RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,163

feels like my brain is melting out of my ears. The spiteful twist to the doctor’s features make him look like a stranger. Someone I’ve never met before. “Awww. Poor Elodie. He didn’t tell you, did he?” he sneers.

“Tell me what?”

“That he and I were together for a time. A short time, sure, but he just needed some time to see it. He and I, we’re kindred souls. We’re supposed to fucking be together. But you know him. He’s stubborn. Sometimes he won’t admit something unless it’s on his schedule. That’s why he hasn’t told you that he loves you yet, Elodie.”

My mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton wool. I can’t seem to close it. I’m having the hardest time understanding what I’m hearing. “He has told me that he loves me,” I whisper.

Doctor Fitzpatrick’s eyes narrow to cruel slits. “What?”

I say it louder. “He has told me that he loves me. He does love me.”

“Don’t, Elle,” Carina warns, digging her fingernails into the back of my hand.

Doctor Fitzpatrick shakes his head violently. He presses the heel of his hand against his forehead, screwing his eyes shut, which is when I see the massive bowie knife he’s clutching in his hand. How the fuck did I not notice that before? The blade glints maddeningly in the moonlight that lances down through the canopy of the trees into the clearing.

Doctor Fitzpatrick’s top lip pulls up, disgust radiating off him as he lurches toward us, pointing the tip of the knife at my face. Carina shrieks right next to my ear, but I…don’t…blink…

“He didn’t say that,” he spits. “He’d never say that. He can’t. Wren’s not capable of loving a girl like you. He needs more than stupid, silly dresses and scruffy Doc Martin boots, and dumb debate questions. There’s just no way.”

There’s no way the man standing in front of me is sane. He can’t be. No one in their right mind would be aiming a knife that size in someone’s face and ranting the way he’s ranting if they had even the weakest grasp on reality. I should say something to placate him, but that’s a dangerous game. Such a fine line to try and tightrope walk, and Doctor Fitzpatrick is a high-functioning madman. He has to be to have fooled the world for this long.

I realize something, as I’m about to speak, though. “Wait. That knife. I recognize that knife. That’s the knife that I found sticking out of my bed!”

Fitz laughs, tossing his head back. “God, you’re so fucking self important, aren’t you? Oh my bed. My precious books. My things. Wah wah wah. Dean Harcourt left it in the drawer of her desk, so I took it back. I’ve had this knife a very long time, y’know. I didn’t really feel like letting her keep it for good.”

“Why the hell did you trash my room?”

The doctor growls, inching closer. “I didn’t have a choice, did I? That room sat empty for months, but then you came along. I still hadn’t found Mara’s stupid journal or Wren’s sweater. It was only a matter of time before you stumbled across them and started asking questions. So I tore everything apart. I looked high and low. I would have found them, too, but then you came back to your room. I could hear you on the phone complaining about your father in the stairwell, and I bolted.”

“God, you are so fucked up,” Carina mumbles.

I’m still processing all of this, but the muddled pieces of information that were making my head hurt all begin to snap together. “You’re the one she wrote about in her journal. Not Wren. You’re the one she was afraid of.”

The English teacher grins, twisting the knife in his hand so that the light bounces off its serrated teeth. “I may have messed with her a little, I admit. She wasn’t my type, but it was fun tricking her into thinking I wanted to be with her. I just wanted her to stay the hell away from Wren, but…” He shrugs, chuckling softly. “She was so fucking gullible. Not like you, eh, Elodie. No, you’re smart. Pointless putting it all together now, though. It’s far too late for that.”

47

WREN

“Whoa! Where’s your mask? I thought you were hot as hell as a wolf, Jacobi.”

It’s just my miserable luck that the first person I stumble across in the forest is Damiana. There are five reg flags tied around her wrist. Her slinky naughty nurse outfit looks like it’s