Chad—the detective—finally whispered, “You belong in here.”
Romeo smiled.
Toying with Chad’s threadbare morals was fascinating to watch.
****
When he stepped back into his cell, the countdown in his head reset itself. Another seven days until he saw Chad again. Seven painfully slow days of laying on his bed, caught in the past.
It took over his mind. He thought of his family life, his upbringing, his parents. Random memories cropped up when he least expected them to, and he was left dwelling.
When the unavoidable present interrupted his thoughts, he hated it. The present was poison, filled with the unachievable desire to escape, but even worse than that was sleeping.
The nightmares.
Romeo stared around his cell, then ungracefully slumped on the bed. 211 days since the cuffs had first snapped on his wrists, and escape had been on his mind ever since, but it seemed impossible in the maximum-security prison.
Chapter Two
“It’s 2:00.”
Romeo looked at Paul through the bars, then sighed, getting out of bed. 2:00 on a Saturday meant it was his only other visitor, Holly Stevenson.
Wednesdays were Chad days, and Saturdays were for Stevenson.
“Hey Romeo…”
He paused as he went through the gate and looked at Will in the neighboring cell. Long hair up in a bun, big smile on his face. It was hard to imagine he’d killed anyone, slim, gaunt. He looked like a gust of wind would’ve been his undoing. He was in for stabbing two police officers to death, and was the only man in the prison Fred and Paul hated more than Romeo.
“You going to see that hotty?”
Paul waved his baton at Will. “Back off.”
“Was only asking…”
“Yep, I’m off to see hot Holly.”
Paul glared at him. “Watch your tone.”
“Can you tell her I’ll be thinking of her?” Will said, winking.
Romeo smiled. “No. Holly’s for me.”
“In your messed-up dreams.” Paul growled.
Will snickered. “I’ll catch up with you later, Romeo.”
“We’ll have a beer at the bar.”
“Some pork scratchings?”
“Yeah, why not? I’ll treat you.”
Fred pushed Romeo in the back, encouraging him to walk.
****
94 days since he’d first agreed to meet Holly Stevenson.
Holly Stevenson, who had picked up where Marc had left off, writing the next installment in Romeo’s dramatic tale.
Psychologist. Journalist, and single. She’d dropped enough hints for Romeo to know.
Blonde hair, low cut top, and fake lashes surrounding her blue eyes. When Holly first started visiting, she kept her blouse done up to the top, her make-up minimal, and her hair tied up, but after three months of weekly interviews, she’d relaxed her uptight appearance. Romeo didn’t know whether she was trying to seduce information from him, or whether his good looks and aloof personality had seduced her. Either way, she distracted him enough to make the visits worth it, and winding up Paul by flirting with her was the cherry on the top.
Romeo backed up to the gate, winced when the cuffs pinched his wrists, then waited for Paul and Fred to give him the go ahead to come out.
He walked past the others on his wing, but didn’t blow kisses or wink to them. Then went through the next door, and past the less friendly criminals.
Justin stuck his hand through the bars of his cell, spitting curses, and stamping his feet. Romeo blew him a kiss just to hear him snarl, and Justin didn’t disappoint. He howled down the corridor, loud enough for Fred to cover his ears.
“Jesus, Romeo! Why do that?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
Holly was already waiting for him when he arrived. The same room Chad visited him in, sat in the same chair. Romeo’s traitorous heart skipped a beat, then settled into its normal bored pace. Chad wasn’t there, Holly was.
Holly, who Paul was absolutely smitten with.
“Hello, Romeo.” She smiled sweetly at him, then tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. He sat down on the chair, and tried to get comfortable, but it was impossible with his hands secured behind his back.
He’d kept Chad cuffed in the barn for days and hadn’t appreciated just how painful it was before he’d been cuffed every time he walked around the prison. His shoulders ached from the position, and his fingers tingled.
“I like the blouse, clings to your curves perfectly.”
Holly licked her lips. “Thank you, but I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
“You like me complimenting you, though.”
She didn’t respond, but spread her papers out on the table a little too fast, brushing some to the floor.
“Careful.”
Holly shook her head. “Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize, take your time. I would offer to help, but … well, you know.”
She snorted, flashed him a fond look, then laid her papers down with shaking hands.
All different questions to ask him to get into the mind of a killer. She was writing a feature article about him for the Canster Times. She wanted to know about his upbringing, his relationships, his desire to kill.
Everything personal about himself he’d told her had been an absolute lie.
“How are you today?” she asked.
“Me? I’m great now I’ve seen you. What about you?”
She blushed and looked down at her papers, sorting through them as she got herself together. “I’m great—good, I’m good.”
Romeo could tell she fancied him, by the redness in her cheeks, her blown pupils, and the amount she licked her lips. She was only human, unlike him who was part monster.
“You’ve been writing this article on me for a long time … isn’t it finished?”
“Well mostly. It has been for a few weeks, but I want to make sure it’s right, I want it to be perfect, I’ve got big boots to fill, and a lot of our readers have been waiting for this.”
“Hopefully I won’t disappoint them.”
Holly grinned at him, all shy and sweet. “You couldn’t disappoint anyone, Romeo. The article … it’s in-depth, more a story of your life, than a focus feature on your crime.”
“But that’s what people want to read about, right? My crime.”
“The Canster Times have gone over and over the killings.”
“Not with the added details I gave you.”
Holly pursed her lips. “I guess that’s true. Not even Marc knew about the dead dogs, or the movie you left on for the police, or the phone call you made from a victim’s address.”
“Exclusive to you.” Romeo mumbled.
Holly nodded. “Yeah, thank you for that, but I’m hoping my article will go beyond the crime. Look into the root cause of why you suddenly snapped one day.”
There was no suddenly or snap—he’d always liked the idea of ending a life. Watching it seep away beneath his hands, or feet. It had started with feet. Stomping on insects, then crushing them slowly, feeling the crunch, the wetness beneath his heel. He’d been born with a need to kill.
“Romeo?”
“Sorry, what?”
“I asked about the number five.”
Romeo frowned. “The number five?”
“Yeah. I’ve always wondered if there’s a significance to the number. Did something happen when you were five years old?”
“No, nothing out of the ordinary happened when I was five.”
“Then why five victims?”
“I only got four.”
“But you were trying for five. I want to know why?”
“Five’s a nice enough number. Why not?”
“You could’ve gone for higher, ten…”
“I could’ve gone for lower, say three, then we wouldn’t even be speaking right now, wouldn’t that be a shame.”
Holly snorted, and scribbled onto one of
her many sheets.
Romeo squinted, and saw the word flirtatious.
He wasn’t being flirtatious, but with his handsome face, and his smooth voice, he could understand why she thought he was. She wanted him to be flirtatious with her, so in her head, she made it so.
“There was no significance to five, something didn’t happen on the fifth, or you didn’t have five previous lovers or something that triggered you, maybe your boss gave you five warnings or something.”
“What?”
Holly flicked back through her notes. “You said you woke up one day with a desire to kill, quit your job, and moved to Hatton.”
Sometimes Romeo struggled to remember his lies. Unlike Holly, he wasn’t allowed a pen and paper to write them down.
“I thought five was doable.”
“Doable?”
“Yes. I was using the same method of getting my victims, around the same area, on the same stretch of road. Any more and my chances of being caught would’ve increased.”
“You got caught before you escaped the scene of your last victim, Audrey Banes.”
“Who?”
Holly frowned, looking down at her notes. “Audrey Banes. The fourth person you killed.”
Romeo shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t know.”
“Audrey…” Holly looked behind Romeo to Fred, then Paul. “Number two—
“Ah, yes, number two.”
Holly narrowed her eyes. “Does dehumanizing them make you feel less guilt?”
“I don’t feel guilt, and I’m not dehumanizing them.”
“Referring to them only as numbers, the numbers you gave them.”
“It’s how I remember them.”
Romeo stared at her through the protective barrier. She scrunched her brow, making it twitch. Something he’d said had upset her, but he didn’t care. She asked him questions, and he answered, it wasn’t his fault if she got disappointed by what he said.
“You said killing them felt pleasurable, powerful?”
“That’s right—”
“Sexual?”
Romeo frowned. “Why does everything lead back to sex?”
“Did you find murdering your victims arousing?”
“No.”
“Good, that’s good.”
“Is that for your article, or your own personal interest in me?”
“The article. Of course, it’s for the article … something our readers will want to know.”
“For the record, I enjoy sex as sex, and I enjoy it with some people more than others…”
Holly couldn’t look him in the eye and was blushing more than Chad ever did.
Holly had a crush on him.
Understandable when he looked the way he did, and entertaining to watch the battle go on in her head.
The infatuation vs. disgust at his crime.
He was playing a game with her, just like he’d played one with Chad. It was entertaining, and stuck in a high security prison, he needed all the entertainment he could get.
****
Romeo lay in his bed and stared into the corner of his cell. A spider lurked, its long spindly legs twitched. He watched the spider move across the wall, slipping every so often, then finding its feet.
He’d told Chad the first thing he’d killed had been the magpie’s chicks before they’d even hatched. They were his first conscious kill—the first time he decided to kill knowing full well the implications—but his first victims had been spiders.
His first murder was also his first childhood memory.
Romeo’s mother had screamed and ran across the room when she saw it scurrying out from the sofa. He didn’t understand her fear, nor did it grow in him seeing his mother react so strongly. He felt nothing towards the spider. He slapped his hand down on top of it, killing it instantly.
His mother thanked him for doing it, and he did so again, and again, and he enjoyed squishing them and leaving a smear. It was his first artwork for his mother, not pinned to the fridge, but smudged on the wall or floor.
She was always so grateful, would ruffle his hair, and give him a relieved smile.
His mother thought he was doing it for her, but he wasn’t. It felt good to squish them, to stop them moving for good, killing them had felt good, more than good, it felt right.
The spider on the cell wall slipped halfway down, and Romeo lost his patience. He climbed out of bed and approached. He bawled his hand into a fist, then pounded it into the wall.
“What are you doing?” Will shouted.
“Making art.”
“Jesus, you’re not doing Seamus’s specialty and wiping shit on the walls?”
Romeo rolled his eyes, then admired his work. He’d left behind a smear, and legs, but it didn’t give him the good burst of endorphins it used to.
Romeo had moved up the killing scale. The monster in his mind turned his nose up and grumbled in annoyance.
Killing spiders wasn’t enough anymore.
Chapter Three
When Chad stepped into the visiting room, the smile he gave Romeo didn’t reach his eyes, and he quickly looked away. He was absent excitement, anticipation, and happiness, in fact, he looked like he was experiencing the opposite. There was no newspaper under his arm, and alarm bells started to ring inside Romeo’s skull.
Chad darted looks at the door he’d walked through, he picked his nails, and moved to the chair without looking up at Romeo.
Romeo’s heart started to thump, hard enough to jolt his body. Even harder than the day Chad set fire to the barn, and his perfect plan came crashing down.
Chad didn’t speak, the only sound that came through the speakers was the soft clicking of his nails as he picked at them. He was nervous and didn’t know how to start whatever he was about to do. His lips opened with aborted words, and he glanced at Fred and Paul, then the camera in the corner of the room.
They’d almost gotten to a year, but finally Chad’s therapist, his friends, his colleagues, had worn him down, had made him see the truth.
There was no good in the monster.
Romeo had always imagined the moment when Chad stopped visiting, he just hadn’t envisioned Chad would tell him he was about to do so. The gently-gently approach was so much worse. Romeo wished for the cut-throat one, of Chad just not turning up ever again.
Romeo’s heart thumped, his stomach bubbled, he could feel sweat on the back of his neck, and his breathing was becoming more difficult. He hadn’t realized how much Chad had become a part of him, an escape, a rare joy, until he was about to be taken away.
Chad placed his hands flat on the table and lifted his head. There were bags beneath his brown eyes—they were red, tired. Romeo imagined Chad hadn’t been able to sleep, dwelling on this decision. If a part of him wasn’t ready to let go, he knew he could manipulate it, draw him back in, but didn’t know if he should, didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, and he wanted to do right by Chad … didn’t he?
“It’s okay.” Romeo whispered.
“What is?”
“What you’re about to do. I understand.”
Chad frowned, then looked up at the camera. “And what do you think I’m about to do?”
Romeo hadn’t been in a relationship before, he avoided them. Being that close to someone, it was hard to fake interest, fake a single slither of emotion, but it had been different with Chad.
Somewhere along the line, he’d stopped faking it.
“I think your line is “it’s not you, it’s me,” but we both know it’s definitely me.”
Chad stared at him, no humor in his face. It had been the wrong time to make a stupid joke. If a comment like that hadn’t even lifted Chad’s lips into an inappropriate smile, there really was no hope.
Romeo thought what other couples did in these situations. When they knew the other was about to end it with them. They fought to keep hold of the one they cared about most, promised to change, promised they’d spend more time together, promised to be more intima
te, Romeo couldn’t make those promises, he had nothing to offer Chad stuck behind fences, locks, gates, doors, and bars.
“Wait, you think I’m breaking up—” Chad stopped himself, looked at the camera behind him, Paul and Fred, then looked back at Romeo. “I’m not gonna stop visiting you if that’s what you’re thinking.”
It took a few seconds for Chad’s words to sink in, for Romeo’s heart to calm down, and his lungs to function efficiently again. As soon as his body had processed, and was running normally, he smacked his forehead down on the table, making Chad jump from his chair.
“Thank god for that.”
He was laughing, and when he lifted his head, Chad was smiling, looking totally confused and adorable, but smiling enough that it reached his eyes. Chad wasn’t going to cut him off, sever their tie. Romeo still had his distraction from the hell he was trapped in.
He lifted his head off the table. “Then why are you looking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Nervous, miserable, like you haven’t slept in days. Like … Jesus, Chad, you could’ve put some concealer under your eyes, and sorted your tie out.”
Chad looked down at his wonky tie, then laughed. “Sorry, I’ll remember for next time.”
“So what’s wrong?”
Chad bit his lip, glanced at the camera, then the guards behind Romeo. Whatever it was, he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Romeo closed his eyes, remembering Chad’s Detective Inspector’s rules, the ones the DI had ordered Chad to follow.
He’d allow their weekly visits on the condition that Chad never talked about cases, past, and present. If Chad broke the rule, Chad would lose his job, and any contact between them would be stopped.
The DI was a cruel bastard, and believed Chad’s vow of silence would affect Romeo, frustrate him, anger him, take away his control, and in some ways it did, but Romeo saw the bigger picture. Romeo could see how much it affected Chad. The DI had reigns on him, controlled a part of his life he didn’t want to be controlled.
He was no freer to be himself than Romeo was.
“Okay,” Romeo whispered. “I know … it’s all right.”
Whatever it was, it must’ve been bad. Chad had been involved in a few murder cases since Romeo had been put inside. They were on the news, all wrapped up in a neat little bow. The shotgun spree, ex-husband gunning down his family. The axe attacker, disgruntled teenager going after teachers.
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