Page 34 of So Hollow

She took a deep breath and drank the entire glass of wine in one gulp. The headrush and the slight wave of nausea that followed dulled her anger and allowed her to think.

Killing the clerk wasn’t a mistake. In fact, it was a stroke of genius. It was garish and shocking. She needed to be both to get Faith Bold’s attention.

The mistake was stealing the tv and the cash. She could avoid the first mistake by finding something other than TVs to break. Maybe she could get a punching bag and just hit that whenever she was enraged. As for the cash…

She sighed and poured more wine. “God damn it.”

She really didn’t want to get a job. It wasn’t the idea of work that bothered her. She wasn’t lazy. But if she worked, then she would have less time to focus on breaking Faith Bold and finishing what West and Trammell couldn’t. And she would have to find a way to keep her anger under control. She wasn’t sure if she could. After all, losing her cool at work was what had landed her in the mental hospital anyway.

But West had pulled her out. He had shown her that there was a way to satisfy her violent urges without going haywire and getting herself in trouble. He was every bit as violent as she was. He loved the feeling of blood spurting from his victims, loved the sound of their terrified screams, loved the godlike power that came from taking one of these pathetic, irritating little fucking animals and showing them in their last moments how utterly worthless they were as anything more than a toy for his amusement.

She loved thinking of West’s piercing blue eyes gazing down at the helpless animal he’d captured. She loved thinking of her own knife joining his as they tore that animal apart. She loved imagining the taste of that blood on their lips as they kissed.

She moaned softly and flinched. “None of that right now,” she said, downing her latest glass of wine. “Work now, play later.”

She had to get a job. She could work mornings at a retail store. Maybe a coffee shop.

No, bad idea. If she had to see cranky people face to face first thing in the morning, she would end up in a mental institution again within a week. She would get a job with customer service. If she didn’t have to see the bitches screaming at her, she could squeeze a stress ball to death and keep her perky voice and smile.

And she would remind herself that it was all for a reason. It was all for a purpose. She could be patient. She could take her time and make sure that the next time she called to Faith Bold, that whore would have no choice but to pay attention.

She poured herself another glass of wine, closed her eyes and sipped. She imagined West’s lips pressed against hers and pretended the wine was blood.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Faith leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Her second cup of coffee sat empty on the desk next to her. Michael’s fourth had been finished hours ago, but he’d refused to drink more lest his heart give out. At his age, heart problems from excess caffeine and lack of sleep were a legitimate concern.

Yes, because he’s so much older than you.

Michael was forty-one, and Faith was thirty-four. Younger, but hardly young.

Her thoughts were wandering. She stood and poured herself a third cup of coffee from the fresh pot on the counter. “You want some more?” she asked Michael.

He shook his head. "No, thank you." Then, a second later, "What the hell. Sure, I'll take another. Wouldn't be the worst way to go."

Faith poured him a cup too and returned to the table. Turk slept peacefully in between their mattresses.

“Must be nice,” she grumbled.

“What?” Michael asked.

“To be a dog.”

“Ah. Yeah, it looks pretty damned sweet, I won’t lie.”

They had spent the night going over the new evidence they’d found and comparing it with what they knew already. The police were still analyzing the footprints, but the agents had ballparked that the killer would be between five-five and five-seven and between one hundred twenty and one hundred fifty pounds. The shoe prints weren’t clear enough to tell them if it was a woman or a man, so they still didn’t know that, but they had at least the beginning of a picture of the killer’s physical appearance.

Michael had gone a step further, theorizing that the killer had to be athletic because he had gone from a standstill to a sprintwithin a few strides, something that was difficult if you weren’t in peak physical condition.

But those height and weight ranges put the killer dead average for a woman and only slightly below average for men. The athleticism was above average, but not so much that they could limit their pool of suspects to, say, professional athletes.

Looking at the crime scene hadn’t yielded anything more useful than the footprints either. They seemed to disappear when they were off the path. Maybe because of the layer of leaf litter, or maybe because the shoes had no tread to make marks in the dirt. Whatever the reason, the footprints seemed to materialize on the path, then disappear when they left the path.

“We know the killer didn’t drive there,” Michael said out of nowhere.

Faith looked at him. “What’s that?”

“He didn’t drive there.” He straightened, excited to have finally found another thread to pull. “The footprints go in the same direction from arrival to departure. He comes out of the trees ten yards behind her, catches her, kills her, stages her, then continues the same direction before crossing back into the trees nine yards from the body.”

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