AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I know who you are, Mr. Sinclair. Keep doing the good work.” The elevator halted on the sixth floor, and she walked out, giving me a wave. When I reached the tenth floor, I walked straight to Natalia’s office.
“There’s a new story if you want to look into it.”
“I’m still working on the girls with the tattoos,” I said with a scowl. Three months, and I hadn’t found a single thing that could be used.
“You’re not going to give up?”
“I can’t. I’m not wrong.” Once I became obsessed with something, it was hard to put it out of my head.
She narrowed her eyes. “Even the cops concluded that it was two random, unrelated cases, Ryden. They arrested the first girl’s stalker."
“I don’t believe it’s unrelated, Nat,” I said with a frown.
I had been hitting obstacle after obstacle ever since I started to investigate this case, but I wasn’t one to give up so easily.
“Shit, Ry.”
Natalia and I joined DDE together. She became the editor-in-chief when I turned down the job. She allowed me to chase my own stories, stories people tended to forget after a while.
I couldn’t forget. I wouldn’t forget.
Sympathy would turn into curiosity; curiosity would slowly morph into obsession. I’d forget everything else and spiral into the darkest corners of my mind. When I finally caught up with the monsters I was hunting, I had to kill them to stop the obsession.
“Don’t fall into that rabbit hole again. Not too deep,” she said, her eyes reflecting concern. “I know how you get, Ryden. You… you lose yourself to this obsession. Find a damn hobby, for your sake and mine.”
I wondered what she’d say if she knew about my hobby. She might spontaneously combust. Natalia was the most upright, moral person I had ever met.
“I’m good, Nat. There’s something that connects them. I’ll find that thread, and then I’ll find the fucking spider and his web.”
“Jesus Christ, Sinclair,” she said with a huff. “Do whatever you want. But give me something soon. We’ve been using resources on these two girls for a while—resources we don’t have.”
“You know I—” I stopped when the door opened. I could smell that cologne from a hundred-mile radius. I gritted my teeth. Fucking Thatcher.
“You’re always chasing ghosts, Sinclair. Maybe you should have started one of those paranormal shows, you know, where they go to a haunted house and…” Thatcher Perry said as he entered the room.
I shot a piercing look at the man, wishing my eyes had the power to kill. Every time he opened his mouth, there was an intense urge to silence him, to smother him until he stopped breathing.
Thatcher was a sycophant and a sleaze—a man who flaunted his wealth in every shirt worn, every word uttered. He was hired because his father, a significant investor and a board member, pushed for it.
Thatcher’s first job was to antagonize me. He just couldn’t accept that someone else was winning; someone else was at the top.
“I know. Ghosts are better than the ones I’m chasing,” I said. He looked at me like I had lost my head. And you should be fucking dead. Sometimes the desire was so strong, but I hadn’t hunted so close to home yet, and killing Thatcher would surely draw the cops’ attention in my direction.
My hatred for Thatcher was widely known around the office. I shouldn’t have so freely expressed my hostility toward him. If only I had kept my feelings a secret…
Natalia sighed. “Get going then. I’ll ask Aaliyah to cover the new beat, and Sinclair, take a fucking break. Really.”
The last time I took a break, I killed Matthew and got caught by a woman. Yeah, I’d rather not take another break anytime soon.
“Thank you, Nat,” I said before walking out. I went to my messy cubicle and sat down, staring at the large corkboard filled with grim photographs of Sofia Martínez and Nikki Singh, along with an array of case notes scattered everywhere. Red threads stretched in different directions, but they all remained disjointed, never reaching a common point.
Detective Rosario arrested the man who supposedly killed Sofia—her stalker. But three months after Sofia’s death, Nikki Singh, a high school student, was found hanged in a parking lot of an old theater. Some junkie found her, and he had the common sense to report her death. The tattoo on her neck was the first thing that caught my eye when I studied the crime scene photos. The same rune on Sofia’s neck was also tattooed on Nikki’s, but her tattoo was more elaborate.
The tattoo was a small triangle and circle knotted together, with an eye in the middle and three runic symbols in its corner.
It was rough and amateurish. I visited my tattoo artist and some of his friends. They all said the same thing: the tattoo was done by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.
What are you? An emerging serial killer who is also a bigot? What do you have against these girls?
