The word feels inadequate. Pleasant is what I call a well-executed business deal or a satisfying meal. It doesn't capture whatever this thing is that's happening in my chest, this strange warmth spreading through tissue I'd assumed was incapable of feeling anything beyond satisfaction at a hunt well-conducted.
"Then tomorrow," I continue, because she still hasn't responded and the silence is starting to feel like a physical weight pressing against my lungs, "five more stations. Each one progressively easier, not harder. A gradual descent rather than an escalating climb. We'd be finished by lunchtime."
I think about the beach on the eastern shore of the island, the white sand and clear water I've never actually used because I'm always too busy monitoring operations and planning hunts.
"After that, we could do something fun," I say, and the word sounds foreign in my mouth. Fun is not a concept I typically apply to my existence. "Go to the beach. Swim. There's a boat if you want to go out on the water. Fishing equipment if that appeals to you. Whatever you want."
I stop talking because I've run out of things to offer her.
The silence returns.
Scarletta is looking at me with an expression I can't quite parse, her eyes searching my face for something I'm not sure I'm capable of providing.
I wait for her answer.
And wait.
And realize, with a sensation that feels disturbingly like vertigo, that I don't know what she's going to say.
This is not a familiar feeling. I research. I plan. I anticipate outcomes and prepare contingencies for every possible scenario. But Scarletta exists outside my models, unpredictable in ways that my usual methods of analysis can't account for.
I think about what happens if she chooses to leave.
The plane ride back to Idaho Falls. The empty apartment waiting for her, still decorated with the Christmas tree I had installed, still monitored by cameras she hasn't disabled. She'll write about this experience eventually. She'll turn it into another story for her readers, another chapter in the ongoing narrative of ScarletSins and her dark fantasies.
And I'll be here.
Alone.
Watching her through screens, reading her words, cataloging her patterns, but never touching her again.
The thought produces a physical reaction in my chest, a tightening sensation that I identify after a moment as something I haven't experienced in years.
I'm going to be sad if she leaves.
The realization lands like a blow.
I don't do sad.
I do focused. I do driven. I do satisfied when a hunt concludes successfully and empty when I'm between targets. But sad implies caring, implies investment, implies that this woman has somehow become more than a project, more thanan obsession, more than the subject of six months of careful surveillance and planning.
I look at her face, at the way the soft lighting of the aftercare room catches the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, at the small smile that hasn't quite faded from her lips.
I want her to stay.
Not because I've invested resources in this operation.
Not because her departure would represent a failed mission.
I want her to stay because the thought of watching her walk away makes something inside me feel hollow in a way I don't have words for.
She still hasn't answered.
Chapter 12
Scarletta
He just told me he kills people.
