.”
“I wouldn’t be out here jogging,” Xavier answered. He was teamed up with Rachael. I ignored the fact that they were probably discussing me. If I thought about it, I’d become paranoid. Paranoia was one of those things sociopaths were prone to experience without provocation. It was also something I tried to tamp down, much like my vanity and narcissism. Sometimes, I failed miserably.
Truth was, I was cranky because it was March and I was outdoors. My body didn’t like the cold. It was one of the few things I couldn’t ignore. I was fine in 100 degree weather, but anything below fifty and my body started to conserve energy by starving essential muscles of blood and oxygen. Once, a doctor had explained to me that if I kept my lifestyle, I was going to have trouble with achy joints and damaged nerves. I had tried to listen, but even when I wasn’t out looking for serial killers, they stumbled upon me. The cold was just the first symptom of many that had yet to manifest. If I kept it up, I’d be doing good to move my legs by the time was thirty-five. The scar tissue was now building on top of other scar tissue. Xavier and Caleb were both interested in trying a radical procedure to remove the layers of damaged flesh, but I wasn’t convinced to allow them to play Frankenstein with me as their monster.
In a few years, if we were all still alive, I might change my mind though. I could only pop so many multivitamins and do so much exercise to keep mobile. I thought about the stab wound. It hadn’t been bad, just an inch or so long. A handful of stitches had closed it up. The problem was that it was on top of other scar tissue. I’d been stabbed there before by a much larger blade. As the smaller stab wound healed, it would raise the skin there, make it stick out even further. Eventually, it would impede my hip movement if I didn’t watch it.
The chatter had stopped. My mind had latched onto my scars as a way to ignore my inner voice. All sociopaths and psychopaths should not be left alone in their own head for very long. Introspection was bad for us. Our egos inflated easily and our narcissism could get away from us because most of us thought we walked on water. The fact that I wasn’t dead seemed to confirm some aspect of this, which is why I was trying to think about other things.
Then again, I had been stabbed earlier in the day. I definitely was not as good as I thought I was. That was obvious by the sheer amount of injuries I had sustained over the years. If I was a little faster, a little more graceful, a little more intuitive, I might not have to consider Xavier and his mad scientist ideas to remove scar tissue. I wouldn’t have this problem. The thought was humbling, to a degree.
Another jogger ran past me, this time a male who looked like a stray cat could take him down. There was nothing exceptional about him. He didn’t have the contained violence that I saw in Malachi or Caleb. Or the raw rage that I saw in many serial killers. Once again, prey had jogged past me, listening to music, and not nearly alert enough to be out at this time of the morning.
In the pre-dawn hours, I counted seventeen joggers. Not a single one of them seemed to have the skills necessary to be out in the dark. Caleb was right, everyone still had the I can’t happen to me mentality. Sadly, they were wrong. We’d reached the point where one in four people had some sort of run in with a serial criminal of the violent kind. That meant at least four of the joggers I had seen would be the victim of a violent crime at some point in their lives. It was just a matter of what type of violent crime.
We dealt with killers, but there were more than just serial killers and mass murderers in the world. Serial rapists, pedophiles, and torturers were just as common. There were times I felt I was living in the Purge movies, but without the time constraints.
I’d also been introduced to the other side of violent crime; mobsters. Mobsters, drug cartels, and gangsters weren’t my area, not really. It wasn’t until they became consistently violent that I could legally do anything about them. However, I had won some points with Interpol for catching the serial killer known as Bec or the Russian Demon. As a bonus, he’d brought along both his brothers and all three were now in custody. I had grown up in the era of civilized mobs or at least, that was the facade. Now, they used serial killers to do their work for them when they needed someone dead. The difference wasn’t that they were more or less civilized than they had been nearly thirty years earlier. It was that the people they employed were more willing to step out of the shadows and use their serial killing hobbies as perks on their resumes. Contract killers had always been a specific breed of serial killer. However, men like Bec were serial killers before they became contract killers.
The sun rose and I got out of my position in the bushes. I’d been less than ten feet from every person that had gone by and no one had noticed me. Either I was well camouflaged or people were very unobservant. My money was on unobservant. Someone should have at least stopped to see if I was dead or injured.
“I don’t suppose anyone saw anyone dumping a skeleton?” I asked as I stretched.
“Not here,” Xavier answered.
“Or here,” Fiona answered.
“Give me a moment,” Caleb sounded concerned. I immediately started towards my car. He was about three miles from me in another park. I could be there in maybe two, if I ran towards my vehicle. I did, sprinting the distance from my spot in the park to entrance gate. I stopped dead in my tracks. Caleb was in the parking lot, he was staring at my car.
My car is not unnoticeable. It is a 1969 Dodge Charger painted black with Dodge Orange racing stripes. It made more noise than some small jets and had the power to win just about any race. My father, Eric, and I had built it before their lives and mine went their separate ways.
“Did you run?” Caleb asked, not looking at me.
“I was concerned,” I answered slowing down and walking towards him.
“Stop, Ace,” he held up his hand. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“Why are you here and what are you looking at?” I asked him.
“Just wait there,” he told me again. I stopped and glared at him. “Glaring will not help.”
“At least tell me why you’re here,” I snipped at him.
“I decided to walk to your location instead of having you pick me up.” Caleb pulled out his phone and began to aim it at my car. I couldn’t see the side he was filming. I started walking towards him. “Are you having issues with the statement that you need to stay there?” He finally looked up at me. The corners of his mouth were turned down. His forehead was wrinkled. Creases at the corners of his eyes stretched his cheeks away from his frowning mouth making them seem thin.
“I take it there’s a dead person next to my car,” I told him.
“Yes, there is,” he nodded twice.
“Why am I standing over here?” I asked.
“Because you know them,” he answered. “You are not going to be happy and you’re armed.”
“Headed that way,” my comm came alive as both Fiona and Xavier attempted to talk to me.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Ace, you need to go sit down and wait for back up.” Caleb began walking towards me.
“Who is it?” I enunciated each word. My family was all in Witness Protection and Australia, that didn’t leave very many people in my inner circle.
Caleb shook his head, as his hand grabbed me. He held me very firmly and when I tried to jerk away, he cocooned me, making sure to pin my arms against me. I kicked him, but he didn’t let go, he didn’t even gasp. He was in off mode, impervious to my attempts to inflict damage to get away. A squad car with flashing lights showed up at the exact same moment that Xavier and Rachael pulled into the parking lot. Caleb kept me in his arms as Xavier walked around my car. His face paled.
“Who the fuck is it!” I shouted at him. Xavier gave me a look and then dropped my gaze.