“Shit, hang on.”
Tobias’s brows shot up as Soren spun around. He returned a second later with two candy bars, one of which he extended toward Tobias with a grin as he pulled the apartment door shut behind them. “I love Butterfingers.” He’d spotted them in the guy’s bag as they exited. “Couldn’t let ‘em go to waste.”
When Tobias waved him off, Soren shrugged and tucked the other in his pocket, then pushed open the door to the stairwell and gestured Tobias through.
“The detective will note that the Butterfingers are missing if he looks at the receipt.”
Soren nodded and crunched into the candy with a happy sigh. The island he’d spent the month before on hadn’t had American candy bars. “He will, yeah. Then he’ll look at the guy’s rap sheet for meth, pimping runaways, breaking and entering, grand larceny, and a quick search of the underground will suggest who he’s working for now. Once he figures that out, I’ll bet you he sends up a goodwill wish that I enjoy this Butterfinger as a reward for taking one more dipshit off the streets without tangling up the court system.”
At Soren’s rental a few blocks away, Tobias stepped in front of the driver’s side door just as Soren was reaching to open it. “Your ability to compartmentalize is impressive. It suggests you’ve been at this a long time.”
“I have. Is there a question in there you want to ask?”
Tobias nodded after a lengthy pause. “How long did it take you to figure out how to disassociate and compartmentalize to the degree that you do?”
Soren squinted at Tobias, gauging the man’s interest and deciding it was both genuine and non-judgmental before he answered. “I’m not compartmentalizing, Doc. Or disassociating. I’m not doing either of those things. I’m fully present.”
There went Tobias’s brows again in a dance of disbelief and intrigue that was growing on Soren.
“Could you explain that a bit more?”
“Mm.” Soren stepped closer and reached around Tobias, pulling the door handle and forcing the doctor to one side, though not before Soren skimmed a touch along his waist. “It’s hard to explain, but I understand compartmentalizing. I just don’t need to do it. I don’t keep things separate in my head like some drawer I tap into when I need to. It just all lives in there together in a jumbled soup. Things flow in and things flow out and things flow around me. You like music, Doc?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There are some lyrics that get it just right: ‘evil don’t look like anything.’ That’s exactly right. Evil and good are just concepts. I do what I do just because it’s what I do. I don’t need a rhyme or reason and I don’t need to push them away from who I am as a person. All people are capable of creation and destruction.”
Tobias tilted his head. “That’s a very interesting point of view.”
“If you say so. You gonna get in?”
Tobias flashed another faint smile and walked around to the other side of the car.
Soren idled at the curb and sent a text to Ronin saying the job was done.
“So, what is it that I was supposed to learn today?” Tobias asked as Soren put the car into gear.
“Oh, today wasn’t about learning anything in particular, per se.” Soren grinned. “I mean, not for you at least. I just wanted to see how you handled yourself in a situation with a person you had no connection to.”
“And?” Tobias prompted him with a sidelong look.
“Now, I think we’re ready to tackle someone you do have a connection to. With,” Soren tacked on, “some specific parameters to start with. No one that you’ve had any contact with in the last five years.”
Tobias was quiet for three blocks before he said, “I think I’ve got just the person.”
9
Tobias
“Who is he?” Soren asked, leaning over to look at the number on the file folder.
Tobias had refused to give up a name the night before. Not because he was having doubts but because he’d wanted to sit with it for the night and savor it. Soren had simply shaken his head as if Tobias was the strange one. But now, they were back at Tobias’s townhouse and he couldn’t keep the information to himself any longer. “Walter Jennings. Pedophile. Habitual re-offender. I stopped our sessions when I realized he wasn’t trying to get better but reliving his offenses for kicks. I attempted to point the police in his direction years ago, but without a specific complainant, it was virtually impossible to do anything.”
“Sounds like a guy nobody’s going to miss,” Soren confirmed with a shrug, like they were discussing the weather or a sports team.
Soren was so odd. Tobias knew a potential serial killer calling a hitman ‘odd’ was a definite pot and kettle situation, but it was true. They couldn’t be more different. Tobias had a place for everything. His shoes, his coat, his messenger bag. They were all masked off in his head, like a chalk outline around a body. His closet was color- coded, his hangers all precisely one inch apart. It soothed him. Let him know that he was in control. Of his life. Of his impulses.
His brain was the same way.
There was a Tobias who maintained objectivity when listening to his clients explain their sins in gruesome detail, there was a Tobias who only appeared in his rage room. Now, there was a Tobias who wanted—no,needed—to kill.
Soren was everything all rolled into one giant, knotted ball of twine. He’d said all those parts of him just mingled together like soup. Tobias didn’t even like his food touching. There was nothing about this arrangement that should work. Tobias was too rigid and Soren was loose about everything—his clothes, his hair. His shaving.
