“Do you need anything from him?” she asks.
“The money. Otherwise, make it beautiful for the victims.”
“I will,” she says, photographs him, and prepares everything to burn down the house. “I would have bathed him in acid.”
“You can do whatever you want with your prey; this was mine. Be done here in ten.”
I walk outside the house because I know Kat will do whatever is needed to my utmost satisfaction and take my golden cross necklace from my suit trousers. I slide the chain through my fingers and rub it three times before I put it back around my neck. I am a firm believer in God, the Lord, as He made me who I am. I became what He needed, what the world made by men needed. Why else would I have been born on All Saints Day with the gift of equalising distinct as mine?
I stare into the dullness of Berlin. I watch a group of young men sitting on the entrance steps leading to one of the multi-komplex houses, smoking pot. Personally, I find Germans in general are very strange people, unemotional and nosy, no class, no style, no charisma—just like the city I am in. I do not wish to stay here any longer.
“Here,” Kat says, handing me a transparent bag. “His phone, DNA samples, photos, and the bullet.”
“Was there anything useful on it?”
“Nothing so far. I made a copy and will check it thoroughly when we are back. We should leave.”
We should. So I walk in my heels, sliding my hat on. We get into the car that is waiting for us.
“I need you to find the money,” I tell Kat. Not because I care much about the money itself, but because the money is a trail. A trail that leads ot the misdeeds of men.
“I have been wondering about that,” she says. “He was rather intent on his daughter, wasn’t he. What if he didn’t touch her, but gave her the money?”
“She’s twelve.”
“So what? I murdered my father when I was that age,” says Kat with a snort, and I consider her for a moment.
“Very well, find her. Track her, but keep your distance. She is too young if we’re wrong.”
“Rose,”says Kat, looking up from her laptop as she sits on the floor in the kitchen of my apartment in Manhattan, and I can see there is something wrong.
“What is it?” I ask, goosebumps spreading over my skin.
Kat bites her lip.
“What?” I repeat my question, more pressing.
“You need to see it yourself,” she says, and turns the laptop.
I get up, walk over to the open kitchen, squat, and stare at the screen. A photo on it?—
My body freezes. My insides clench as I realise what it shows.
“I found it on his phone,” Kat says.
I want to curse, but there are no words as my breath flattens as the sensation of pain consumes my chest like a void.
“She killed him,” I whisper. “She killed my son.”
“Rose,” says Kat, her hand on my forearm, but I am not there. Images flash through my mind as I finally know how it happened. How he was taken from me.
Murderous rage burns through me.
And I know a single thing: I am going to murder this girl for everything she has taken from me. It’ll be slow, it’ll be painful, and I will not stop until I see the life fading from her eyes.
“Find her,” I say as I get up and turn, ice-cold rage consuming my heart. “And bring her. Whatever it takes.”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing,”says Kat on her return as she leans backwards against the rickety old stone railing leading down into the sure death. But she has always been one to walk on the thin line between life and death—something I quite enjoy.
