CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
JACK
“WEAR SOMETHING PRETTY,” HE SAID on a snort. But he found himself changing his jeans and finding a clean blue tee that not only clung to his body in a way that pleased him, but showed off the brightness of his blue eyes.
There was heat in his cheeks and also his crotch. The only other thing that did that for him was hunting. Or hearing someone’s pleading screams from the basement or his property.
It had been a while. As far as sex, it had been forever. Prom night. A mere decade and a half ago.
He knew he was an anomaly when it came to sex, but he was also an anomaly when it came to killing. He was a firm believer you could only truly shine at one thing.
When she rapped on the door, his heart skittered in his chest.
Jack found it mildly annoying.
He opened the door and studied her beauty. She’d applied some makeup, but it was a bare minimum. Just enough to give a smoky rim to her eyes and a pale shine to her cheekbones and lips. That was it.
Not whoreish like other girls.
“Come on in. I have to get the steaks off the grill. They only had about two minutes left.”
She placed a finger to the very center of his chest, pressing. He felt the pressure in his penis.
“Nice shirt, Jack. Makes your eyes pop.”
In his mind, he saw his eyeball popping out of its socket and hoped that wasn’t a prediction.
“Thanks.” He stepped back, leaving her there in the foyer so he could get the meat.
She followed him. He could hear her moving with nearly silent steps in her Converse sneakers.
She was right behind him when he stepped outside. “Smells good.”
“Ribeyes. Hope that’s okay.”
“That is perfection.” She leaned against the side of the house and watched him. “Grill much?”
“Not as much as I should.”
“Entertain much?”
“Never. Not for real, anyway.”
She grinned at him. In on the joke. That was an odd sensation.
“Had sex once,” she said, as if recapping.
“Yep.”
“Never with your mother then?”
She kept an utterly straight face. That jaunty eyebrow cocked. Waiting for him to answer. Calmly or otherwise.
“Never. I’m sure plenty of people would think I had. Or wanted to. But I had no desire. Truthfully.”
He dropped the steaks on a plate, hung the lid on the side of the grill. It would take a while for those coals to cool down. Jack put the plate on the patio table. Waited.
“How about when you kill them. Do you get off on that? I mean physically.”
He stared her in the eye and she never flinched. She didn’t look away.
“Yes.”
She nodded. Her hands slid into her pockets. She looked both relaxed and alert. She reminded him of a predatory cat.
“And what about you?” he countered.
“I get revved up,” she said with a shrug. “And then I want to find someone to fuck.”
“But not them?”
She looked up as if recalling. “Once or twice I went there before doing my thing. But it was never as satisfying. It’s much better to make them suffer and then find someone else.”
“Are you ready to eat?” he asked.
“I am.”
He made an after-you gesture and she made it back.
“Don’t trust me?”
“Not yet. Maybe never.”
“Fair enough.”
As he passed her with the plate she asked, “Do you trust me?”
“Not at all,” he said.
She laughed.
Dinner was . . . weird. For lack of a better word.
They talked about nothing and everything. How long he’d lived there, why she’d moved, how he made his money, how she made hers. Some similarities there, he noted.
When they were stuffed and simply pushing the remainder of their food around on their plates she said, “How many?”
He knew what she meant but decided to play dumb.
“How many what?”
“Don’t fuck with me. You know exactly what I mean. And you know exactly how many. Of course you do.”
He speared a baby potato with his fork. “Fifteen,” he said.
“When did you start?”
“In earnest?”
“Just when did you start.”
“When I was twenty. A game of cat and mouse went too far. I always would date them and chase them. But nothing they could report. I’d asked them if they wanted to play tag or something after making them a nice dinner. A lot of them thought it was sweet. Unusual. You know women are always looking for an unusual date. That was me.”
“I bet.”
“I liked to hear them scream,” he said.
Something flickered across her face.
“And that one? When you were twenty?”
“She flipped out,” he said. “Started yelling that I was a lunatic. That she was going to report me to the police. Much like Callie, who you met the other night. Who, by the way, was not my fault.”
Meg gave him a nod.
Jack went on, “No matter how many times I told her it had just been a bad joke that had gone awry, she wouldn’t hear it. She said she was calling them. Said she’d ignored her instincts that something was off about me. And now she knew she wasn’t wrong.”
“And you?”
“Broke her neck.” He hesitated and then went on anyway. “She didn’t die right away. There was time to get her to scream a little more.”
“You’re being so honest.”
It didn’t matter, he realized. He could tell her everything because he was going to kill her anyway.