Her thumb traces the edge of the paper without looking at it. ‘Someone who was there. Young enough that no one would have listened to him, or he told himself they wouldn’t.’
‘And he’s mad at both of us.’
‘I know.’ She exhales slowly. ‘Our bubbles burst, huh?’
Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I tip my head onto hers. ‘We’ll get him.’
‘While our bubble’s burst, tell me about what happened with the policeman. I saw a news article about torture… and fire.’
Damn.
‘He deserved it.’
‘That and more.’ I turn to face her, expecting her to have been far, far more disgusted with me.
‘You really don’t hate me?’
‘Liam, I fucking love you. The darkness is part of you and me. They made us like that.’
‘You.’ My heart aches. ‘Love.’ I feel like I might pass out. ‘Me?’
Kat tilts her head a little and gives a smile. ‘Every single part. I always have.’
And like it was information I should have known, and not that upends everything inside me, she goes back to talking without a second’s thought.
‘You were careful though, right?’
‘Yeah, gloves, mask, no cameras. Resisted spitting in his face. Thoroughly sanitised my equipment before disposing of it far from the scene.’
‘You made him suffer, right?’
‘He cried like a baby. Begged for his life.’
‘He’d been doing to others what was done to me,and he wasn’t going to stop.’ My jaw tightens. ‘And I extracted all I could from him.’
‘Good,’ she says.
‘That’s it?’
‘I wish I could do it to all of them.’ She meets my eyes and gives the most saccharine smile. ‘I mean it.’
I’m still stuck on the fact that Katherine Elliott loves ME.
She breathes out through her nose. ‘Did the names he gave you help at all? None were the boys, were they?’
‘All dead ends as far as your stalker goes. Especially with this last note. He was too fast to be any of the older men, and I don’t think any of the adults bothered with my name; they used much less pleasant names.’
‘We need to find him,’ she says.
‘Yes.’ I broach the one guy who knows where she lives and is the right age. ‘What about Darren?’
‘No… not Darren,’ she says. ‘I’ve never let him in my house.’
‘But he knew where you lived. He could have come back. And for a few weeks there was nothing… right after you let him down.’
‘You saw that?’ Her nose crinkles in the cutest way.
‘I’m always watching, Kat. Well, almost.’ I glance down at the knife. Not often enough clearly.
