Page 1 of Playing with Fire

FourYearsAgo

The zippo lighter danced between my fingers as I watched my prey pour himself a nightcap, oblivious to the fact that he was about to die screaming.

I rolled the metal over my knuckles in a fluid wave, then flipped it with a flick of my wrist, catching it between my index and middle finger before spinning it into my palm. All the while, the fire flickered, licking at my skin just enough to burn, but not enough to leave blisters. I was quick. I was good. And I was focused entirely on planning to burn Richard Thackery alive.

Fourteen bodies. That’s how many paved Richard’s road to riches. Seven on Morton Street fire, Four in the Elm Avenue Apartments fire. Three in the West Highland blaze. The causes were all different, of course, ranging from electrical fires to an unattended space heater the tenants had been running when he didn’t repair their heat. He was a slumlord, not a fucking evil genius. This fucker wasn’t smart enough to have a master plan.

But I was.

I’d been watching him for months. Waiting. Planning.

I snapped the lighter closed and pulled out my phone, sliding my thumb over the fingerprint scanner to unlock it. A divided screen showed me security feeds from each camera I’d planted in his house over the last few weeks. Breaking in had been easy. The ADT sign in his front yard was mostly for show. It was the waiting that was the hard part.

Three fucking hours on his roof in the rain last Tuesday to plant the bathroom camera. Two days following him through his stupid routine to learn where he ate, what he bought, and who might interrupt my plans. One very tedious afternoon posing as a house cleaner to slip a USB into his computer and make copies of his house key. Each step had brought me closer to my end goal, and now I was ready to execute.

Some of my brothers thought I was lazy, that all I did all day was lie around in my pajamas playing video games. They didn’t realize that a proper hunt took time, planning. Well, Shepherd would understand. We were alike in a lot of ways. But while my older brother enjoyed theanticipationof the hunt, I lived for thekill. The moment my prey realized they weren’t the predator, when they finally gave in and rolled over, showing their throat? Those were all great moments, sure. But I was there for the moment I got to sink my teeth into that throat and feel the pulse stutter and die.

On my screen, Thackery moved around his bedroom with the smug confidence of a man who believed he was safe in his own home. Shower at 10:45. Laptop until 11:30. Lights out by midnight. Same boring routine every night. The predictability of the privileged. Men like him never questioned their routines because they never had to. No one was hunting them.

Until me.

My phone buzzed with another email alert. I’d hacked into his accounts weeks ago to watch him delete maintenance requests while sending them late charges. It was evidence of his crimes that the police would never find because they weren’t smart enough, didn’t care enough. Not that I planned to involve the pigs. Fuck cops. Fuck the justice system. Where were they when fourteen people died? I wasn’t about to trust them to do anything.

His latest email was about the insurance payout for the Morton Street fire. The one where they found the charred remains of the father trying to shield his kids from the flames. The one that would make him two point four million dollars. Minus, of course, the ten grand he’d saved by ignoring the family’s six separate requests to fix the faulty wiring.

My fingers tightened around the lighter. Most people thought revenge was hot—all rage and passion. They were wrong. Real vengeance was ice cold. Calculated. And mine had been cooling for eight weeks, crystalizing into something perfect.

I slipped from my surveillance point on the hill and made my way down toward the house. The autumn air carried the scent of fallen leaves and the promise of rain. It was the perfect night for a fire.

The copied key slid into his back door lock without resistance. Inside, his house reeked of wealth and unearned self-satisfaction. White leather furniture that he never sat on. Art that he never looked at. His possessions were trophies that served no purpose except to announce his wealth to visitors who didn’t give a shit.

I moved through the darkness like I belonged there, placing the charges in all the pre-planned locations. This wasn’t chaos. It was choreography. Fire needed direction to achieve its full potential. Most arsonists were anarchists. They only cared about the destruction, about feeding the urge. They were amateurs. I was a professional.

The shower kicked on upstairs, right on schedule. I counted my steps as I moved, putting everything in its place.

I reached the third floor as the shower stopped. He was humming behind the bathroom door. Probably planning how to spend his insurance windfall. A new car. A vacation in Thailand. Another investment property he could run into the ground.

I settled in the shadows of his home office, breathing in the smell of lemon wood polish and expensive leather. The large mahogany desk where he signed eviction notices sat off to my left, holding the laptop where he tallied his profits against the cost of human lives.

The perfect place for a conversation about consequences.

Footsteps approached. The bathroom door opened.

I flicked my lighter open, the tiny flame dancing in the darkened window. He wouldn’t see me at first. They never did. People saw what they expected, and no one expected death in an office chair.

The desk lamp clicked on.

He froze, hand still on the switch, his body catching up to what his brain refused to process. I watched understanding bloom across his face. “Who the fuck are you?”

I smiled, letting the silence stretch until it physically pained him. People got nervous in silence. They tried to fill it with words, movement, with anything to ease the discomfort of being prey. Thackery’s hand twitched toward his phone. Predictable.

“I wouldn’t,” I said, voice soft enough to make him strain to hear me. Make them work for every word. Make them lean toward the danger. “You won’t be able to call out, not with the jammers in place.”

His face cycled through emotions like someone flipping channels on a TV. Anger. Confusion. The beginnings of fear. He was still trying to hold on to the illusion that he was in control of the situation. He wasn’t. I was.

“Look, whatever this is about—”

I cut him off. “Fourteen people.”

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