“I’ll give you a tour. And then you’ll stay.”

I place my hand in Jack’s and he leads me past the dining room, down the hallway where he took the call. There’s a bathroom and laundry on the right, an office and a home gym on the left with weights and a Peloton and treadmill.

“Use it whenever you want,” Jack says when I turn a slow circle in the center of the room.

“I run with Cornetto. At the river.”

Jack lifts a shoulder as though this is not new information.

I sigh. He seems to enjoy my faint frown. “You’ll be joining us, I suppose.”

Jack’s silence is all the confirmation I need, and he switches off the light before I can savor the glint of amusement in his eyes.

Next, Jack leads me back down the hall into the kitchen, depositing me there to retrieve the bottle of Tequila from the conservatory. He pours a generous shot into the metal stemless glass I left on the countertop with a pointed, admonishing look that makes me grin. When his Scotch is refilled, Jack leads the way across the house to the stairs.

On the second level is a large bathroom with dark gray tiles and an extra wide shower, another vase of blue flowers on the counter between the double sinks, lilies this time. There are two guest bedrooms which Jack barely stops at and have probably never seen visitors. And then the main bedroom with an ensuite, the room simple and tasteful, the decor nondescript.

I drift forward to one of the windows overlooking the backyard and the peaked roof of the conservatory.

When I turn to face him, Jack is standing at the entrance, the bed looming like a fortress between us. He studies me as he leans against the doorframe and takes a sip of his drink. His other hand is deep in his pockets, turning something with a methodical rhythm. His lighter. I miss the weight of it in my palm, the metallic flick of the lid.

“Which room is mine?” I ask, nodding toward the corridor.

“This one.”

“Then which one is yours?”

“Also this one.”

“I can stay in one of your guest rooms,” I say, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

Jack’s eyes darken. “No. You will not.”

“I don’t want to be an inconvenience.”

“You’re really going to take away my excuse to redden your ass?”

“I’m sure you’ll find another.”

We exchange false smiles that mask desire. I try not to look at the bed, hiding my emotions behind a long sip of Tequila. Even still, I can’t resist the urge to chew my lower lip in the silence that draws out between us.

“The dolls are in the attic,” Jack says. “Want to see?”

“I’ll take a pass. Show me something else. Something you’ve never shown anyone.”

The levity dissipates from Jack’s eyes.

He seems to know I really won’t stay unless he takes me where I want to go. And if this were a game, it would be mine to win. Jack might have torn down my defenses tonight, but he’s the one who must give up something he covets. He must make a choice: risk his darkest secrets...

…or risk me.

I follow every movement Jack makes, no matter how miniscule. The way he looks down into his Scotch, his blink a fraction longer than typical. The twitch of the muscle in his jaw when he presses his molars together. The shift in the column of his neck as he swallows.

Jack takes another sip of his drink and lets go of the lighter before extending his hand.

“Come on. I’ll show you what you want to see.”

When I walk around the bed and lay my palm in his, he doesn’t move from the door, pulling me closer instead. His gaze scours my face like crystals of ice and my smile unfurls, a defiant bloom beneath the snow.

“One day, lille mejer, I will stop underestimating your ability to turn anything to your favor.”

I stretch on my toes, coaxing Jack closer so I can whisper a devious grin against his skin. “I certainly hope not, Dr. Sorensen. That would really inhibit my fun.”

Our eyes lock, even though we’re so close that Jack’s features are unfocused. My lips draw across his stubble as I pull away. Not a kiss, but an enticement. A promise. Maybe a reward. I press my fingers a little tighter around his hand, and with a final, thoughtful frown, Jack leads the way downstairs.

We end up back in his office, where he stops at one of the three bookcases that line the walls. Jack bends and presses his finger beneath the lowest shelf, waiting until a quiet beep confirms his touch. The bookcase unlatches and swings back from the wall, revealing a narrow wine cellar, the diamond-shaped shelves stocked with bottles.

“Are you going to add me to your biometrics?” I ask as Jack continues to the end of the room, finding another sensor hidden beneath the frame of a cubby hole on the far wall. Another soft digital chime, another shelf swinging open to reveal a hidden door. “I feel like I should have access to the wine supply at least.”

“Knowing you, you’ll find your way in without my permission,” Jack replies as he unlocks the iron door.

“I can’t help but note that’s not truly a response to my question, Dr. Sorensen.”

He only casts me a brief smile before flicking on a light switch and gesturing for me to step inside.

Jack’s trophy room is the first one in the house where I get a true sense of him. Even the conservatory is more like a window, one that only lets me peer into his thoughts of me. But the trophy room, that’s like throwing open the door to his soul.

The room is long and narrow, an older couch lining one wall, its worn upholstery covered with throws and mismatched pillows that are somehow still harmonious. Aside from the flowers, it’s the first time I’ve noticed any color and pattern in the house, though the tones are still dark and jeweled. Opposite the couch and the end tables that bracket it is a table and bookshelf that houses annotated texts and a row of binders. At the end of the room is a small storage shelving area and next to it a locked steel door, the cold radiant from its unforgiving surface.

And everywhere on the walls, Jack’s art.

Pencil. Charcoal. Sketches of flesh peeled back from bones, the style clinical yet evocative. Some are femurs, each one a unique study of particular features. The shine of the smooth patellar surface. Tiny striations on the intertrochanteric line near the neck of the bone. Others are clavicles, or mandibles, or fibulae. But most abundant are hyoids. Beautiful and delicate, rendered at different angles. The shallow concavities on the body. The lesser horns that link the floating bone to the stylohyoid muscle. And next to the sketches are the bones themselves, preserved in locked glass cases.

I take time to look at many of them, comparing the similarities and differences between the sketches and the bones. Sometimes, the drawings are faithful representations. In other sketches, it seems like Jack was drawing from a different model. “You draw them before you kill them, don’t you. That’s why they’re not always alike,” I say as I lean closer to examine one bone and sketch pairing that are markedly mismatched.

“Yes,” Jack says as he stops by my side. He tilts his drink toward the case, the ice within clinking against the metal. “I was surprised to be so far off with that one.”

“Not more surprised than the man you took it from, I’m sure,” I say with a grin before turning away.

I make my way to the steel door, taking time to appreciate Jack’s art and trophies with every step. I spot one sketch taped to the wall that’s not like the others and recognize the setting immediately. It’s my condo where we killed Sebastian. In the image, I’m asleep on the couch, which did happen after we spent time cleaning and Jack went to retrieve his vehicle from a parking garage near the club so he could drive the body across state lines. In Jack’s rendering, however, I’m not wearing any clothes, though I know I had changed to sweats and a tank top before resting as I waited for him to return and pick up Sebastian. I remember waking to find Jack already back in my living room, watching me with a dark, unreadable look that I thought had more to do with the cold body on the floor between us than with me.