Page 48 of The Hunted
“Did you leave this body on the carousel for a reason or because it was the only viable place here left to stage the scene?”
The Reaper leaned back on their heels looking at what was left of the fair. This had once been a place of great joy and entertainment for families to bring their kids to. The Reaper remembered seeing dads lift their smaller kids up on their shoulders while the mom’s held the hands of the slightly older kids. They remembered seeing the teenagers win prizes for their significant others, and they marveled at what it would feel like to be touched in a way that didn’t hurt—to finally have parents who cared about them instead of pawning them off.
“Be good. You’re their favorite and we want to make them happy, okay?”
The Reaper stumbled back, their shoulders shooting up toward their ears. The need to hurt something, to tear it apart and cut it open just to watch it bleed felt overwhelming. The corpse in front of them, taunting them, begging them to inflict more pain on it, but the Reaper held themselves steady.
They wouldn’t contaminate the scene any more than they already had. There wasn’t much fun in hurting something that couldn’t feel the pain.
“Breathe,” the Reaper whispered, rolling their shoulders back and cracking their neck. They needed to go. The exhaustion was starting to set in as was the need to fill the emptiness inside of them.
The blonde should have been enough to tide them over but she hadn’t been. The need to kill was coming quicker now. The ability to space them out as needed was starting to dwindle, and they couldn’t figure out why.
The Reaper’s gaze flicked over the corpse once more, smirking at the blonde’s leg that sat next to it. “Returning gifts I’ve given is rude and distasteful.” They chuckled but sobered quickly. They had been watching Santino a long time now, and the rest between his kills never escalated, even when he missed his mark.
“What keeps you so calm when you should be raging on the inside?” The Reaper looked over the cuts on the corpse’s body. They were clean, unhurried, as if he had all the time and patience in the world to leave his mark.
“Unlike me who always needs to purge,” they murmured.
What would it be like to fully play with their marks? The Reaper had fun with the blonde, but they had been distracted. Marcus and Chester had been quick deaths, even when they weren’t supposed to be. The Reaper hadn’t been able to keep their rage in check—especially once they found out what they were and what they had done.
“Did it feel good to destroy their lives?”
“They’ll never be the same because of you. It makes me want to burn your flesh from your body so you know how it feels to scrub your skin raw trying to get the stench of someone else off of you.”
The Reaper clenched their fists, steadying their rapid heartbeats. It would be too easy for their past and present to blend. They wanted to scream, to thrash out against the phantom hands they still felt against their body, but they couldn’t.
“I need to leave.” But the Reaper hadn’t moved, their gaze stuck on the body Santino left for them.
Did the lack of memory give him no sense of urgency—no sense of boiling rage the way it did the Reaper?
“How does it feel to be blessed in a way you probably think is a burden now?” The Reaper reached forward, ripping the note off of the corpse with their gloved hand. There were still pieces of the paper pressed against the corpse thanks to the staple gun and the Reaper smiled. They could imagine how the local cops and FBI would rack their brain trying to figure out what was stapled to this body—another note they wouldn’t be able to read.
It wasn’t time to let the world know there was more than one killer among them. No need to cause a panic and increase the number of law enforcement looking for them both. Though, given that Santino worked for them, it stood to reason they couldn’t find what was right in front of their faces even if they left the right clues.
The sun warmed the Reaper’s face, and they closed their eyes letting the first breaks of sunlight wash over them. They definitely needed to go now. It was too early—too many bright spots they wouldn’t be able to hide under, and there was too much time left on their game to get caught now.
The Reaper stuffed the note in their pocket and shifted the weight of the book bag on their back. The thing was heavy but served its purpose to bear extra weight whenever they left footprints behind. It was time to pay someone else a visit, another name on a list. Santino wanted this point, but it wouldn’t go to him. The Reaper may have been slightly impressed he strayed from his list, but given who the lifeless body once belonged to, Denise Miller wasn’t a saint. She wouldn’t truly be missed.
ChapterTwenty-One
“Yes, that’s correct, Bob. Behind me is what was once known to the people of Nova Springs as the State Fair. Families used to come here all the time until tragedy struck, which cost the lives of two people. The fair has since been closed from that fateful day, but it hasn’t stopped it from being a bed of activity. It isn’t uncommon for kids to come and hang out here or for people to dump unwanted things. As you can see behind me, local officers and caution tape have been used to block off the carousel area where a body has been dumped. Sources have claimed there was also a severed body part next to the body, which now has the local PD out canvasing the rest of the fair.”
Santino kept out of the camera operator’s line of sight. He wasn’t one for the spotlight, but he was interested in hearing what the news anchor had to say. There had been no mention of who the victim was, probably because they hadn’t notified her family yet. Not that she had any that still cared about her. But there was no mention of Ring camera footage of her last known whereabouts either.
Which works out well for me.
He wasn’t worried. If it did pop up, he had tight alibies for his time should someone—namely Amra—start asking around.
“As the world changes, mijo, you gotta change too. You must adapt. The technology we’ll have to watch out for, though you know as well as I do, they won’t do anything about anything until you hurt someone important.”
His guardian’s words were fresh in his mind as he scanned the grounds around him. There had been no working cameras here. The kids who used this place as a hangout always made sure to destroy them so they wouldn’t get caught, and he was thankful for that. But that didn’t mean his truck didn’t show up on a traffic camera or someone’s phone since they were always glued to people’s hands.
How narcissistic of humans to document every single minute detail of their lives and upload it on the internet. There was no such thing as privacy anymore, and it would have made his job harder had he not been prepared and taught how to adapt.
Santino’s gaze shifted to the marked-off sections where he knew there were footprints leading up to the carousel and back out to where he would have assumed a car was parked—though there were no tire marks the way that there were footprints. They weren’t his. The sizing was all wrong, and considering the note he had left behind had been ripped off the body, these had to belong to the Reaper.
He wondered how close he’d been to the Reaper last night when he dumped the body. Had the Reaper watched him prep the scene and if they did, why hadn’t they made themselves known? What was the point in dragging out this game?
