Page 12 of Half the Summer's Night
That was for Uncle Nash, though. My own kills, I prefer to be more creative. I never use knives anymore.
I turn away from the autopsy tools and take in the rest of the space. I don’t see any bodies, but I do see a wall of gleaming metal drawers. I walk over, my footsteps soft and clicking.
They’re labeled. Names, a date (death or delivery, I don’t know) a string of identification numbers. Marcus Nielson is onthe far left, and I pull him out and look down at him, his face much more peaceful than the last time I saw him.
“You served your purpose well,” I say, my voice echoing strangely in this cold, sterile room.
I consider, briefly, leaving my messageonhim. But no. Neither the police nor the sheriff’s department currently suspects foul play, even if my clever Abi does, and I want to keep it like that. I’ve no doubt she’ll take this to them, and I fear marring Mr. Nielson’s corpse might be a bit too obvious. I don’t want the cops swarming my hotel in earnest.
So I slide him back in with a distressingly loud clang. Then I turn away from the cabinet, looking out at the room. For a moment, my eyes settle again on her tools. That could be a possibility, but something about it doesn’t chime right. I keep scanning, looking over the sterile countertops, the pristine walls, until I land on a door.
It leads, I think, into an office; there’s a window beside it, although whatever’s inside is too dark to see. I stride over, my heart fluttering. An office would be intimate, wouldn’t it? And subtle, if I play it right. I need something meaningful to her, but not to the cops.
I try the door, and find it unlocked. Unlike the autopsy room, the lights don’t come on automatically, and I feel around until I find the light switch.
What that soft overhead light reveals makes my heart flop over in my chest.
A map of Rosado County. It’s impossible to miss; the office is tiny, and Abi has pinned the map to the wall exactly opposite the door. But it’s notjusta map.
It’s a model of all my work over the last two years.
I drift forward, my breath caught in my lungs. I have a similar map at home, neatly folded in a locked box I keep in the back of my closet. Every letter of my message is planned outthere, every location of all seven kills marked with a blue felt-tip pen the same color as Abi’s lovely eyes.
She doesn’t have all of them, of course, because I haven’t finished my work. But she has pressed a red pin in the location of every single kill to date, each letter of my message printed on a little flag.
But what really makes my heart skip—and, if I’m being honest, what sends blood shooting into my cock—is the fact that there are a smattering of white pins, too, and a handful of them, enough to be impressive, are also my kills. Murders from before she came back to town.
Not all of them. She’s being overly optimistic, I imagine. But she’s clearly seen enough of my work to understand it.
I stumble up to the map, breathing heavily behind my killing face, and read what the flagged pins spell out.
YOUR DAR
My mind fills in the rest:Your Dark Whisperer.My signature, just for her. My way of introducing myself. I chose it because my true self doesn’t really have a name, and this felt appropriate, given all the times I’ve knelt beside her bed and whispered truths into her ear while she was sleeping, hoping that she would hear them in her dreams.
Truths like,You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.
Or,You’re the reason I finally freed myself.
Or, sometimes,I love you.
I feel dizzy—with happiness. With excitement. Of course I knew she had found the most recentRand enough of the letters to see a pattern, but I didn’t know, not until this moment, that she had all of them.
Plus some of the others. Before Abi came back to Rosado, I used to choose my victims purely by instinct, an instinct even I barely understand. I’d watch them at the hotel or on the beach.I’d wait until they were far away from anywhere tied to me. And then I’d find a way to trap them in their deaths.
And yet Abi still sifted through that chaos until she found me.
I suck in my breath and palm my cock over my pants, shuddering at the touch. I never masturbate in her home, mostly because I don’t want to risk leaving evidence, but also because it feels uncouth somehow. I usually do it out in the cemetery, holding onto the memory of her lovely face while I spill my seed on some hundred-year-old grave.
But this is special. In fact, this might be how I send my message.
I choke back a groan as the idea takes form in my head. I imagine it: Abi coming into her office, a tidy bowl of my cum waiting for her on her desk. It’sdefinitelyuncouth, but I bet she doesn’t go to the police with it. And it’ll let her know she’s onto something.
There has to be a bowl somewhere down here. Or a jar.
I don’t go looking for one just yet, though, just unzip my pants and grab hold of my cock, giving it a few slow strokes. My grunts are dangerously loud in the quiet of her office. But they sound right, too.
God, what I wouldn’t give to fuck her down here for real. I might whisper in her ear during our nights together, but I’ve never touched her, not even when she’s sleeping. I don’t want her like that. I want her awake and willing. I want her to lean back on her neat little desk and slide her skirt up her thighs and show me she’s naked underneath. I want her to gaze up at my killing face with lust in her eyes and beg the real me to make her come.
