Page 6 of Mutual Prey

“Sorry, nothing like that around. How about some water?”

Liar.“Fine.”

I watch him fill a glass from the tap then hand it to me. I take a small sip while he sits across from me, his hand nervously drumming on his knee.

He’s not nervous for the right reasons, though. I can tell. He’s nervous because he’s awkward, and he has no clue what I want or how to get rid of me.

He doesn’t realize that with every tick of the clock, he’s got a little less time to live.

“Nice house.”

“Uh… thanks. So… what can I do for you?”

“Well, I wanted to chat a little about my mom.” I give him a sweet smile. “You knew her.”

“Yes. Well,knowis a big word. I think I spoke to her once, twenty-six years ago or so. How’s she doing?”

I set my glass down on the table.Have the decency to lie a little better.If all he’d done was chat with her, he wouldn’t remember her twenty years later. The guy is guilty as sin. I don’t need his lie to confirm it, but it irks me. At least put some effortinto it.

“She’s dead.”

“Ah.” He tries to act surprised. “Sorry about that.”

“I know that before she died, she sent you a research project she’d been working on. She was hoping to get a grant.”

“Right.” He gives me a tight-lipped smile. “She was a very bright young scientist. Unfortunately, we had no need for her research. We, uhm, were already developing something along those very same lines.”

“Uh huh. Funny story, she was injected with the two products she was developing—Synaptrex and Valeron. I don’t think she would have injected them of her own accord. There were some pretty nasty side effects to that interaction.”

“Right.” He clears his throat. “Well, who knows what happened? It was so long ago…”

“Do you know what the side effects are?”

“I, er…” He drags a grubby finger between his collar and his flabby neck, and I can tell its folds are shiny with sweat. “Er, now that you mention it… well, no…”

“Oh. I thought you were developing something along those very same lines,” I quote, flipping a strand of hair back.

“Right, well… we never had the chance to test them together. Where’s this all going?” He lets out a nervous chuckle.

“I just wanted to tell you about those nasty side effects.” I give him my best, wide-eyed innocent look. “Hyper-fixation and violence. Apparently, you get fixated on the last thing you see before you’re injected. The last thing Mom saw was a bus-load of people. She was injected right in that bus. Funny, huh?”

“Uh…” He brings his finger up to swipe at the sweat shining on his temples.

“It was a Greyhound bus, traveling from New York to Washington D.C. It never reached its destination. Within seven hours, every single person on that bus was dead. Thirty-sixpeople. One of them killed her in self-defense before biting the dust. And funnier still, my mom was pregnant when she died. With me.”

“Really?” The nervousness suddenly increases tenfold. “So… so… what does that… mean…”

“Daddy blamed those drugs on the way I am. He always said , “Some killers are born. Others are made.”I don’t know which category I fall into. But I’d like to think it’s the former.”

By now, he’s edging back on his chair, eyeing me with undisguised panic. “What is this, April Fool’s?”

I reach into my Birkin bag, grabbing the syringe I’ve slipped inside. It’s a roomy bag, not exactly ideal when you need to find something quickly. But, I mean, it’s a Birkin. I managed to snag one just before leaving for the tundra, and there’s no way I’m going to be leaving the house without it for the foreseeable future.

“Oh, fuck,” he gasps, his eyes glued to it. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck…”

“Daddy always said you shouldn’t swear,” I scold him.

And then I plunge the syringe into his flabby neck.