“I guess I break all your expectations then, don’t I, Dr. Sorensen?” I reply with a bright smile.

With Mason’s limbs pushed down into the silt, I grab the shovel and start dismantling the pile of dirt I’ve set aside to cover them over. Jack observes me, calculating, weighing, maybe butting his big brain against every wall in the maze I’m creating between us. But he doesn’t move. He doesn’t come closer. Not even when I tip a little in the awkward waders and have to right myself by plunging the shovel down into the bodily remains with a surprised squeak. When I turn around, he’s right where I left him, and I know my confidence in his obedience unnerves him just as much as anything else he’s seen or heard tonight.

When I’m done, I use the shovel as a cane to slurp my way out of the thick, heavy mud, then I toss it next to the bag.

“What do you want?” Jack asks.

I could close my eyes and bask in the honeyed need that drips in my chest when I imagine a thousand possibilities of how I could answer. The richness of his voice wraps around me. The smoothness of his every word has a sharp and hidden edge, one I want to run my finger across, to see if it will really make me bleed.

We stand and regard one another, the creek trickling behind me. A barred owl calls far in the distance. The windless night carries the sound.

I draw closer to Jack, my eyes never leaving his, though I sense him tensing in the periphery. I stop when I’m close enough to touch him, letting my hands slip into my jacket pockets in a show of trust. In the dim light, I see him raise a dark brow, a soundless question. What do you want? he soundlessly repeats.

“I want you to tell me about the first time we met,” I say.

There’s a flicker of movement in Jack’s brows, a stutter in the cadence of his blink. He glances away to the dark water and back again, his full lips set in a straight line. If there was more light, I’d be able to see the changes in those gray eyes that pick up the colors of his surroundings like camouflage.

He looks away again, his expression smoothed out once more but distant. “Angélique Noire perfume. That’s the first thing I remember.”

“I didn’t take you for a perfume guy,” I say with a smile.

Jack glances at me before returning his gaze to the creek. “I turned and you were at the door to the old lab with Dr. Cannon. You wore a deep purple dress. Your hair was up. Your perfume carried into the room.”

My smile fades as Jack’s eyes find mine and don’t let go. I nod for him to continue and he takes a step closer. I let him.

“You came into the room with your hand extended. Dr. Cannon introduced you as Dr. Roth, but I already knew who you were,” Jack says. My heart thuds faster in my chest. A long neglected hope stirs beneath my sternum, and I tip my head to the side in a question. “He’d sent a departmental message with your photo that morning. But it didn’t look like you, not when you were standing before me with a smile that could consume every sin.”

My heart detours as though it’s been stitched to a pendulum. I want to step back from Jack, but I don’t.

“I’d asked if your first name was pronounced keer-ee-yay, like the prayer, Kyrie eleison. I didn’t think your smile could get brighter, but when I said that, it did. ‘Keer-ee is fine,’ you replied. ‘My parents wanted me to have Christ’s name, but it never really fit’. I suppose that makes a lot more sense now.”

I try not to nod, but a faint bob of my head escapes my control. Something thickens in my throat. I remember that moment of our meeting so clearly that it’s like watching it through a polished crystal ball. For a fleeting breath of time, it had felt like everything fit together, like our first conversation was exactly as I’d hoped for. A recognition of likeness. A connection with someone like me. The way Jack tells this story, it feels like that connection was real, like it existed for him too.

But that’s a lie.

Jack is just trying to bridge the gulf between us now in the hope that I’ll have mercy on him. Everything that came after the conversation he’s just described has buried that possibility beneath the thick sediment of time.

And he knows it. That’s why Jack is silent now.

His eyes glint in the moonlight as they take in the curves and angles of my face, dropping to my lips. They linger there before resting on my neck for a moment that seems too calculating to be intimate, too cold to be anything but cruel. And cruel is exactly what he was from that pivotal moment onward. Questioning my experience, my merit, my worthiness at every turn. No matter how hard I worked or how much my efforts benefited him, he was always there with those steel gray eyes to watch for a mistake and then slice me down.

“It’s quite a pretty story the way you tell it,” I say, my voice barely more than a whisper. I take a step closer and his gaze slides back to mine. His face is a perfect balance of silver light and deep shadows, so hauntingly, achingly beautiful. But he is a beast. He’s feral beneath this angelic façade.

And he still can’t seem to accept that he’s not the only apex predator here.

“The only problem is, Jack…you’re wrong,” I say, striking out with the last word.

I hit Jack’s chest with a Taser. He lets out a strangled, gritty groan and drops to the dirt. His body convulses in distress as I uncap a syringe with my other hand. When I kill the shock of the device, I drive the needle into his jugular and deliver the pre-filled dose of midazolam to the delicious sound of his protesting moan.

I pull Jack into the recovery position and watch for just a moment as his breathing deepens. His eyes don’t leave mine, not even as their sharpness dims and dulls beneath the pull of the sedative.

I’ve been waiting for this moment, this look between us when Jack realizes he’s gotten me wrong all this time. I’ve wanted it since the time he berated me for the notorious CRYO freezer incident in the lab, when he accused me of destroying his tissue samples through sheer ineptitude. It was the first time I truly accepted that I might have to put my little beast down.

Who’s inept now, you fucker.

Just before he falls unconscious, I lean in close. I press a gentle kiss to his cheek. And then I bring my lips to his ear, giving him a gift he might not remember when he wakes.

“You’re wrong, Jack,” I repeat in a whisper, a wraith to follow him into a dreamless sleep. “That wasn’t the first time we met.”

When I pull away, he’s unconscious.

I rise to stand over my sleeping nemesis, and then I leave him in the dark…

…right where he’s always been.

OceanofPDF.com

FOUR

OceanofPDF.com

CORE

OceanofPDF.com

JACK

A crisp, gauzy layer of fresh snow collects on top of my body. My breathing has shallowed, my lungs no longer feel the sharp bite of winter. My arms and legs have gone numb, my skin frozen and nerves dulled, unable to send pain signals to my brain.

I lay here in the freezing night as a continual hush falls over the woods with thick snowflakes.

Fatigue settles deep in my bones with the frozen ground, dragging me beneath consciousness. It’s tempting to let go, to just keep falling under. I’ve never felt more at peace then I am now, wrapped in a blanket of ice, sheltered from the world of misery.

The sound of snow crunching beneath heavy footfalls splits the empty silence, and I stop breathing altogether.

The steps encroach closer until I feel the snow shift against my cheek.

“Where are you, you little shit.”