Eric’s conjured voice continued to encourage her to keep going.
“What your mother did was awful. But it made you stronger, right?” She was running out of time. “I mean, look at you. You got out of that life. Went on to make something of yourself. You’re asurgeon,Greg. Not many people can—”
“Do you want to know how I got into medical school?” He came back into view.
Riley’s heart rate spiked wildly when she saw the rope in his hands.
“I got a pity grant. That’s what everyone called it. It didn’t matter that I was at the top of my class. Or that I aced every board and inquiry required of me. Everyone there knew the only reason I got in was because theyhadto accept so many lower-income students in each year. I filled a quota for them.”
“Does it matter?” Riley couldn’t stop looking at that rope. “The only thing that should matter is that you graduated and became a successful surgeon.”
And a serial killer. But that was beside the point she was trying like hell to make.
“She never even missed me.” Hayes stepped closer to the bed. “I asked her when she finally came home. I remember standing there, looking up at her big, brown eyes and asking if she missed me.”
Miss me?
Correction,thatwas the final piece to the puzzle.
He hadn’t written those words to her. Not really. Hayes had left those notes to his neglecting mother.
“Do you know what she said?”
Riley shook her head as best she could.
“You stink.” A flash of something resembling emotion crossed over his face. “That was it. She said I stank and told me to go take a bath.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Like you said...” He began wrapping both hands around the ends of the thick rope. Rope he’d probably used to kill every single one of his victims. “It made me stronger.”
This was it. This was how she was going to die.
Fear paralyzed her. The sadness in her heart broke her.
Please, God. I don’t want to die. Not when I finally found the love of my life.
Eric’s face flashed before her. His sweet, handsome, loving face. In her mind’s eye, Riley stared deep into his baby blues. The ones she knew from that very first day were eyes she’d lose herself in.
In the end, she lost herself to him in every way imaginable.
Just don’t let him be the one to find me. Please, at least spare him that much.
The mattress dipped as Hayes kneeled beside her. The ropes rough threads scraped across her cheek as he slid it between her face and the pillow.
No, no, no!
“Please—”
“Goodbye, Riley.” The rope pinched the skin on her neck as it began to close off her airway. “I really am going to miss you.”
****
“Move out of the fuckingway!” Eric smacked his hand against the dashboard. “Goddamn, D. I told you we should’ve gone the other way.”
“I’ve got this.” Derek weaved in and out of traffic. “Hang on!” He jerked the wheel to the left, the tires on the Homeland SUV sending smoke into the air behind them as they took a side street at the very last second.
They were still three blocks away from his apartment. For Eric, it may as well be thirty.
