by Trisha Wolfe
Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t bother me. It’s how I lived my life. Alone. And I preferred it this way. I liked my solitude and didn’t need intimate connections from friends or family. I had always deemed those a burden.
Still, what if I had died during Alex’s torture treatment? What if I never came back? How much time would have passed before someone noticed…and cared?
I tried to shrug off the unease and concentrate on the next steps I needed to take to recover my life, but the thought kept resurfacing, manifesting in a physical symptom, like something akin to homesickness. A queasy feeling I’d heard described by others, but never experienced myself.
So I went to see Vanessa.
My request to stay a few days with my mother was met with a stunned look. Although to be fair, the Botox prevents her facial muscles from displaying varying expressions. But what she said couldn’t have been more clear.
“You’ve never once, in your entire life, asked me for anything, Blakely. Are you ill? Do you need me to make an appointment with Dr. Westfield?”
“I’m not sick,” I told her. At least, I didn’t think I was physically sick. “I just… I think I want to come home for a while.” I had been fiddling with a loose string on my shirt and it snapped. “Have you missed me…at all?”
Another frozen expression. Then: “I don’t know how to answer that, honestly.” She reached for her Prada bag. “Do you need money?”
When the offer of money came, I hardened my expression, replicating the daughter she’d always known to ease her confusion. Then I left. Money is my mother’s answer to everything, hence why I made it a point to never to accept it. Family money came with strings, expectations.
After a failed attempt to connect with my mother, I saw a psychologist in the hopes that, with a vague summary of my circumstance, she could help correct the faulty wiring that Alex had done to my brain.
There were a lot of questions about feelings that, as it turns out when you actually feel them, make you uncomfortable. I canceled the next session.
I wondered if I should go to the police. Make a report on Alex. But really, I didn’t feel traumatized. Was I a victim? My brain was faulty and I was lost—but I had escaped, and there was a body out there that would dredge up more questions than I was prepared to answer.
Useless.
I was wandering the city aimless and confused and utterly useless, and I was starting to become angry. I always had a strategy. I always had a purpose. I had been more than content with my life, and now I was questioning my entire existence.
Then there are the dreams. Or rather, the nightmares. Waking up drenched, heart pounding so hard I’m terrified I’m having a heart attack. Reliving the torture in such vivid clarity, I wake with strands of hair tangled around my fingers from trying to tear the electrodes off my head.
But the nightmares aren’t what frighten me the most.
I’m stirred awake by the memory of Alex’s touch. His intense, pale-blue eyes as he stared into me, as if seeing a part of me I never knew existed. The way the weight of his body on top of mine felt comforting. And when he told me he loved me…the way it tore through my entire being, obliterating the darkness.
I fear him. I fear myself. I fear the emotions he forced on me, and I fear the loss of them.
What I experienced underneath that waterfall grips me nightly, and my hatred for Alex is tied to those indefinable feelings I have for him. Alex is a stain on my soul.
Trying to erase that dark, sordid blemish has only left a hole. There’s an emptiness now, a cavernous chasm where I was torn in half, and I lost some vital piece of myself at that cabin.
I’m frightened I’ll never feel those feelings again with anyone else.
God, the polarizing madness of these thoughts is unbearable. The crushing height of it right there with the depth of this torrid love, this insufferable anguish, that torments me more than any physical pain.
I’m shattering…just like those fucking clocks.
I have to make it all stop before I’m driven mad. I’m determined to fit the pieces back to together.
So, in an attempt to correct the damage and get my life back, I decide to return to work. I make a hair appointment with Lyric to get my roots touched up, buy a whole new wardrobe, then place a call to Lenora.
“I thought you were dead,” she says, voice laced with bitterness. Which completely contradicts her statement, in my opinion.
I internally scold myself for caring what a client thinks, and clear my throat. “Lenora, listen to me. There were extenuating circumstances, I assure you, but I never not complete a job. I’m on this.”
“I don’t know, Lucy. I’m wondering if it’s been postponed for a reason. Maybe I should handle my husband some other way.”
She can’t back out. I need to finish this job. Desperate, I reach for how Blakely Vaughn would handle this conversation. “I absolutely understand, Lenora. Since there are no refunds, then this will conclude our business together.”
“Wait—”
Money always gets the proper attention and respect. I rummage through my bag and dig out my black notebook and pen. As Lenora stresses her new concerns, I reassure her there will be no mistakes. I ask about Ericson’s recent activities and take notes.
“It’s happening this week,” I say, and end the call.
A sense of calm settles over me like a warm blanket, that comfort of familiarity.
I need my normal back. I need to find myself again. And if the only way I can see that through is by punishing Ericson Daverns, then so be it.
After the job is done, the past month will start to blur from my memory, and Alex Chambers will only exist in a dark pocket of my mind.
Staging the scheme has put me back in my element, like sliding into a favorite little black dress. The fit is perfect. The single-minded focus on my target has been the distraction my mind has needed.
For the most part, I kept the plan simple. Any busy establishment is always in search of employees. So I started with the temp hiring services. After confirming Ericson’s firm was seeking a few different positions, I created an email from my very own temp agency and sent over several resumés.
Avery Laurence was hired two days ago as an office assistant. She has all the right skills, and works on the thirteenth floor. Not in the same department as Ericson, but close enough to his offices to observe.
Day one: I scoped out Ericson’s routine. Made any adjustments to his schedule, then followed him to his newest watering hole. According to Lenora, recent credit card charges show Ericson attends happy hour at The Sage House, a swank cocktail lounge tucked into a corner of trendy Tribeca, and Ericson confirmed this.
After watching him for two hours at the bar, I tested my access to the thirteenth floor. There was some persuading of the security officer, but he was easily enough convinced of my desire to work after hours to make a good impression on my new bosses.
I pinpointed three cameras that I need to disable. Luckily, the security system runs on Wi-Fi. One jammer placed on the floor affords me fifteen minutes before any red flags are raised.
Fifteen minutes will be all the time I have to nail my target.
Day two: Instead of testing my access with the security officer again, I hang back this afternoon at my desk as everyone starts to leave for the day. Then I dip into the bathroom and wait. Not the most covert plan, but keeping it simple is the best practice.
I check the time on my phone, and my heart knocks painfully in my chest. Just a flash memory of Alex clicking his pocket watch open, and my body responds.
He’s gone.
There’s a strange melancholy that comes with that awareness. I shake the feeling off and enable the jammer. As an extra precaution, I slide on a mask used by the janitorial staff to shield half my face, then I emerge from the bathroom.
Ten minutes spent searching Ericson’s office computer and I come up with nothing. All his financial records are pristine. Too pristine, in fac
t, as if he’s purposely curated the numbers to appear like all his other accounts.
“Damn,” I whisper.
I should leave now. Go home and regroup. Spend more time observing my target to formulate another plan to safely get the documents I need. But my heart is pounding. I feel the pressure to get the job done tonight, to make this part of my life done.
So I can move on.
I backtrack out of the programs and erase my digital footprints, then remove the jammer before I exit the building. The whole time, every step of the way, knowing where I’ll end up.
A tiny voice in the back of my head says I should monitor my target longer. Be sure—absolutely positive—about the time he leaves The Sage House. But again, I just can’t—I cannot keep postponing this job.
It needs to be finished.
It needs to end.
And my instincts urge me to the building on the corner where Ericson’s second apartment—the one he keeps hidden from his wife—is located. If Ericson is hiding his dealings with Brewster and the fact that he skims off the top of his not-so-legit clients, that has to be where he’s keeping the evidence.
I’m mentally going through the plan, deciding the best way to gain access to his apartment, very much breaking one of my own rules that insist I never wing it, when I hear a definite whimper from the alley of the building.
None of my business.
The Blakely of just a month ago would walk right by this alleyway and not even look. She would feel absolutely no responsibility to turn down the alley when she hears a woman’s cry for help.
But the desperate pull in my chest has me doing the exact opposite.
And when I see him—his hands around her throat—I have no choice.
On reflex, I run toward Ericson and sling my bag at his head. “You sick bastard. Let her go!”
His elbow connects with my cheek, sending me into the concrete wall. Pain radiates through my shoulder. Dammit.
He’s not fazed as he flops his unkempt, dirty-blond hair out of his eyes and continues to strangle the woman, silencing her cries. Her fearful gaze connects with mine, a plea there that riots through me. Then I notice Ericson’s pants are unzipped and slung low around his hips.
Bile rises into my throat, the burn urging me off the wall. “Get the fuck away from her, you piece of shit.”
With a grunt, Ericson slams the woman’s head against the wall. She falls to the pavement, her torn skirt riding up her thighs, a shoe missing from her foot. As Ericson turns to acknowledge me, I shove my hand into my bag.
I take a step backward as he approaches. “This is none of your business, bitch,” he says.
I agree—but it’s too late to walk away. No one cares about what’s happening on this backstreet or the woman with the missing shoe. Cars drive past, horns blare, people rushing to live their lives. Why the hell do I care?
It’s not because I was hired to do a job.
Something else, something foreign and memorable all at once, and it’s waging a war. The feeling builds and builds until it erupts. A lifetime of reserved empathy releases an avalanche.
As Ericson’s lips curl into a snide smile. He must decide I’m not worth his bother because he turns and starts toward his victim again. The helpless, defenseless woman lying in a filthy, pee-soaked alley behind a Dumpster.
As I watch Ericson kneel and lean over her, a fierce violence quakes within me, the onslaught of emotion so overpowering my vision blurs. My chest explodes with heat. Every emotion I’ve been denied takes hold with a furious vengeance.
My hand is still in my bag. I grip the solid object in my palm. My feet are taking me toward Ericson, and then the switchblade is in his back.
His guttural cry bounces off the building as I stare down at my hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife. I yank if free and, as he flails his arms to attack, I drive the blade into his collarbone. I struggle to pry it loose, and stab his chest.
As he falls to the pavement, I follow him down, my strikes wild, the knife finding a new location every time I sink the blade into his flesh. I feel bone and soft tissue and spongy organs. A haze covers my vision. I don’t stop the attack until he goes completely still.
Some thought draws me out of the frenzy, and I glance at the woman. A beat where I notice her chest moving to confirm she’s alive, then I seal my eyes closed. All I can hear are my breaths, the buzz of the city has gone silent.
I stand and stare down at the mutilated body of Ericson Daverns.
A high-pitched ringing pierces my ears. I’m numb. I can’t sense anything around me, other than an irritating sting on my palm. I close the switchblade slowly, my movements so out of character for this moment, then I turn my hand over.
Red covers my palms and fingers. I can’t stop staring at my hands, the way the color darkens the creases of my palms. The ringing grows louder, becoming a vibration in my skull, as I examine the reopened cut on the heel of my hand.
Dread is ice in my veins. The bone of Alex’s victim that punctured me, the cut that has reopened, and the blood of my victim seeping into that wound.
Alex’s final words come back to me in haunting precision. This is exactly what you’re designed to do.
“Oh my, God.” What have I done?
This wasn’t a crime of passion. It wasn’t self-defense, though a great lawyer could make a case for it. The truth is, I had options. I could have called 9-1-1. I could have warned Ericson I’d made the call. I could have fought him harder.
I consciously chose to end him. I knew, in a fraction of a second, that Ericson would get away with hurting…maybe even killing that woman…that he’d continue to hurt others, and I shoved the Taser aside in my bag and chose the switchblade.
I needed it to stop. I needed to stop him. Permanently.
I made a choice to kill.
A scream tears through me as my fingers scrape my hair back.
Once, vengeance was my ethos.
And no one is more deserving of my revenge than Alex Chambers. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d make good on my vow to hunt him down and tear his throat out.
Before Alex, I was a harmless, unfeeling psychopath. He wanted me to experience a world of emotions I’ve never felt before. He wanted to cure my sickness.
He opened a pathway—some closed-off road of neural connector bullshit is now wide open and assaulting me with too many emotions.
No…that’s impossible. Psychopathy isn’t a disease that can be cured. It wasn’t Alex’s experiment that broke my brain, it was the emotions he forced on me—emotions I wasn’t built to feel. His love created the affliction.
He made me a killer.
Epilogue
Alex
Our brains have an internal clock.
Located in the medial temporal lobe, the lateral entorhinal cortex stores cells that code episodic memory. These cells capture the specifics of an event. Basically, they capture memory.
This is our perception of time. Our clock. And some days, it’s pure torture.
I’ve been counting the seconds since Blakely escaped me.
I’ve been counting the minutes since I was inside her, since I last tasted her lips, felt her in my arms.
The days stretch on, and I count.
I destroyed every clock. Shattered my pocket watch. Torched my sister’s cabin and burned it to charred, skeletal remains. I voided data and killed my project in one violent act, all so Blakely could be free.
In essence, I tried to stop time.
So what a cruel revelation it is to discover my brain is the ultimate timekeeper.
As long as I breathe, my cells won’t let me forget her. She’s hard coded into my memory. Her sweet scent of coconut, her taste of sin. The electric current of her touch. She’s a part of my DNA now.
I scrub my hands over my face, a fervent curse uttered in despair as I try to redirect my thoughts. Like the cells coding my memories, I’ve been busy reprograming a new life—one where I’m no longer a brother or a b
iomedical scientist. One free of every painful tie anchoring me to the past.
And as with any program, the coder always leaves a backdoor open. Another way in. However in my case, I left a way out. The night of the fire, I waited until Blakely was clear of the cabin before I escaped through the crawlspace. I had every intention of going down with my failed experiment, but as the flames climbed higher, searing my flesh, the pain brought on a moment of clarity.
I saw her sea-green eyes and the torn emotion behind them as I asked Blakely to end my life. She was conflicted. It was just a spark, the slightest glimmer, but it was there. And that realization changed everything.
I’m counting and theorizing as I wrap my hand with bandage when my laptop pings with a new email. I finish securing the burn, then seat myself behind the screen. My heart rate spikes.
The notification is from my alerts, the ones I have set in place for specific words, phrases, and names.
Ericson Theodore Daverns appears highlighted in bold.
I click the email.
Officials are seeking information on the murder of Ericson Daverns. His body was discovered behind a Dumpster near Daverns’ apartment building. The report states that Ericson was viciously stabbed thirteen times. His blood-covered body was found with no identification, money, or shoes. Officials suspect robbery as a motive, but are asking for anyone with information to please come forward.
I recline back in my chair and steeple my fingers together. I wince at the pain in my hand, but it’s not enough to deter me from churning theories, possibilities.
The authorities are asking for witnesses…revealing the killer got away. For how long, is the question. I mean, it is the city. Ericson very well could’ve been a victim of a mugging. He also kept company with very unsavory types. Maybe one of them put him down.
Only, that’s not what my instincts are screaming.
Ericson Daverns was at the top of a revenge list of one very dedicated justice dealer.