Page 53 of His Sinner

Thanks to his district attorney father, he managed to get several indiscretions buried, including a history of violating girls when he was a minor. A hidden file that was nearly impossible for Zayden to crack due to Trevor’s age at the time.

But Trevor didn’t stop after he became an adult. They rarely do.

He was fired from his last position at a police department in California for abusing his power with vulnerable women.

After our little run-in at the campus security office, I couldn’t shake off the hunch that there was more to Trevor that Briar didn’t know. April cemented my suspicions. He’s obviously attracted to Briar, though she’s entirely oblivious. And he wants her ten thousand miles away from me.

But there’s far more to him than I suspected. Much worse.

Perhaps this information will be enough to convince Briar that her so-called friend is a menace to society, specifically to women like her. Alone, vulnerable, desperate. The blueprint of the type of woman Trevor targets.

But maybe his past won’t be enough to convince her. I need proof of what Trevor is up to now.

He lives in an apartment, so he can’t be causing too much trouble when he has neighbors sharing a wall with him. Unless this is another Dahmer situation.

After a little jiggling with my lock pick in my stolen maintenance staff uniform, I gain entrance into Trevor’s cramped apartment. The space wouldn’t appear so small if he didn’t have so much shit. Like he attempted to move a full house of belongings into a one-bedroom apartment.

No stacks of stolen case files or murder boards on the walls. Not much of a detective then. In the bathroom, short hairs dust the sink and rest in the garbage can after he cut his hair and trimmed his beard.

The messy apartment becomes far more interesting when I find his bedroom. Crumpled up bed sheets, a bedside table littered with used tissues and an uncapped bottle of lube, dirty clothes strewn across the floor, tattered curtain drawn over the lone window. In the corner is a rickety desk with a laptop, brand new and entirely out of place. His most prized possession. Jackpot.

I know exactly what I’ll find but still dread looking. What sort of pictures of Briar has he taken? What obscene photos and videos has he edited to replace them with her image?

He hasn’t set up a new passcode on his laptop yet. All of his files are at my fingertips.

What I’m looking for isn’t difficult to find—multiple folders filled with porn, which he surely cycles through every time he jerks off. But a disturbing pattern quickly emerges.

All of the women in the videos and pictures he’s saved have dark brown hair and blue eyes.

Just like my muse.

I click out of the porn folders. There must be something more. His obsession with her can’t end here.

That’s when I find it. A folder called Her.

Throat constricting, I open it.

Images of a brunette flood the screen. All of them taken surveillance style when she clearly had no idea she was being photographed.

None of the backgrounds are familiar. None of them were snapped on the Auburn campus, outside Briar’s house, or in town.

These photos were taken in a major city, dozens of other people around her at any given time. She’s trying to blend into the crowd but watching over her shoulder. Aware that someone is out there looking for her.

The images are too blurry and distant to identify the woman, but I’m certain she isn’t Briar.

Whoever she is, this is the woman who has captivated Trevor’s mind. Briar just so happens to be the unlucky woman with the same shade of mahogany brown hair.

A few clicks through the metadata on the recent photos tell me he hasn’t photographed this woman in two years.

My heart slams against my ribcage hard enough to bruise. Trevor did something to this woman.

And he intends to do the same to my muse.

At Briar’s house, I pound on the front door to give her a chance to answer and pretend we’re a normal, civilized couple before I resort to breaking in through a window.

She takes her time coming to the door, not at all hurried on by my booming, frantic knocks.

Her hair is unbrushed, untamed like her spirit. She’s wearing her usual glower, but there’s something different in her eyes this time. An animosity I don’t recognize, even from our early days before she learned my true intentions.

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