Page 164 of Controlled Burn
He’d done this before.
Not here. Not like this.
But other towns, other girls. Always the same pattern: the obsession, the buildup, the break.
He left when things got messy. Or when someone got close enough to scream.
There’d been a girl in Norfolk—another in Raleigh. One disappeared. Another filed a restraining order that never stuck.
But no one had ever connected the dots.
He changed jobs, changed names, stayed ahead of the shadows.
But Talia was different.
She made it harder to hide.
And if he couldn’t disappear into her world, he’d make sure she couldn’t escape his.
And now she wasn’t just a distraction. She was in command. That made her dangerous.
It started again the day she touched his arm—just a tap—after a successful call, routine.
“Good job, Brooks,” she said, smiling like she didn’t even know what she was doing. Like it wasn’t the first physical contact he’d had in months. Her fingers were warm. Light. Unaware.
He hadn’t stopped shaking for two hours after that.
The corkboard dominated the far wall—images pinned with surgical precision.
Talia Cross.
Photos. Printouts. Screengrabs.
One from a debriefing meeting—her head thrown back in laughter, neck exposed, the ghost of a bruise visible just beneath her jaw. Another where she crouched over a victim, blood on her gloves, eyes wild and locked in.
Locker room stills, grainy and distorted.
High school yearbook photo—sunlit, too happy, teeth bright, careless.
He’d known her before any of them did.
Middle school. She was the golden girl—popular, pretty, loud in a way that made insecure boys ache.
He was the quiet one.
Skin bad. Clothes worse.
He always smelled like his dad’s garage—the invisible kid, orbiting her sun.
She never noticed him.
Once, in eighth grade, he’d dropped his tray in the cafeteria. She’d laughed. Not cruelly. Just… carelessly.
He never forgot that laugh.
High school made it worse. She got hotter. He got angrier. Found her online—cheer photos, group selfies, a bikini pic from Myrtle Beach.
He saved them—printed some and taped one inside a drawer.
