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Controlled.

Dr. Quinn nodded faintly. “The skin removal is extremely precise. It’s been done without disturbing or cutting any muscles or tendons, even around the delicate areas such as the genitalia and other appendages, like the toes and fingers. The veins are also intact. It’s…meticulous. He works with such precision, it’s almost professional,” Dr. Quinn said with a grimace, adjusting her mask when it slipped down her nose.

Sebastian glanced at me. “Professional how? Like a surgeon?”

“Or a butcher,” I added, like there wasn't a hollow pit forming in my abdomen as I voiced the words out loud.

“So we’re looking for a doctor or a butcher…who moonlights as a serial killer?” he said as I took my notepad and pen out and started writing details down.

“It's hard to say. He could be neither. He’s been doing this for years, it could just come down to experience,” Dr. Quinn suggested as she covered the body up again.

“He’s also had fifteen years to perfect his method and skill,” Sebastian added, removing his mask and stuffing it in his coat pocket.

“We need to look up cases from before 1982 of bodies that were found on the side of the road,” I said, pulling my own mask off. “Focus on the ones with marks that suggest there was an attempt to remove the flesh or with missing skin in general. For all we know, he’s been doing this long before he killed Matilda Stevens.”

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

JACKSON

December 22nd, 1992

Ishould’ve been familiar with the feeling of her absence. I had spent seven years without her, accustomed to the harsh reality that I would never see her beautiful face or hear her sweet voice in real life ever again. It shouldn’t have hurt this much. Yet hours passed without seeing Evie, and it felt as if I’d lost her all over again. Like the hollowed pain in my chest was a fresh wound and not an unhealed scar.

I remember it took me months to fall asleep without crying. Without seeing her face when I closed my eyes, picturing all the horrible things that were probably happening to her. She wasn’t supposed to be captured by a serial killer and held captive for the last seven years.

She was supposed to be mine.

Mine to love.

Mine to protect.

Mine to cherish.

Mine in every sense of the word.

That’s why it made me sick when I’d heard the unmistakable sounds of mattress springs when she went back upstairs. I thought it was the pounding in my skull at first—but then I heard it.

“Stop crying and get on your knees.”

My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as Evie cried out, and the incessant squeaking continued. I thrashed, trying to get down from the hook, screaming in agony as it tore through my shoulder. It was like all my nightmares were coming true. Evie was upstairs, alive, being assaulted by that monster, and I couldn’t fucking do anything about it. “Fuck!” I bellowed, pulling on the chains.

“Mate, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” Christopher hissed from behind.

“He’s hurting her!” I shouted, kicking my legs out. Darkness cloaked the corners of my vision as I swung above the ground, pushing through the pain, trying to get down. “Evie,” I murmured as my eyes fluttered. Don’t you fucking give up, Jackson. “I'm gonna…” I mumbled, jolting against the chains as my vision tunnelled out. “Get you…out of here…gonna…” My head lulled back on my shoulders as all my energy drained from my body.

When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting beside Christopher on the uncomfortable mattress with my arms chained above me. I didn't even register the dull throb in my shoulders—I just stared lifelessly into the darkness. How long had Evie been suffering like that for? The whole time? Every day since she’d been gone? I squeezed my eyes shut as they stung while a quiet, unfamiliar pressure built behind my sternum, something dangerously close to cracking the control I’d spent the last seven years perfecting.

But emotion wouldn’t help her.

Losing control wouldn’t change what had already happened.

It would just make me weaker.

And weakness was exactly what put me here in the first place.

I refused to become a mirror image of the dying man beside me, no matter how friendly he seemed. Christopher had accepted his fate. I refused to sit here and wait until The Skinner decided mine.

“I’m not dying down here.”