teeth she took and why in the heck she needed so many of them in the first place. Ten minutes of this passed before the flight attendants took their positions at various sections of the plane and ran everyone through the standard preflight instructions. Exaggerated arm movements pantomimed the placing of oxygen masks over faces while a prerecorded message droned on in the background imploring everyone onboard to secure their own masks before attempting to assist their fellow passengers. Ten minutes after that, the plane finally streaked down the runway and lifted off, shooting sharp little thrills of excitement through Dana’s stomach and eliciting a delighted whoop of glee from little Bradley in the seat in front of her.
Dana sighed and looked out her window again, watching Los Angeles disappear behind them in a swirling fog of gray-and-white jet exhaust. Like it or not – and she still wasn’t quite sure which one it was for her yet – it was time to get back home to Cleveland, back to her old life in Ohio after six solid months of traipsing around the country chasing deranged serial killers.
Dana sighed again, even more deeply this time. At least, what was still left of her old life. Because not counting Oreo – her beloved black-and-white cat who she’d left under the care of her kindly old landlords at a price and security level she never would’ve been able to find at a kennel – there wasn’t much left of her old life back in Cleveland to speak of.
Wasn’t much left to speak of, at all.
CHAPTER 2
Chicago – 22 August 1977 – 2:31 p.m.
Nicholas was fourteen years old the first time he brought someone to the butcher’s shop without his mother’s permission. Thankfully, he’d managed to survive this long without angering her to the point that made her want to erase each and every last trace of him too. Quite the opposite, actually. Turned out his mother had other plans for him. Plans she’d been feeding him piecemeal over the years until he was old enough to fully understand.
Plans that excited him.
Still, that didn’t mean that what Nicholas was doing here at the moment marked a safe proposition. Far from it, as a matter of fact. Three weeks earlier, he’d stolen a key to the butcher’s shop from her lingerie drawer when she hadn’t been home before making his own copy without her knowledge or consent. He knew she’d kill him if she ever found out, of course, but it was a chance he was willing to take. A chance he felt he needed to take. He was getting older now, for Christ’s sake. Becoming a man. Even had a thin line of downy, first-growth hair on his upper lip to show for it.
So if Nicholas was becoming a man (wispy facial hair and all that in actuality you needed to look at upside down in the light to even see) he figured that he might as well start acting like one. And there was no time like the present, right? Besides, there was still one more step he needed to take, one more rite of passage he needed to navigate.
The rite of passage that would finally make him a real man.
Still, burgeoning man or not, Nicholas’s heartbeat had slammed painfully against his bony ribcage the entire time he’d stood waiting in line for the key machine at the Walgreen’s drugstore, half-expecting to see his mother come storming into the place at any given moment to drag his sorry ass out of there by his ear. Thankfully, though, his mother had never come, and Nicholas had given her sufficient time since then to confront him if she had any suspicions about what he was up to.
When it finally became clear to him that his mother didn’t have the slightest idea of what he had planned – or at least wasn’t going to say anything to him about it – Nicholas supposed he was safe enough. At least as safe as anyone could be around a woman like her. Besides, it was time, wasn’t it? Goddamn right, it was time. Nicholas felt ready for this. Had felt ready for this for a very long while now. Ever since the day he’d watched his little brother brutally murdered in cold blood right in front of his shocked and disbelieving eyes.
Nicholas chased away the unpleasant memory with a quick shake of his head as he glided his ten-speed into the parking lot a strip-mall three and