Last Hit(38)

“Just tell me you’ll use it the next time Saul loses his temper,” I entreat her, my voice encouraging.

“You mean like right now?” says an ugly voice.

Christine’s face goes bleach white, and she moves behind me. I turn, and there’s Saul in the doorway, a vicious look on his face.

He’s followed us, and we’re trapped between him and the door.





Chapter 14


Nikolai

As Professor Hare discusses the visual sensitivity of Escher’s tessellations and his unique use of texture created from lines and spacing, I tap the printout of the Hitman message forum. Three of the shooting deaths have created a pattern. The shooting here on campus is consistent in all else but the end result. No one here died—a break in the tessellation.

The evidence points to a less-than-adept shooter, one who is new or perhaps has never shot a gun outside a game. I do not have the resources to find this person. I am not an investigator. If given a target, I can find everything about that person, but working backward from a clue? That is not a skill I have developed.

I want this world to be safe for Daisy, for us. But to go to Detective McFadden with this information is to invite even more scrutiny. He will ask more questions, and I will have no answers to give.

The single most important reason I am not the shooter McFadden seeks is that I do not miss. If my target were here on campus, that target would be dead and I would be gone.

But I am not that man—or I am trying to be reborn. McFadden is preventing that, but he might not represent the most danger. People—boys—trying to win a false prize by taking a fake game into the real world? Those are a greater danger.

Resolved, I send a text message to the number on McFadden’s card.

I have something for you.

I’ll meet u @ ur apt.

I am in class.

When is ur class ovr?

He types his messages like Daisy did when she had a cheap phone that required her to use numbers instead of letters. I smile fondly at the memory of breaking it, which required her to accept the more expensive phone that I had purchased. It was more a gift for myself so that I could bask in the pictures and messages she sent.

As all of my gifts are.

She believes me to be generous. I have tried to explain every gift to her is a gift to me. It is not a concept she has yet comprehended.

When Professor Hare finishes his lecture, I jog over to the Architecture and Design complex where Daisy has her classes. When she doesn’t immediately emerge as is her normal pattern, I enter the building. Her classroom is the third door down. It’s empty. The entrance is devoid of her presence, as is the study center where she eats, recently with the new girl.

My heart rate speeds up. It’s pounding fast and loud, drowning out the sounds of the students—their chatter, the shuffling of their feet against the floor, the thud of their books and bags against tables and floors. She’s not here. I would know if she was here.

I text her.

Waiting for you . . .

When I receive no response, I send her an image—a picture of a flower. Hers.

Are you with Christine? I will wait.

There is nothing. So I call, intrusively interrupting her space. But the fear that is gripping me is too strong to ignore.

Her voice chirps and I open my mouth to respond only to realize it is her voice mail . . . leave a message.

Hope fading, I open the application that I know she would not approve of and search for the location signal from her phone. It is wrong, tracking her, but we do not have ordinary lives with ordinary enemies made up of miffed former lovers and unhappy neighbors or jealous students.

I have many people in my past who know how to snuff out life with one hand, one bullet, one drop of poison.

The signal shows that she is at home.

So.

She is safe, I try to tell myself. Unharmed and likely baking even more cookies. My phone buzzes, alerting me to a text, and I flip the screen open anxiously.

It is only McFadden.

Ready to meet. Will head to ur apt.

Home. It is a place to start. The phone signal means nothing. I have been fooled by this before. But it is better than searching this big city for one girl. I will start at the beginning and move forward. If I have to, I will capture McFadden and torture him in every way possible to obtain his cooperation in finding her.

I will . . . fuck . . . I will terrorize this city until she is returned to me safe and unharmed.

The apartment building is quiet when I arrive. A cab drives off just as I pull up. The lobby lights are on, per the city codes, but inside there is almost no noise. Daisy’s father in his apartment on the ground floor makes almost no sound. Sometimes I can hear the light scrabbling of the nails of his dog against the wood floor, but most of the time it is as if Daisy and I live on an island. I have always liked it that way, finding any reason at all to reject every potential tenant. But now I wonder if isolation is wise. I have lived by myself for over ten years. Daisy is the first person I have allowed inside, not just into my heart but my life. I am jealous of sharing her with anyone, even Christine, even with another tenant whom I know she will befriend with her warm smiles and her cookies.