Page 11 of Falling for a Killer

I can seeA Tale of Two Citiesby Charles Dickens resting on a laptop next to his bag, piquing my curiosity. “Do you need anything else?”

Killian looks at me like he’s confused. “Are you... offering?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t really know how because I can’t leave and we can’t have anything shipped here, but... never mind. I promise that wasn’t a ploy to get to leave but I hear how it sounds that way.” My cheeks flush and I wish more than anything I could sink into the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry about. I was just surprised you’d offer me anything at all after I trapped you here. At the moment, I have more than I expected to have. I thought I was going to live off canned food and beef jerky and instead I have a beautiful woman making me french toast in the mornings. Thanks for the offer, but I’m good. Do you need anything?”

For him to understand that the food I bought won’t last forever. We’ve got a week tops. I bought enough for longer than that, but only for me — and with the way he eats, a week might be generous. At some point, he’ll have to trust me enough to let me leave or he’ll have to go himself. “I’m okay.”

I was silent too long for that to be my only response because he sits up straighter and eyes me. “I know you came here wanting to be alone, and I’m sorry I fucked that up, but I still have nowhere else to go. You don’t have to pretend you’re okay with all this, though. I can take it if you want to tell me off.”

Part of me would like that very much, but where would it get us? Nowhere. “I don’t want to tell you off. I get it, okay? We’re all running from something and my parents would be the first to offer this place to you if you’d asked. I don’t care that you’re here. I just don’t know what we’re gonna do when we run out of toothpaste or toilet paper or meat.”

“Your dad seemed to prepare for the toothpaste and toilet paper shortage because you’re stocked downstairs. The meat and produce is another issue though, especially if you’re going to keep spoiling us with those meals. The nearest store is about twenty miles away, and based on my research, it’s a pretty sleepy little town. Hopefully by the time we need that stuff you’ll already be in love with me and won’t want to run.”

He smiles at me teasingly, but there’s an undertone of seriousness he can’t laugh away. Even if the world turned upside down and I did fall in love with him, how would he ever believe it? I wouldn’t. Not with what I’ve been through. “I already told you I don’t want to run.”

His eyes suddenly snap to the tv droning on across from him, and my gaze follows. There it is again — the grainy shot of the man who killed the senator.

Suddenly he isn’t smiling anymore. His body goes rigid as he watches them lay out the evidence they’ve found so far, and he doesn’t relax until they say they need help finding suspects.

The face mask they found at a bus station had no traces of who the perpetrator was.

The coke bottle they believed belonged to the shooter somehow had the victim’s fingerprints on it, and the note they found underneath the body gave no tips as to who may have pulled the trigger. They show it hoping someone out there may recognize the handwriting, but when they do, I see something flash across Killian’s face that practically confirms my suspicions. Satisfaction.

All the note says is “KARMA” in bold, neat letters, which isn’t something new to him. Didn’t he say I was his karma?

“You did it, didn’t you,” I say softly. “You’re the one they’re looking for.”

Those identical blue eyes we just saw on screen snap to mine, a thick silence settling between us as we both hold our breath and wait for the other to freak out.

But it doesn’t happen. And his silence speaks volumes.

“How would you feel if I was?”

“Honestly?” I ask, giving myself a second to breathe. This is it. If I say the wrong thing, his good nature might come to an end. At least I don’t have to lie. “I don’t know what he did to you, but in my experience, there’s no such thing as a good politician.”

Those full lips part a little like he’s surprised, but it’s the relief I see on his face that has my attention. Maybe relief isn’t the right word... hope? Is that hope I see?

“Yeah,” he says, his voice cracking on the word. “It seems we share the same experience.”

“So if you did kill him, I’d probably offer to bake you a cake. It’s nice when the people who think they own the world get reminded that they don’t.” It’s true, and I wish I had the balls to do something so bold. “Politicians and most rich people are so out of touch with normal citizens that they don’t even realize how bad they screw us over every day. Or maybe they do know and they just don’t care, which is worse.“ I might have money, but I work for it, and not even I’m in a high enough tax bracket to be treated well by the government. And just being a woman is enough to tell me they don’t care about me.

“They don’t care because we aren’t people to them, not really. If they humanized us they’d have to feel for us, and that will never happen. Not unless more people show them they bleed just the same as us.”

He hasn’t outright admitted it yet, and for some reason, I need him to. “So you killed him.”

Killian chews his lip silently for a second and then nods once, allowing me a few moments to accept what he admitted before he says anything out loud. “What kind of cake?”

Holy shit.

He really did it.

“Um... it might be boring, but I make a mean chocolate cake.”

“My favorite.” The way he looks when his body fully relaxes is criminal. The flirty smile he offers me sends a shiver down my spine — this man is a killer in more ways than one.

Funny given his name.

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