Kill Game: An Unforgettable Serial Killer Thriller

by Adam Nicholls

  “And why should we give you what you want? What control do you really have?” Bella tried to sound tough, but her hand was shaking, and flakiness edged into her wavering voice.

  “You come play with me like we used to, duckling. All of this will stop. All you need to do is come back to your old friend. Someone’s got to rip open all those scars.”

  Bella felt herself yell before she heard it. It echoed through the room and out into the hallway like a primal howl. “Fuck you, Ross. Fuck you. Fuck you!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Her voice, cursing and howling in his ear, gave him more pleasure than anything he’d heard in a long time. The wet, garbled noise the Sandy woman had made when he’d cut her tongue out had been good, but Isabella’s fear and rage was his life’s blood. He felt his ear grow hot where the phone was pressed against it, the unguarded disgust in her voice traveling down into his groin where it throbbed.

  He was winning. Sure, he’d had to get loud about the whole thing, killing a celebrity and making phone calls, but he’d finally flushed her out. It was only going to be a matter of time before he had her again, before her body was right back where it belonged—where it had always belonged.

  Bella was still cursing at him when he hung up the burner phone. He looked up one last time to where the lights burned in the penthouse suite above him. For a few seconds he’d even been able to see her tiny body silhouetted against the glass. She was still so small. He thought again of her limbs, thin and willowy, and of the sick heat he’d fed off for so many months. She’d changed him, his little duckling. She’d taught him to have a hunger like this, a ravenous, obscene hunger that overshadowed any other desire he’d ever had.

  Salem tucked the phone back into his jacket pocket. He’d been standing outside Sandy’s apartment since he left, and enough rain had collected on his shoulders to drip down onto his hands. He brushed the drops off, looking across the street to where the crowd around the murdered woman’s building was still growing. He’d even seen a few people bring bouquets of flowers and teddy bears to place in a memorial around her doorway. He’d caused this. He’d raised the tent for the circus that was laid out around him on all sides. He’d never been prouder.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked across the street. He would mingle, just for a bit.

  At least three camera crews had arrived. Desperate for what was going to be the biggest scoop of the week, they jostled against each other for the best shot of the apartment entrance and the forlorn doorman who stared, confused, out his door where it was flung wide. The reporters were so sincere. Hair coiffed and faces powdered, they spoke into the bright lights of the camera like they were consoling their best friends. Their voices combined with each other to become white noise, babbling and sputtering like that awful Sandy used to do.

  Watching them from behind the cameras, Salem remembered how wonderful it’d felt to rip her tongue out. She’d never annoy him again. These three though… He scoffed and shook his head as they spoke in tangent, delivering the biggest scoop of their careers with hungry compassion. He might have to cut out their tongues, too.

  What would they do, he wondered, if he were to jump in front of the cameras and confess to all the murders. Where would he be on the national celebrity register if he were to expose his crimes on live television? He’d already earned himself a hashtag, so what if he were to take it that extra step and cut out one of their tongues right now?

  Historic. That’s what he’d be. If he managed to get away with it, he’d be a YouTube sensation, his face on every television screen and computer monitor worldwide. Hadn’t he always wanted to make his mark on the world?

  Who was to say his career as a killer had to end once he got a hold of his little duckling?

  He was about to step closer to the camera when he was jostled by an officer. The man placed his hand on Salem’s shoulder, his face turned to the walkie-talkie he was speaking into. Salem jumped, shocked out of his reverie.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to move out of the way, sir. We have emergency vehicles coming through.”

  “Sorry, Officer,” Salem mumbled and began to step up into the tightly packed crowd that’d moved up to the sidewalk. Before he did, he turned to the officer, a wide smile on his face.

  “Officer, do you know what happened here? Is everyone okay?”

  The officer looked past Salem, peering over his head to where he expected the ambulance to arrive. “You’ll have to wait for the morning news like the rest of the world, sir,” he said, waving him up onto the sidewalk.

  “Nothing? Did someone die?” he continued, the excitement of his dirty secret like a lump in his throat. He wanted to laugh. “Did you get the guy who did it?”

  The officer finally made eye contact. Under the streetlights, Salem could see how rattled the man was. For someone so big and so heavily armed, he looked as if he were clinging to his composure with whatever was left of his strength.

  “This wasn’t a guy. This was a monster.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The patio that circled the penthouse wasn’t as weatherproof as she’d hoped. The rain that had begun to fall was bitterly cold. The gusts of wind that circled the high-rises around Sandy’s building drove the rain under the overhang and onto Bella’s burning cheeks. She welcomed it. Anything to stop her heart racing.

  Brooks and Gray, however, were huddled against the wall, their arms crossed and their foreheads crumpled with matching concern. Bella strode by them, pacing as adrenaline pumped through her body.

  “I screwed up again,” she said through clenched teeth. “Again! How could I be so stupid?”

  “You knew it would be him, and you recorded the conversation. That’s not a screw-up—that’s evidence we didn’t have before,” Kyle said as she passed. He was trying to be helpful, at least. “It was a good call.”

  Bella stopped in front of them, frenzied with guilt.

  “I told him to fuck off. How was that a good call? I could’ve kept him on the line, I could’ve asked him more questions, I could’ve done anything and it would’ve been better than what I did. What if I just cost another person their life? He’s not going to stop until he gets to me, you know that don’t you?”

  “We don’t know that.” Another burst of cold air slapped the three of them. Kyle’s teeth started to chatter. “How can we know whether he’s going to kill again? How can we know how a madman’s brain works? The only thing we can do is work with the evidence we have.”

  Bella uttered a bitter replica of a laugh. “I know that, Kyle. Just like I know that he’s going to kill again, and I don’t want to have that on my conscience.”

  “It’s on all of us, Bella, not just you,” Brooks finally spoke. “We’re all responsible for catching Ross. You’re only involved in this case because I have no other choice. You’re a risk. We know you’re a risk, but we’ve got to use everything we can. I can’t have him getting away again.”

  Bella stepped under the overhang. Her hair was wet and beginning to curl up around her hairline. Combined with her tight, non-blinking eyes she felt uncomfortable and undone. She was suddenly in Brooks’s face, a soggy mass of searing intensity. “You won’t. We won’t lose him again.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We’re going to give him what he wants.”

  The men were stunned for a second, forgetting all about the cold and no longer shivering. Their jaws dropped in unison, their teeth no longer chattering. Nobody said anything until Brooks stepped forward with a single word falling from his lips. “No.”

  “Not a chance,” Kyle backed him up, even moving closer to him as if being in Bella’s line of vision might change her mind. “There’s no way we’re handing you over to that pervert.”

  Bella ignored him, directing all her energy to her father.

  “I can do this,” she said, lowering her voice. “You’ve seen me put away men twice his size. I’ve got more arrests than anyone in our department. My
track record is perfect.”

  “I said no.” Brooks looked past his daughter’s head. His hand reached for a phantom pack of cigarettes in his pocket despite the fact he’d quit years ago. He was looking for something to do with his hands—anything to avoid looking down at her earnest face.

  “If I wasn’t who I am—if he hadn’t done what he did to me and I had no connection to this case—I’d be your first choice to head this investigation, and you know it.”

  “Hey…” Kyle began.

  Bella silenced him with a look and continued. “If you can’t get past this protective dad bullshit of yours and let me do my job, who knows who else is going to be hurt?”

  Brooks finally looked at her. Irritation had brought the hardness back to his face, every line cut sharp like he was made of stone. “My protective dad bullshit?”

  “Did I stutter? This isn’t about the case anymore, is it?” Bella had never referred to her father as anything else but Brooks or Captain. The word Dad might as well have been an open-handed slap to the face.

  Brooks looked nervously to see if there were any other officers on the patio and was relieved to see they were still alone. He drew himself up to his full height, his chest broad where his hands went to his hips. “What is it about, then, Bella?”

  “It’s about how overprotective you are. It’s about me still being that little girl in the basement and you being too stubborn to see it.” She waited for Brooks to explode, to transform into the red-faced, terrifying Captain Hook that had every officer in his department shining their shoes before work every morning. She was frozen, watching his face as he struggled to contain whatever emotions were surging beneath the badge in his chest pocket. “You would send in any other detective with as many connections to the suspect without a second thought”

  “Don’t you—”

  “I’m not finished,” Bella said, almost shouting. Her finger jabbed at her father as she spoke as if she were trying to poke a hole in the shell he’d built around himself. “At this point, if you don’t let me do it, anything else this sick bastard does is on your shoulders. I can’t let that happen, Dad. I won’t. You either send me in, or I’m going in alone.”

  Bella had made her point. She took a ragged breath, her heart beating like a parade drum in her ears.

  Brooks continued staring at her, his own chest moving up and down in long stretches.

  “You’re my daughter, Bella. I made that commitment years ago, and I will honor every damn part of it,” he finally said, his voice so quiet she almost had to lean in to hear him. “I’m sorry. You’re right and I’m sorry. But you’re my daughter, and I can’t let you use yourself as bait.”

  Bella felt her face crumble. All the toughness that had made it burn with desperation drained out, leaving behind a frustrated girl on the verge of a tantrum. “Fine.” She smoothed her hair with trembling hands, hesitated for a moment, and then turned on her heels. The men watched as she half ran, half walked toward the door that led to the stairs. She sensed Kyle lurch forward on instinct, but something held him back. Maybe he knew she was right.

  “Wait,” Brooks said.

  But Bella was already on her way out, and she wouldn’t be held in place by his excuses any longer. There was a problem, she had a solution, and he didn’t want to hear it. What else was she supposed to do? Her father—police captain or not—had to start accepting her as a grown woman at some point. And hell, so did she.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Her hip was screaming at her. It was a bone-sick pain that ran around her pelvis like a girdle and shot down her right leg. Bella ignored it, her eyes focused on the wall in front of her as she forced herself to go faster. The pain was all in her mind. All she needed to do was push through it, and she’d come out the other side. Wasn’t that what she told herself all the time? Just push through it?

  She punched the speed button on the treadmill, and the belt beneath her whined as it ramped up. On cue, her hip screamed again, sending a wave of nausea now rather than pain. Her stomach was shut down anyway. She was running at such a pace that her body was lucky to be getting oxygen, let alone the luxury of a vomit break.

  She hadn’t warmed up, and she knew she’d pay for it later. She’d gone straight from Brooks and Gray and her little scene on the penthouse patio to the gym, fighting back waves of humiliation in the back of a taxi like a heartbroken socialite.

  Save it, she’d told herself. Take it all out on the treadmill. She couldn’t afford to dilute her rage—she needed it at full strength if she was going to accomplish what she had in mind.

  The thump of her feet on the belt was starting to fall out of rhythm. She’d even left her strict guidelines for pacing behind. All she wanted to do was move. All they wanted to do was keep her stagnant, keep her safe in a little cage of their own making. She’d had enough of big swinging dicks telling her what to do. The captain or Salem and even aw-shucks Kyle, they were taking turns with her now, manipulating her to satisfy their own desires, good and evil. She was sick of it. So sick of it.

  Fuck them all. She wasn’t going to watch another person die while she lived—as if her own mess of a life was so much more valuable.

  She’d lost control of her breathing as well as her pace. If she wasn’t careful, she’d tumble right off the treadmill and onto the sweat-sodden mats behind her. She tried to focus, but the burning ache in the back of her throat as her body fought for oxygen was too much. The gym buckled beneath her like Sandy’s apartment had, dipping and surging under her aching legs as she ran and ran and ran, but not fast enough. Never fast enough.

  Her eye had swollen where Scott had hit her. The bone still ached beneath, bruised in a way that had become far too familiar to her. She reached up and touched it tenderly with her dirty fingers. The swelling began at her cheekbone and reached its apex where the lids were swollen shut. A part of her wished she had a mirror so she could see what the shiner looked like. She’d never had a black eye before. She’d never had a lot of the things she’d had forced on her in this filthy cellar.

  Bella shuddered where she sat, curled up into herself in the corner. She refused to go anywhere near the air mattress. She’d rather sit on the damp concrete, a pillow of rat shit and dust for her head, than go anywhere near that disgusting plastic thing. The sheets hadn’t been washed since she’d arrived, and from where she sat she could still see the blotches and stains of blood and fluids all over the worn cotton.

  She’d die here. She knew that now. Her chance to be saved had been dismissed a day ago. It’d walked itself back down the stairs and back into its car, went back to its family and its frozen-pizza Fridays to leave her here to die. If the policeman had a family, that was. Bella sure didn’t.

  She pushed her head back into the shadows of the corner. It was the last place she’d heard her mother singing before she’d fallen silent. She’d stopped coming a while back. Bella had lost track of conventional time, but from what she could gather from meal times and sunrises, it’d been at least two weeks since she’d heard her. She’d sung her to sleep every night. She’d told her stories, whispering in Spanish from the spiderweb of shadows she hid in. Bella had strained to hear them, like a radio heard from another room, until she’d finally fallen asleep. She slept a great deal these days. She felt the weariness fall over her now, like a heavy blanket fluttering up and down until it landed on top of her like a second skin.

  Bella’s good eye was just flickering shut when a noise from the door at the top of the stairs woke her. She automatically scrambled deeper into the shadows, pressing the sharp bones of her spine against the concrete. He was coming. Oh God, he was coming.

  She heard herself whimper, staring through the shadows at the wooden staircase across from her and waiting for his feet to stumble down one at a time. What she saw instead sucked the air out of her lungs like she’d been punched again.

  The door creaked open and a man was thrown down into the darkness. Bella watched him roll down the stairs, hi
s jacket flapping around and his shiny shoes catching the light from the single bulb like a prism. This was not Jim or Scott or Him. This was a stranger in a recognizable blue uniform.

  She watched, mute, as the man became a heap at the bottom of the stairs. There was laughter from upstairs, and the cellar door slammed, the sound of the lock clicking in place an exclamation mark. Holding her breath, she watched the mound at the base of the stairs groan. One arm and then another emerged from the uniform-clad mess, and he pulled himself up to sit.

  Had he been captured, too? Had someone killed his mother? His wife? Dropped him down here in the damp darkness to keep her company? What if he wanted what the rest of them wanted? What if this was a trick? A new fear ignited in her, and Bella pushed back even farther. She heard herself cry as she dragged her bare feet into the safety of the shadows.

  At the sound of her sobs, the man looked up. Despite the bruising and blood that coated his face like a ski mask, his eyes were sharp. They scanned the entire basement with robotic precision. “Isabella?”

  Her breath caught in her throat, locked there as her muscles clenched. The man moved to his feet. How did he know her name? She’d been called nothing but duckling for so long that she’d forgotten that was what they called her in that other world—the real world.

  “Isabella Cruz, is that you, honey?”

  He crept forward, still scanning every inch around him. His uniform was so torn from whatever struggle he’d been in that he looked more like a cartoon of a hobo than a real person. He shuffled into the center of the room and then stopped. He’d seen the mattress and the bloodied sheets, and Bella watched as his giant owl-like eyebrows knitted together with disgust. He knelt beside her bed in a second, examining the dirty chocolate-covered plates that surrounded it and the bucket.