Stage two waited, where what remained of Reverend Neil Langston would stop being an issue when I disposed of him.
It was only as I began to drag him out that I realized I’d still been recording. I dropped the victim and picked up my phone, then sent the entire last part to Caleb, including the crying, the begging, the extra information, and the slow removal of the reverend’s cock.
I could have edited it.
Removed the screaming.
Cut it down to the information he needed.
I didn’t.
He needed the full sequence to understand because I didn’t know which parts mattered to him.
Caleb called me Doc’s pet psycho, had even given me the nickname Freak, and that made something in my chest settle into place, because he’d named me correctly, and I knew exactly where I stood.
Caleb Shawhatedwhat I did for the Cave, and he told me that to my face.
Most people hid their reaction to me.
Caleb never did, and I didn’t hide the real me from him.
Everything I did was for him.
FIVE
Caleb
To sayI reacted badly to the recording Novak sent me was an understatement. The truth was simpler and uglier—I saw red.
Not just because of the contents of the audio, but that Novak’s low, deep tone did something to me, which was deeply irritating, because my body reacted before my brain caught up. It scared me that Novak had this effect on me as much as it fascinated me. I should have avoided him, should have buried my interest under a mountain of self-preservation, but every time I thought I was done with the fucked-up magnetism between us, some new crack opened in my resolve. Maybe it was guilt too—guilt that I could want someone so dangerous, so immune to the kind of feeling and empathy I believed in and still feel heat rising in my chest and blood thrumming behind my eyes when he was in the room. He was a killer, a psychopath, and he recorded torture as if he was collecting data.
But all his hard focus and intensity did things to my libido I couldn’t get control of.
One second, he got under my skin in a way that was dangerous and distracting. Then he sent me that, and it reminded me who he was—and what he was capable of.
And I couldn’t decide if that should push me further away… or drag me in deeper.
I could rationalizewhywe needed the information because Reverend Neil Langston was the worst kind of man; I’d known it the second his name had surfaced in the files—too clean, too righteous, too carefully insulated by people who owed him favors. A man of the cloth who preyed on kids and secrets they could never hide from me.
But still—Jesus Christ—did Novakhaveto send recordings where the screams outweighed the useful intel? And why the fuck did he narrate the entire thing?
I shouldn’t have noticed how steady Novak’s breathing was on the recording. I made it twelve seconds longer than I should have before ripping off my headphones and swearing loud enough to rattle the glass in my office.
“Fucking freak!”
I couldn’t think of a better descriptor for someone so broken, and that should’ve made him easier to categorize. It didn’t.
Being attracted to him didn’t fit. Obsession didn’t fit. Nothing fit—and that made it worse. Novak unsettled me because he never once tried to hide what he was, and he didn’t have to be in the room to get under my skin.
Sonya didn’t glance up from the tablet in her hands. She sat at the small conference table by the window, sleeves rolled, dark hair pulled back, glasses low on her nose—calm as ever.
“You know, Novak’s not a freak.”
“Psychopath.” Sexy, focused, asshole of a psychopath.
“Yeah, but not the kind of psychopath you think he is.”
“Then what is he?”
