Page 36 of With Spite

“Home?” I asked. “We?”

“We,” he said. “I’m your new shadow until we kill this freak.”

My heart hammered. “What?”

He pushed away. “Get your hands washed. Trash in the trash can. We’ll take it out before I take us back to your place.”

Nine

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I’m using that line like a jump rope.

—Hux’s secret thoughts

Hux

A serial killer.

And not just any serial killer.

A fucking terrifying one that’d never been caught.

The police involved were no closer to catching him now than they were twenty years ago when he’d started.

As I stared into Bernice’s frightened eyes, I thought about everything I knew about this serial killer.

Twenty years ago, in a little town south of Oakland, New Jersey, a serial killer was born. Though not figuratively. Literally.

This serial killer they’d dubbed “Corpse Violator,” which was a quite appropriate serial killer name, started his reign of terror.

He completed his year of stalking—something that was well-documented through the police department of a young woman around Bernice’s age—then he’d killed her. The cops all figured it was coming, seeing as the longer the stalking went on, the worse the escalation.

Any man who ever dated the woman that Corpse Violator had made his obsession was killed off. Anyone who tried to help his stalkee was gently dissuaded—at first. Then, they were harshly dissuaded until they were forced to stop or die.

On the last day of the stalking period, the woman was kidnapped—though the woman had been watched like a freakin’ hawk because of the buildup. She was stolen out from under two cops’ noses. Once with him, the victim had been brutally assaulted—though not sexually.

When she’d given up, she’d been murdered, no longer an amusing game to him.

From there, he allowed her body to be found.

Cops took the body to the morgue, and from there, the Corpse Violator did his thing again by stealing the corpse and defiling it.

He made sure the evidence was found, too.

He always, always left DNA evidence behind in the form of his semen.

He’d taken nineteen women.

For nineteen years, he’d done this same song and dance.

Until last year.

Last year, no body had been found, indicating the Corpse Violator had struck again.

Everyone had thought that he had died.

Only, he hadn’t.

His plaything had outsmarted him, and the Corpse Violator would never, ever let that go.