Page 49 of The Perfect Prey

Jessie noted that the detective had a joyful smile on her face.She was loving this.Unfortunately, Jessie couldn’t claim to feel the same way.Her primary sentiment right now was barely contained fury.She knew that wasn’t a productive emotion under the circumstances.

But knowing it didn’t make the feeling go away.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Michael Pearson tried not to let his enthusiasm get the better of him.

He was really concerned that his latest selection was going to make his life difficult.Claire Hoffman, an attorney with a prestigious Beverly Hills entertainment law firm, didn’t work normal hours.It was conceivable that she might have to work into the late evening on some legal issue.That would mess everything up, which was why he’d called in the bomb threat.

It had worked exactly as he’d hoped.After calling in the threat on his burner phone, he had ordered a muffin from a nearby bakery and just” happened” to be sitting on a bench outside the law firm’s offices when people began pouring out of the place.

They milled about, waiting to see what would happen next.It only took a few minutes for word to spread among the staff: out of an abundance of caution, and because it was already well into the afternoon, the executive team determined that everyone should just work from home for the rest of the day.

Upon hearing that, he’d returned to his car, which was parked across the street from the firm’s parking garage.He waited for Hoffman to exit the garage, then followed her.He could have gone straight to her place but worried that she might choose to work at some other location.Since this would be his one opportunity with her, he couldn’t make any assumptions.

They were getting close to her West Hollywood condo complex now, and he felt the giddiness return.He tried to stifle it, but it was hard.He’d gotten the same feeling with his other selections, and the rush had been addictive.His only regret was that after he completed his mission with Claire, he’d have to start all over in a new country.

Still, it had been worth it.He still recalled the moment when he’d decided to first take action.It was a long time coming.He’d been a member of Special Friends Events for over a year now and had high hopes that being a part of a club like this might finally change things for him.

He was tired of being ignored.All through high school, he’d been mocked because he was a “nerd.”Girls would only look at him to laugh.Same with the boys, who sometimes went further, bullying him if they got bored.

That wasn’t as much of an issue in college, where people like him could be found everywhere.But the problem was that by the time he got there, his high school experience had made him so awkward and uncertain that anyone he was interested in avoided him just because he made them uncomfortable.He was aware of the issue but couldn’t seem to change how he interacted with folks.

He was fine in academic settings, as long as the discussion was about coding or design or something similar.But once the conversation turned to anything social, he froze up, often saying the wrong thing, that is if he spoke at all.

By the time he graduated, he still hadn’t gone on a date, much less had sex.Opportunities for either became even more sparse in graduate school.He retreated into himself, focusing on the work and little else.Eventually, during his PhD program, he’d come up with the idea for PSS—Pearson Security Systems—and dropped out to focus on that exclusively.

When his mind was on the work, everything was great.But any time his thoughts weren’t consumed by it, he was overwhelmed with an intense loneliness that he didn’t know how to overcome.He thought about seeking therapy but worried about the stigma, especially as he was looking for buyers for PSS.

After he sold the company and fell into more money than he knew what to do with, he considered buying the services of a high-end professional.But again he worried about the stigma if it ever got out.He was planning a new business venture and the revelation that he paid for sex likely wouldn’t help his cause.

There was another reason he didn’t want to pay for affection.He was ashamed to admit it, but what if he froze in that situation too, just like all the other social ones where he’d gotten too nervous to act?What if he embarrassed himself in front of this person?It was too much to bear.So he simply remained celibate, though only half-heartedly by choice.

Then he heard about the Special Friends Events.It seemed perfect.Because it was anonymous, with all members wearing masks, there was no fear of an embarrassing moment that might haunt him in the future.Or so he had thought.

It turned out that he was wrong.After ten months of attending parties but only observing— which others did as well—he finally decided to take a risk.That was the moment of action that was still burned on his brain.

He had approached Evelyn Channing, though he didn’t know her name at the time, and asked if she’d like to “spend a little time with him.”They’d chatted briefly, but he must have done something wrong because within a couple of minutes of talking, she said it had been nice to meet him but that she didn’t think they were a match.She wasn’t mean about it, but it had stung nonetheless.

So the next time, he tried a different tack.He had seen a couple that he later learned were the Hartleys.They were engaging in an enthusiastic threesome with a young man about Michael’s age.So at a subsequent event, he’d approached them, asking if they might be interested in a repeat session with him.They also declined.And while they weren’t outright rude, they were more brusque than Evelyn had been.

He tried to shake it off an and attempted to engage several other folks.All of them passed, culminating in his encounter with Claire Hoffman.Unlike everyone else, she made no attempt to soften the blow when she rejected his offer.In fact, she’d laughed in his mask-covered face, just like the girls back in high school had.

In that second, something inside him broke.He went home that night and hacked into the Special Friends Events e-mail system.They thought they’d made it secure, but not from him.He was able to get all the relevant personal information on every member of the club.It didn’t take long to identify the people who had rejected him.

He decided that the time for such rejection was over.He would take matters into his own hands.And so he did.He wanted to do his work in order of who had refused him.But he had to tweak his plans when he learned that Evelyn Channing was out of town for a work-related music event.So he did the Hartleys on Saturday.

The process, as with everything he did in life, was very methodical.First, he smashed the couple in their heads, removed their clothes, and then positioned their bodies.There was no special reason for that.He just liked the idea that he could do what he wanted with their bodies without objection, something that had been denied to him at the parties.

After that, he found their masks, suffocated them with their own pillow, and lastly, placed their masks on their faces.It was a breathtaking experience.He’d planned it out in such detail that when he was actually completing the acts, he had his first orgasm.He knew that it said something strange about him that it occurred as he was pressing the pillow down on Cynthia Hartley’s face.But he wasn’t in the mood to examine what it said.

With Evelyn, it had been easier.There was just one of her, and she had no idea he was there when she stepped out of the shower.Later, when she lied naked on the bed, unconscious, but before he used her pillow to suffocate the life out of her, he’d considered whether he should take advantage of her compromised situation to finally end his virginity.But that somehow felt wrong.So he’d simply suffocated her like the Hartleys and got his release in that moment.

But as he sat in his car and watched Claire make a pit stop at a grocery store near her home, he acknowledged that everything was different now.He only had time for one more encounter.And while he had originally planned to continue working in chronological order of his rejections, that plan had changed.

If he was only going to get one more chance to eliminate one of his torturers, it had to be Claire, the one who had laughed in his face.The one with derision in her eyes as she told him, “No way.Never.”

Well, never was about to change.

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