I feel like I’m going to pass out from the fear that invades my body in that very moment.
“Get up,” he orders in that hoarse voice. “Now.”
Taylor and I get to our feet, but it takes all my strength to stay on them as my knees begin to tremble. I try to ignore Taylor’s whimper beside me, as I keep all my focus on Black.
“I’m sure you’re wondering by now, who I am, and why I chose you,” he says, running his fingers over the chain in his right hand. “Those answers will all come in time, but they will only come at the right moment. I don’t want to answer those questions for you, I want you to answer them for yourselves.”
“I know what you want from me,” I say, and I don’t have to put on much of a show to get my voice shaky, because it’s already mostly there. “Leave my friend out of this. Please.”
His head swivels in my direction. “And what is it I want with you, Hartley?”
“You picked me for a reason,” I say, my voice trembling. “You did your research to torment me the way you did. Taylor has nothing to do with this.”
“Always the hero,” he says. “So strong.”
Strong.
God.
I need him to think I’m weak. That he’s won.
“But I will break you, and that’s what your little friend here is for,” he rattles the chain in Taylor’s direction.
No.
“Leave her alone,” I cry, once again. It isn’t an act. The thought of him hurting Taylor sends shivers up my spine and causes a coldness to take over my whole body. I let a lone tear roll down my cheek. “Don’t hurt her. Please. I’m begging you.”
He swings the chain in Taylor’s direction, causing her to take a little jump back and lose her footing, falling onto her back with a cry. She has no way to stop her fall, so she lands hard.
“Please!” I cry, shuffling forward. “Please stop. Don’t hurt her. I’ll do anything. Just don’t.”
It isn’t hard for me to cry, and a month of pent-up fear flows out and I let it, not even attempting to hold it back. If he needs me to break to leave her be, then that’s what he’ll get. I won’t let him hurt her. If I have to play this until I’m on the ground sobbing and begging for mercy, I will do it. I will do whatever it takes. I sob, staring at the masked man, praying this works. “Dammit. What more do you want from me? You’ve tormented me enough. Just do what you have to do with me, but leave her alone. I’m begging you.”
He looks at me, and for a long moment, he just stares. I wonder if beneath that mask he has his eyes narrowed, studying me. Just when I think he’s taking it all in, believing my act, he throws his head back and … laughs.
My body goes straight and my tears instantly stop flowing. When he looks back at me, I know his eyes are pinned to mine even though I can’t see anything. “How stupid do you think I am? Honestly, Hartley. I’ve watched you for long enough to know you’re not that weak—to think you actually believed I’d fall for that. Good plan, though. Trying to pretend for the sake of your friend. It isn’t going to work.”
He’s onto me? Just like that. How?
“I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt her,” I try again, desperately.
He laughs again.
“Please,” I beg, lowering down onto my knees. Shame flooding my cheeks. Because deep down, I know he’s right. I’m not this weak. But for Taylor, I’ll do anything. I’ll be anything. “Please, don’t hurt her.”
“Get off your knees!” he orders. “Your act won’t fly with me. I don’t need to hurt her to break you. That would be too easy, and too cliché. Don’t you think?”
I look up at him, still on my knees. By the way he says the next words, I can almost hear him smiling beneath that mask. “I simply need to hurt you.”
I’m confused, and for a moment, I just stare. Hurt me? Isn’t that the plan all along? To hurt me? By using my husband, and now Taylor? I don’t understand.
“There is more than one way to skin a cat, Hartley. Of course you’d put on a show to protect your friend from getting hurt. And, granted, I could hurt her enough to break you, but you’re anticipating that, and like I said before, cliché. I like to play by a different set of rules. No. If you think you’re so tough, so unbreakable, then I’ll let her watch you suffer. You see, I don’t need to lay a finger on her to traumatize and ruin her for the rest of her life, in which case, ruining the person you hold dearest.”
Taylor makes a pained sound on the ground beside me. She’s stayed quiet. She’s not stupid. But those words scare her. I know they do. Taylor is soft at heart. She might be full of sass, but she’s a gentle person. Seeing someone get hurt … will destroy her. He’s right about that.
My skin prickles. The smart bastard. “Just let her go. Please. She isn’t part of this.”
It’s pathetic. I know it even as the words are coming out of my mouth, but I can’t stop them. I have to try, once more. I can’t let my best friend watch me get hurt, I know what it’ll do to her. Vomit rises in my throat, and I look over at her. She’s as pale as a ghost, staring at Black.
He laughs again. “Oh, but Hartley. She is.”
Then he swings the chain. It hits me across the face so hard my head splits. Blood spurts out from a wound in my forehead. I can feel the skin split apart. Pain, unlike any I’ve ever felt, tears through my skull and I stumble, falling to the ground, screaming in agony. Not even the strongest person could handle that. Taylor’s screams fill the small room and she begs, “Please, please stop. Please don’t hurt her.”
The chain swings again, like a whip, the clatter filling the space until the end connects with my shoulder. I tumble backwards and another pained scream rips from my throat. Tears pool in my eyes, mixing with the blood running down my face.
“Stop!” Taylor screams. “Stop!”
Hearing her agonized cries rips me in two. It tears into my very soul. He knows it—it’s precisely why he’s doing it. But he will not break me. I’ll take every beating under the sun before I let him break me. But God, it hurts so bad. So damned bad. I have to fight with everything I am inside to stop myself from breaking.
“Taylor, close your eyes,” I yell at my friend. “Close them. And trust me.”
“Hartley,” she wails.
“Close them!”
I don’t know if she does, all I hear is his evil laugh muffled by that voice changer. I turn to face him, pushing to my hands and knees and panting through the pain, “You will not fucking win. Beat me until I’m dead, but you will not break me. She might not like to see this, but she will recover. I, however, will not give in to you. So beat me until there is nothing left. Cut me into a thousand tiny pieces. Do whatever it is your weak, pathetic ass has to do. But. You. Will. Not. Win. You know nothing about me. There isn’t a single damned thing you could do that would make me yield to you.”
“Is that so?” he says, raising his hand.
I prepare for another blow.
But he takes off his mask.
* * *
I stare.
For a moment, that’s all I can do. Just stare. My entire body feels funny, tingly even, like I must be seeing it wrong, like maybe this is a dream after all. I mean, it has to be. It has to be a dream. It can’t be real. It simply cannot be real. Even through the blood soaking my vision, and the pain pounding in my head, I can see him clearly enough. And I heard Taylor’s gasp. I heard it as clearly as I heard my own.
But it still doesn’t seem real.
But there he is, standing in front of me.
Jacob.
Jacob, who was sweet, romantic, kind.
Jacob, who took me out and kissed me when I was sad.
Jacob, who changed my locks so I wouldn’t feel afraid.
Jacob, who I would have sworn on my life was a good and loyal man.
“Broken now?”
His voice hits me right in the heart, like a deadly whip.
I dated a serial killer. I kissed and let a serial killer into my home
and into my life. I confided in him. I trusted him. I dated a man who had killed not one, not two, but three women. And I, Hartley Watson, was stupid enough to let him into my life, and nearly into my heart.
I’m numb.
I can’t stop staring at him.
It feels like my body is going to just go out from beneath me.
“Cat got your tongue?” He laughs, stepping forward, looking down at me. “Imagine how Raymond would feel looking down on you right now? His wife, his dear sweet wife, dating a killer.”
I can’t breathe.
“She let him into their home, into her life, and she had no idea. None. He’d be rolling in his grave if he could see how stupid you’ve been. If he could see the woman he left behind was locking lips with a man who has, if I might say so with pride, had plenty of blood on his hands.”
I’m going to be sick.
I vomit, there isn’t much more in my body to come out, except blood and mucus, but I vomit. I vomit until I’m dry retching and gagging. Tears run down my face, my nose dribbles. This must be a nightmare. It has to be. It can’t be him.
“You think you’re so smart. You think you can’t be broken, but guess what?” He kneels down in front of me and I stare into the eyes that I would have told anyone who asked, were kind and loving. “You just broke.”
My whole body starts shaking.
I let him into my apartment. He could have hurt anyone, because of me. Ace. Lena … Oh God. I fell right into his trap. All along he was right there, and I dove in headfirst. Now that I look at it, it’s almost glaringly obvious, but at the time I would have sworn to anyone that Jacob was a good man.
Oh God.
“You were easier than I thought, honestly. With the cop living next door, I worried he might catch on, but like the stupid fools you both are, you let me slip right past your radar. And don’t get me started on the cop. He questioned me. Twice. But instead of actually asking me questions that would’ve probably given him a clue, he was too caught up in trying to make me look like a nobody. He wanted you and he couldn’t look past that to see the truth. Idiot.”
My throat closes and I can barely breathe as he continues.
“All along I was there, right in front of you, and you didn’t see it. I knew I’d break you, but I must admit I didn’t think it would be me that did the deed. I tried your husband, but you overcame that; I tried your best friend, but still you wouldn’t crack; and then it came to me … it came to me and I knew. I knew exactly what it was that would destroy you.”
He leans closer and chuckles.
“It was me. It was simply knowing that you let me into your world, and your friends’ worlds, and how close I was the entire time … that’s all it took. And now look at you—pathetic, broken, on the floor with nothing. You’re exactly where I want you, Hartley. Now the real fun can begin.”
A strangled sob climbs up my throat and escapes. Jacob. Sweet, kind Jacob. This has to be a joke. It has to be.
“I will say,” he continues, as if he’s having a general conversation with just anyone, “I didn’t think I’d involve myself, let my face be shown, until you. I tormented those other girls, by doing very similar things to you, but I never became a part of their lives. I watched you for so long, and I knew you were going to change the rules, there was just something about you—so stubborn, so strong. I needed to challenge myself, to make the stakes higher. At first I didn’t know how to get close to you, but when I saw you on that dating website, I knew what I had to do.”
Taylor makes a pained sound, and I know what she’s thinking.
She’s thinking this is her fault. But it isn’t. He said he’s been watching me, which means he would have found a way to get to me, no matter what.
“Do you want to know the first place I saw you?” he says, rocking back on his heels, keeping that machete close to his body. “It was one of those support groups. I found the other girls at those, too. Easy pickings. I noticed you right away, and I knew you were different. You want to know how?”
I don’t.
I don’t.
“You rolled your eyes,” he chuckles. “You rolled your eyes when someone said something—oh, I can’t remember what it was, but all I could think was, she’s the one. Even in her time of grief, when her face is so empty because she’s so hurt, she’s got an edge. I needed a challenge. You became my challenge.”
My vision blurs, and my head pounds.
“I knew you were never going to be the same. You simply couldn’t be.”
I can’t speak. I cannot speak.
“Of course I imagined the final kill, when I carve a bowtie into your neck. You’d be my trophy, my greatest achievement. Mommy would be so proud. She’d be so proud of me.”
What the hell?
I glance at him and he’s staring blankly at the wall. Mommy? What does his mother have to do with this? Did she torment him as a child? Did she drag out his suffering? Why a bowtie? So many questions flood my mind, but are quickly replaced with horror when I realize how close he was all along.
He was right there.
“Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself,” he continues, breaking himself out of whatever twisted memory was playing in his head. “I’m quite looking forward to listening to you beg for your life. And you will beg, Hartley. I will kill you knowing I’m the man that broke you.”
“No you won’t!”
Taylor’s voice whips through the air and my head spins just in time to see her lunge at Jacob. In his storytelling and his focus on me, he’d forgotten all about her. She hits him hard and both of them tumble backwards. For a moment, I am frozen in shock, but then I move, as quickly as I can, pushing past the pain and the horror. Taylor lands on top of Jacob and they roll for a few seconds, all the while she’s slamming her cuffed hands down over and over onto his face.
Jacob raises the machete, and drives it into her leg.
Blood pours to the surface as Taylor’s screams fill the room. He pulls it out and raises it again, aiming higher this time—for her throat.
He’s going to kill her.
No.
This is my opportunity. Taylor gave me an opening, and I’m going to take it. With all my might, I lunge forward. I hit Jacob in the back and he stumbles forward, the machete flying from his hand and skittering across the room. He spins around as I raise my cuffed hands, and I hit him as hard as I can across the face. A loud crunch feels the room, and warm blood splatters over me as his nose starts bleeding. Then I move quickly, going for the machete.
I shuffle towards it, but he’s quicker and lunges forward, his hand curling around into my hair and jerking me backwards. I lose my footing and land with a thud. I roll to my back just as he’s leaning down to lift me up. I shove my legs into his body, sending him across the room again with the force of my kick. I’m panting as I push to my feet. He makes a pained sound, and I glance at the door. I have to move.
So I stand and I hop. I hop as fast as I can towards the stairs, and then I use my cuffed hands to hold the railing and I hop with all my might, step by step, up into the house. I hop down the hall, my body aching, my lungs screaming from exertion. I reach the kitchen, eyes darting around. It takes Jacob a few minutes to get to his feet, but he makes it out into the kitchen just as I start shuffling through the drawers.
He stops and stares at me, machete in his hand, grin on his bloodied face.
“You didn’t think you were going to get away that easily, did you?”
TWENTY-FIVE
Ace
I can’t believe it’s Jacob. When I heard his name, I didn’t want to believe it. When I looked at the picture, I still didn’t want to believe it. Even when he pulled his mask off, I found it hard to believe. But no matter how I try to deny it, the truth is right in front of me. All along it has been right in front of me. Fucking right there.
“Jacob,” I growl. “Fucking Jacob. I should have known. I felt it in my gut that there was something wrong with that man, but I ignored i
t. I ignored it. If I had listened, I would have figured it out.”
“No time to blame yourself, Henderson,” Craig says. “We need to find this man.”
“What have we managed to dig up on him so far, now that we know it’s him?”
Caleb, another detective, says, “Obviously, his first name is Jacob, but his last name is different. He started using a fake last name when he started hunting for girls. I’ve looked into his real name, he was adopted as a baby. Single mother. She’s dead, I’m looking into her.”
“Anything else we can work with?” Craig says. “Do we know where the mother lived? Perhaps he’s in the same house?”
“Got someone on that now,” I say, running a hand through my hair, trying to fight back the anger at myself. He was right there in front of me the whole fucking time.
“How did he find her on a fuckin’ dating app?” Caleb grunts, crossing his tattooed arms over his chest.
I exhale for calm. “He knew enough about her from the support group, maybe he followed her, tapped into her phone, even listened to Taylor and got the idea as a way to get into her life. I can’t see him coming up with that—he waited too long, my guess is he found out about Taylor setting her up and used it as an opening to get into her life.”
“He must be savvy with technology, then,” Caleb mutters. “It ain’t easy to get the information he’s gotten, or tap into people’s computers…”
“People do it all the time,” I mutter. “That’s what’s fuckin’ wrong with the world, it’s too easy to find out what you want to know, if you’re good with computers.”
“Yeah,” Caleb grunts. “Do we know how he found out so much about Hartley’s husband? How he found out all those things?”
“The smart fucker started breaking into her apartment when the locks were flimsy,” I growl. “Then, when she got scared, he changed them and must’ve kept a key. That’s why it was only after I changed them again that it stopped happening inside her house, and he started sending things to her instead.”
“So all the things he used to torment her, he found in her apartment? The clever, sick fuck.”