Page 75 of Edge of Control

I had fallen asleep next to a serial killer.

Holy fucking shit.

What theactualfuck?

I could hardly see straight, could barely think straight. Everything in my body was shouting out at me tocall the police and have them race here, where they could snap handcuffs on Theo’s wrists and drag him away. It would be the right thing to do. But another part of me didn’t want to give him a chance to escape, to hurt me.

He wouldn’t hurt me.

I was a fool for even thinking it, but then again, Theo had proven me a fool from the start.

No, I’d walk him to the police station myself and make sure he was locked up. I’d watch them take him through the door and book him. I’d guarantee that this saga was put to an end.

“Let’s go,” I said, keeping the shake out of my voice by a thin miracle. There was fear inside me, for sure, but there was also anger. He’d played me. He knew I was working the Nevermore case. Did it get him off to have me fuck him while he knew I was also the one hunting him down?

“Jace… I’m so sorry.”

Surprisingly, he did sound extremely remorseful. And that spiel he gave about his victims being monsters, that part could have very well been true. I didn’t want to take everything he said at face value, but I could confirm some of the reports. Even the FBI had reached out to me about what they found on one of the victim’s hard drives. They had been quite cooperative throughout the entire investigation, and I was sure I could ask to see if they had any information on the other claims Theo had made.

But what would that do?

Theo was a killer, and there was no getting around that.

It didn’t matter how complete he had made me feel.How much of a spark he had returned into my life. How could that matter when he was off extinguishing the sparks of other people?

“I can’t believe this,” I said as we entered the elevator. The door closed. Silence surrounded us, broken up by the old elevator struggling to bring us down to the ground floor.

It was at the third floor when the elevator gave a sudden jerk, and a loud creaking sound followed. I looked up at the fluorescent lights, now flickering.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Theo leaned his head against the wall. The elevator had stopped. I pressed the ground-floor button, but nothing happened. I pressed it again and again. I started to hit it with my fist. I was trapped inside a cage with a loose lion. I continued to hit the ground floor. Theo put a hand on my wrist, but I pushed him back.

“No! Don’t fucking touch me.”

Theo’s eyes opened wide. His breaths were rapid, heavy. He was clearly a hair-thin thread away from a full-blown panic attack. His eyes searched mine.

I could hardly recognize this man.

And yet…

“I can’t fucking believe this.”

“Jace—”

“Don’t say anything. Don’t fucking say anything.”

I hit the emergency button, a shrill alarm sounding up and down the elevator shaft.

“They’ll get this fixed. It’s happenedbefore. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes.” I was talking to myself. Trying to rationalize this. Make sense of at least one thing in my life. Because everything else had been blown to bits. This was all so fucking wrong.

“I swear, Jace, I’ll never do it again. And I never—never—thought once of hurting you. I’d never. Never.”

Never. Hah. Nevermore. Never, never, never.

“I don’t want to hear it. You can explain yourself to a judge.”

“And I will. I don’t expect forgiveness. I understand what I did was abhorrent, but so were those people. I stopped them from hurting anyone else.”

---