“You didn’t contaminate the scene.”
The way he says this, so assuredly, drives a sliver of apprehension beneath my ribs.
“But your allegations of me?” He takes a determined step forward. “Revenge is a weak motive. I could’ve walked out of Briar any time I wanted. Dr. Torres wouldn’t have been difficult to manipulate to that end. My very expensive lawyer could’ve appealed. Hell, I have enough money and connections to have you fired from every future position—”
“That’s not how your twisted mind works—”
“I stayed there because of you. I waited patiently for you.”
“So you could fuck me, or fuck me over? Or maybe fucking me was just the icing on your payback cake.”
His hand fists at his side. “I love fucking you, Halen. I’ll fuck you ten different dirty, demeaning ways right now that will make you scream my name and plead to let you come. But sex doesn’t start with the act itself.” He takes another deliberate step toward me. “It’s heated glances and charged near touches. It’s cruel words and fiery tempers. It’s instant chemical attraction across a quad when you make that first real connection, when you feel the center of gravity shift…and you know nothing will ever be the same again.”
I swallow past the burning ache in my throat, my breath too ragged to voice any denial.
Kallum stops, keeping a safe distance between us. “We’ve been making love since day one.”
I hate the way my body reacts to his claim, the way my blood burns my veins, my bones ache as if I’m fighting an unrelenting current pulling me toward him.
“So don’t cheapen what I’ve sacrificed to prove myself to you, to keep you safe,” he says, his tone a solemn affirmation. “If you think I suffered six months in a mental institution for a piece of ass, then you’re the one who needs her head examined.”
I hold his intense gaze through the downpour. Racked with shivers, my lips numb and the weight of his words crushing me, I struggle to drag in a full breath.
“I want you,” he says, as relentless as the storm. “All of you. Your sexy as fuck body that drives me right out of my goddamn senses. Your intellectual mind, rational and logical to a frightening degree, but so fucking brilliant everyone else around you pales miserably by comparison. Your beautifully broken soul, so immersed in anguish it chokes me—” he swallows hard “—but I relish the pain. I’m begging for it, because the sweetest taste of you soothes the burn, and it’s fucking euphoric.”
He takes a final step, yet still leaves too many between us.
“And you can deny that you feel the same,” he says, his voice gravel, “but I don’t need a lame verbal profession. Because I can feel you, Halen. I can feel what you try to hide. I felt it deep inside you, buried under your skin, drowning in your emotions with such sweet pain, I wanted to carve my own fucking heart out.”
I’m trembling, shaking so fiercely my muscles are fire. The storm builds, the rain hammering down, unyielding, heightening my emotions until the dam threatens to crack.
The only thing separating me from him is the rain.
“Come here.”
Those two simple words commanded by Kallum do something dangerous to me. Every bruise and scrape and injury on my body comes alive, vibrating with a frenzied current.
Goddamn him. I wipe the rain from my face as I take measured steps to reach him, stopping once I’m close enough to feel the rain ricochet off his chest.
Kallum’s gaze stays on me as he tears the soaked bandages from his hands and tosses them to the ground. He then removes his suit jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. I shiver at the sudden embrace of his body heat, the way his fingers trace the back of my neck as he lifts my hair away from the collar. With one expert move, he snaps the hair band, bringing my drenched strands over my shoulders.
Before I can escape him, he has my face trapped between his palms. He tilts my gaze up, mercifully blocking the rain as he towers over me. The cuts on his palms are friction against my skin. The clashing blue and green of his heated gaze lures me in, and my traitorous heart riots in my chest to expose the effect he has on me.
“I love you in my jacket,” he says, a sly smile curling his mouth.
A memory of us in the university parking lot triggers with sudden fury. His jacket around me, the lampposts glowing behind him. A false memory, I correct myself, blinking the vision back into my subconscious. It’s the memory he planted during the ritual. It can’t be real—but even as I enforce this belief, I sense my conviction to trust my own mind crumbling beneath the feel of Kallum rubbing my arms to warm me.
When two different beliefs battle for dominance, cognitive dissonance is the resulting mental discomfort. Right now, I’m not mentally strong enough to hold two versions of Kallum: the one who I know is capable of atrocities, and the one sheltering me from the storm.
“I can’t do this, Kallum.” I turn my head, breaking away from his touch.
As if he knows I’m dangerously close to snapping, he drops his hands, sinks them into his pockets.
“Look. Just… Before you go in for questioning, I need you to think, Halen.” The urgent demand in his tone keeps me rooted. “You’re so obsessed with proving I’m your killer, it’s blinded you to one critical aspect.”
I pull his jacket tighter around me. “Are you going to make me play twenty questions to guess it?”
A lopsided smile breaks across his face, that fucking dimple squeezing my heart. “You told Alister there was only one difference between the Harbinger crime scenes, but there’s another. What is the other difference between them?”
“The letter,” I say instinctively. “The Harbinger never addressed his messages to anyone. But that’s not a deviation in method; that’s proof he’s devolving.” As I say this, the apprehension that I could be staring into the eyes of a devolving serial killer rears inside me.
Tentatively, Kallum removes his hand from his pocket and swipes his thumb across my cheek. The cool sensation of his ring sparks an ember beneath my skin. “We weren’t alone at the ritual site.”
Unease crawls along my spine. “I know. Landry was there. Right before he attacked us.”
“And someone else,” he says, his words dredging up the ominous feeling of eyes watching from the eerie darkness of the killing fields. “The person who injected Landry with hemlock.”
A hard shiver cloaks my body. With how fast-acting the poison was, they would’ve had to have been nearby to administer it—and to watch and make sure their plan worked.
“They know, Halen,” Kallum says, reading my anxiety. “About the Cambridge scene. What happened that night with Wellington. They heard everything we said out there.”
Panic is a vise crushing my rib cage. My heart constricts under the pressure.
“If for one second you remove me as your suspect,” he continues, “then who’s the person who could’ve staged the victims’ tongues and the Harbinger scene at the same time.”
I hold up a hand and move back, giving myself space to think. I mentally walk through the crime scene, retracing each step anew.
The impossible window of time is no longer impossible if that person staged both scenes. I was so focused on placing Kallum there, I overlooked the most obvious and logical explanation.
“The Overman,” I say aloud, lost in my racing thoughts.
Suddenly, the Harbinger’s letter has a very disturbing, ulterior message.
I see you. I have uncovered you.
“The letter was calling me out,” I say. “He sees me, has uncovered a secret that could hurt me.” Through the rain, I find Kallum’s eyes, gauging him closely.
After everything he just confessed… God, if he’s ultimately behind this, then he’s playing on a whole other twisted level.
When I first read the letter, I imagined Kallum had penned it; a threat to kill the victims.
