He nodded, and I took his hand. He stared at me for a moment but gave my hand a squeeze, which I interpreted as him indulging me rather than approval, but that was fine. I led him back out to the staircase near the front door and we went up together. He gave me a look as I guided him along the hall past all the rooms, and we turned right at the end where there was a tiny half corridor. I pulled on a cord overhead and a set of ladder steps came shooting down to the floor from a trapdoor. He glanced at me with wide eyes.
“We’re going up. Are you afraid of the dark?”
He stared at the emptiness and shook his head.
I laughed and went first, even though I was leery of having him at my back. I didn’t quite trust him, but that was half the fun. The attic wasn’t tall enough for me to stand upright. I grabbed a flashlight I kept next to the ladder for this purpose and pushed the button to turn it on, the beam cutting through dust motes in the air. I walked toward the far corner where I kept a stack of boxes and took down a plain brown one from the top of the pile, then set it on the bare wood floor and opened the flaps. Ari sat down cross-legged next to the box, and I joined him. He looked at me with interest.
“Go ahead.” I gestured at the open box.
Brows furrowed, he reached in. He dragged four driver’s licenses out, and I held the flashlight closer to him as he shuffled through them with a pout on his lips.
“Who are these men?” He frowned at me.
“They’re all scum who belong in prison, but I couldn’t put them behind bars. They went free on technicalities or because we—the police—weren’t able to collect enough evidence. I’m not a detective and don’t want to be because there’s too much of a chance of exposure for me. But these men were useless. They killed carelessly and with no art.”
Ari’s eyes were huge as dinner plates when he glanced at me. “These men are all killers? Like us?”
I pointed to the photo of a man on top of the stack in his hand. “No, not like us.” I’d never killed anyone outside of the line of duty, but I supposed that counted. “Jeffrey Arlan Wengrow. He ran over a little girl and hid the evidence. I found her tricycle in his garage, and he was eventually charged with manslaughter because we couldn’t make anything else stick. He had time to clean and repair the van he hit her with, and all the evidence was long gone. I told the detectives he was her stepfather’s cousin, and he was paid to make the little girl disappear, which was a fact—I heard the rumors on the street and ran down corroboration for them. It went nowhere, a jury never saw the evidence.”
Ari shook the box and snatched my flashlight from my hand to peek inside. He turned excited eyes on me. “And you have a box full of stories like that?”
I shrugged, frustration making my face hot. This was someone who had taken it upon himself to kill and do it well, and here I was talking about fantasies. “I always figured someday I would get sick of playing pretend. Then... I would go off grid and make a real change, take them out. They deserve it.”
I tapped Wengrow’s license, and he glanced at it again. “He’s been working at a gas station nearby for three years. He’s scared of me. He’s like a rat, cowers whenever I enter the store. He is aware that I know what he did.”
Ari pointed the flashlight at the license and brought it closer to his face. “Would anyone miss him?” He didn’t sound as if he particularly cared, more like he was inquiring about the weather.
“Just his cousin, who also deserves to die. I have his license in there somewhere, too.” I shivered. It had been a thrill to steal those at crime scenes and interviews, and I’d been doing it for years. If someone seemed like they deserved to go in the box, it felt like I was honor bound to make sure I got their license.
Ari hummed and flashed me a small, twisted smile. “Too bad you told me to leave town.” He stared at me with his beautiful dark eyes and something strangely emotional twisted up my gut.
I wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and he hissed as I abruptly dragged him flush against my side. I expected him to be tense, but he melted into my hold like maybe he’d wanted to be there in the first place. “You didn’t listen when I told you that, did you?”
“No.” He blinked at me, as if daring me to say it again. I didn’t want to.
“You can’t kill the same way twice, which you already figured out. No matter how careful you are, if you kill a lot of people, you’ll have to leave town eventually.” An awful sensation sank into my chest, one I didn’t feel often. Sadness. I didn’t want him to go.
Something sharp poked my side, not enough to cut me, and I glanced down. Ari had a switchblade in his left hand—he was still holding the driver’s licenses with his right one. I grabbed his wrist and shoved the knife away from me, but he dropped the flashlight in the process and it bounced onto the floor at my side with the beam pointing at us. Ari hissed and let the driver’s licenses fly as we wrestled for control of the knife. He was much smaller than me, but he seemed to know how to throw around his body weight in a useful way. I didn’t want to hurt him.
Ari came close to taking a slice out of my chest with his damned switchblade, so I slammed him onto his back and pounded his hand off the floorboards until the knife went skidding away into the darkness. I stared down into his face, and he was smiling as he looked right back.
“Testing me?” I asked.
“You surprised me. I wasn’t sure if you were going to hurt me or not. I’m glad you wouldn’t be easy to kill.”
I pressed my weight down against him and wasn’t shocked to feel his chubby firm against my stomach. “You wanted to gut me?” I asked, pressing harder against him. “Or do you want to ream me?”
He moaned and his eyes fluttered closed. “No, I didn’t want to kill you, but I would’ve. You’re not like everyone else. You don’t get sucked in by my face. You know I’m more.”
I snagged his other wrist and put them both above his head, rocking my body against his. His mouth was beautiful and I wanted to kiss him—brutalize him. He arched against me, then glanced at the box nearby.
“You want all those people dead because they’re bad people?”
“Are you trying to figure me out?”
He nodded and whined when I ground my cock against his thigh. Pleasure sizzled through my veins.
“No, I want them dead because the world makes more sense if the right people die, and their deaths would be like divine balance. It’s difficult to explain.”
