Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

Holland didn’t think so. He thought maybe it meant something else. Maybe it meant the killer wasn’t quite done yet. Maybe he planned on using the knife again.

Holland had moved to the entryway between the living room and the kitchen in an attempt to stay out the way of the evidence techs, whose work he hoped would be finished soon. He shook his head slowly, thinking about Mr. Midnight running around the city, and when he did, his eyes fell on a piece of trash, no great surprise since the entire apartment was filled with trash. But this particular piece of trash appeared to have been placed , not scattered haphazardly like everything else, on a small uncluttered portion of the scarred kitchen counter. Something about it bothered Holland. He bent down and examined it without touching it. It looked like the back of a cardboard insert to a snack cake package. Written on it in messy, spidery script, was “7 Granite Circle.”

Holland felt his pulse quicken. It was a long shot, but maybe this “7 Granite Circle” was where the killer had gone. Maybe he had tortured this information out of his victim and was even now either at this address or on his way there. That the person who had planned and executed a crime of this magnitude would leave a handwritten note leading investigators to his current whereabouts seemed unlikely in the extreme, but if Holland’s theory about the killer dissembling was correct, it was at least a possibility.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Holland Montvale had no idea how many towns and cities in the surrounding area had an address of 7 Granite Circle within their boundaries, but that information could be accessed easily enough. And it needed to be accessed right now.

Before it was too late.

When the disgusting murdering psycho had offered his knife to her, flipping it into the air and then holding it out like a proud teen offering flowers to his date on prom night, Cait had known immediately he was screwing with her; she wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought he was. But she still could have grabbed for it. She had just been so concerned with Kevin and the awful blood bubbling out of his chest that she was just a little too slow on the uptake.

If she had only whipped her hand up and grabbed it out of his slimy paw! She pictured herself plucking it cleanly from his palm and stabbing him in the heart, puncturing his chest like he had punctured Kevin’s, blood pouring out of the wound as he stared disbelievingly at the tiny woman he had so badly misjudged, at the knife handle sticking out of his own body, quivering to the pulsing beat of his dying heart.

Cait considered herself a pacifist and not so long ago would never have imagined herself capable of the sort of black fantasy she was currently experiencing. But the world she had known her entire life, a world where people treated each other with dignity and respect and where things proceeded along a rational and understandable arc, that world was gone, at least for now. It was gone and it had been replaced by a world of madness and hate and unimaginable brutality and violence, a world where an armed police officer is no match for a madman with a knife.

Cait was so wrapped up in the vision—not a Flicker, just a regular, garden-variety daydream—she didn’t realize the murdering bastard was talking to her until he leaned down into her face and shouted, “Hey!”

She recoiled in surprise. “What?” she whispered.

“I said, it’s time to get this production rolling. Are you ready for Act One?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re to get your pretty little ass over to that couch and lie down on it.”

Oh, God .

This was worse than she thought. The idea of that horrible, nasty man raping her, sticking any part of his disgusting body inside her, was too much to bear.

As if he could read her mind, the man snickered. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said. “Although, if you don’t get moving, I might fuck you just to make a point.”

Cait knew she should shut her mouth and do what the man said, but she couldn’t help herself. “What point would that be?” she said, half wondering when the breakdown she was expecting any moment would strike and she would be reduced to a blubbering, sniveling idiot. So far it hadn’t happened, but how far off could it be? She felt her sanity warping, being stretched to its limits.

“The point,” he answered, baring his teeth, his hate for her radiating off him like a force field, “is that you think getting raped is the worst thing I could do to you, but you have no fucking idea how wrong you are. But if you don’t do as you’re instructed, and I mean right fucking now, I will rape you just for the fun of it and then we’ll take things from there.”

Cait began moving in a confused daze toward the couch. She wondered why he wanted her to lie down if he didn’t plan on raping her. She wondered what she had ever done to this man to warrant the kind of hatred he clearly felt for her.

She couldn’t recall having ever met him—and she was certain she would remember a man this evil if their paths ever had crossed—but everything he was saying seemed to indicate this was personal, that everything he was doing was about her, and her alone.

She racked her brain, trying desperately to think, but her brain wouldn’t cooperate. It felt like mush. The panic that threatened to overwhelm her made concentrating difficult. She knew this was her long-lost brother, the twin she had not even been aware existed until yesterday; that much she had already deduced, even without the benefit of a Flicker.

Could it be he was aware of their relationship? If so, could his barely controlled rage be somehow related to that knowledge? And more importantly, could she figure out a way to use that knowledge to her advantage? Dammit, think!

She reached the couch and turned to sit on the dingy material but Milo stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “No,” he said. “We can’t very well put on this performance with you still in your street clothes, can we?”

The panic threatened to mushroom again. What the hell did he mean by that? The situation was bad enough without this madman speaking in riddles. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, a lump forming in her throat, tears on the verge of returning.

Cait longed to be wrapped in Kevin’s arms, his muscular body pressed to hers. It was an almost visceral need. She glanced at him, still unconscious, duct-taped to the chair, and forced herself to focus. He was dying and he needed her, and falling to pieces from terror and confusion would do nothing to help him. “So I need to change my clothes?” she asked, amazed at the steadiness of in her voice. She had no idea where that was coming from.

“Well, not change, exactly,” he said with a smile. It made him look like a shark about to strike.

“May I undress in the bathroom?”

The crazy bastard actually laughed at that one. “Oh, sure,” he said. “No problem. You go right ahead into the bathroom, where there are probably no more than a couple of dozen potential weapons you could use against me! Scissors, tweezers, nail files, maybe a toothbrush to jab into my eye. How fucking stupid do you think I am?”

Cait dropped her head. Her eyes swept the floor, taking in the damage from the smashed chair. She sighed. She knew where this was going. She raised her head resolutely and began unbuttoning her blouse. She hesitated only a moment before shrugging it off her shoulders and down her arms. She shook it onto the floor where it fell, inside out, atop a jagged splinter of broken chair. Then she unsnapped her jeans.