Every song she listened to, I downloaded to my playlist. Every book she read, I bought for myself. Every movie she watched, I forced myself to sit through. Every word she uttered, I analyzed. Every fucking food that burst against her tongue, I tasted so I could experience it as well.
She played three instruments: cello, piano and guitar. I bought all of them and had them in my penthouse even though I had no idea how to make them sing.
And every man she let near her, I refrained from killing. Not that I didn’t want to. It was a struggle of epic fucking proportions. Something had changed since the night I touched her, and instead of simply being amused by her frustrating antics, I was slowly coming undone.
Enough to worry Lincoln.
Enough for me to worry about myself.
So, I kept my distance. I watched, but I didn’t touch. I kept myself busy with jobs and asked Lincoln to babysit as much as possible.
I was casually involved in her life. An awareness that took no part in it, but knew everything about it. At least until the tables turned, and I received a phone call that caused my blood to boil.
I’m walking through the arrival terminal of a commercial airport, minding my own fucking business after having executed a particularly bothersome film producer who’d had his way with an underage actress.
Not that I gave a damn about his crimes, but that little girl’s manager took issue with a man in a position of authority who liked them young.
The problem was solved quickly and quietly. As far as anybody knew, his guilt had caught up with him and he’d decided to consume a cocktail of drain cleaner and bleach while watching the secret audition videos he’d made of his victims.
What they didn’t know was that he’d done so with a gun pointed to his head.
Personally, I would have chosen the bullet, but the man was an idiot who thought he might survive his stomach being dissolved by cleaning products.
His death had been excruciating, and I’d be a liar to claim I didn’t enjoy it. Had his victims been sixteen or older, I might have empathized. I was the creeper who’d stalked Adeline since that age after all.
But no, they were half that age, and for that, his death had been justified.
Not that it mattered.
I’d killed him for the money, not the crime. He could have done something as mundane as tossing a plastic bottle into a trash can instead of the recycling bin, and I still would have killed him, although maybe not as painfully.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I answer it while eating the distance across the terminal on a long-legged stride.
“What did she do now?”
Lincoln’s long exhalation is followed by the sound of his hand scrubbing against his face and the gravel of his deep voice.
“You’re going to lose your shit.”
My feet stop, the crowd around me parting and moving like a school of fish to the left and right, careful not to touch me, as if they know death itself is staring them down.
“I’m a very patient man, Lincoln. You know this. We need to be for our line of work. And while I stand here and wonder why you think I need an assessment as to my future psychological state, that patience is running extremely fucking thin. So much so, that I’m having preliminary regrets about cutting your tongue out of your throat to let it hang like a damn tie down your chest. So, I’ll ask this again and expect a better answer: What did she do now?”
His silence does nothing to improve my state of mind. I’d only been out of touch for the eight hour flight. In that time, I’ve known Adeline had gone out to a club, one I couldn’t monitor from a distance, not that the Wi-Fi on the plane would have allowed for live streaming even if I had cameras in every place she frequented, which I don’t.
“She met up with a guy. He hit her. She’ll have a decent shiner for a week or two. I thought I’d let you know before you saw her again and planned my death for letting her get damaged.”
My jaw ticks, and my body goes far too still.
“What did she do after that?”
He sighs again. “Told him to get lost. Caused a scene. Left and took an Uber home by herself.”
My left eye twitches. I scratch my jaw with my free hand then straighten