Page 114 of Kill For Me Kill For You
But he hadn’t called her Felicia just now. He’d called her Ruth.
‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time. All this would’ve been easier if you’d just agreed to meet me when you were targeting Frank Quinn,’ he said.
She had never even spoken to him on the phone. Yet she knew that voice.
The man smiled at her.
Then, with his left hand he raised his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. They were the color of brown sugar. She thought he was going to close his eyes, and rub them clear, but he didn’t.
He kept them open. His thumb and forefinger touched the eyeballs, and then gently pinched, sweeping out the contact lenses.
His brown eyes were gone. In their place, a pair of dead blue eyes stared through the gate at her.
Ruth’s lips began to tremble, then her body followed, and a scream that began in her stomach erupted through her chest as she pointed at him and yelled . . .
‘It’s you! It’syou!’
His voice echoed through the elevator shaft, into the hallway and deep into her frozen heart.
‘That’s right, Ruth. It’s me. Hi there,sweetheart.’
She pulled the gun from her pocket, pointed the barrel through the gap in the gate, aimed straight at his chest.
She pulled the trigger, but she was half a second too late.
The man yanked the gate open, which caught the gun barrel, wrenching the pistol from her grip, but as it did so the gun went off, sending an explosion of splinters up around the man as the round hit the panel to his right.
Ruth fell backwards, her mouth open, unable to breathe, unable to scream, using her heels and elbows to back away toward the stairs as the man stepped out of the elevator and walked slowly toward her.
‘I should have killed you that night all those years ago. I don’t like loose ends. Because of you I had to leave New York. I continued my work elsewhere, of course. But it was not convenient. Fresh surroundings bring new risks. An old shark like me favors familiar waters for their feeding grounds. And now look at you. Look at what you’ve become.’
She backed away, unable to breathe or speak.
‘I read about your husband killing Patrick Travers in that hotel, and when I saw Travers’s picture and read about your case I knew what had happened. You thought I was Travers, didn’t you? You killed an innocent man who looked just like me. You went away to Kirby hospital and I thought I was rid of you. Then I saw on the news one day, a picture of a man who looked just like me, just like Travers. His name was Saul Benson and the man who killed him said he’d been tricked into doing it. He’d agreed to swap murders with a woman named Deborah Mallory who he’d met in a support group. I looked online, found more men, killed in their home, with no motive. And theyalllooked just like me. Almostexactlylike me. I knew then I had to find you. You were hunting me, Ruth. And that is not something I can tolerate. I am no one’s prey.’
He was still coming towards her. Ruth glanced behind him, saw the gun on the floor. She couldn’t get to it.
‘I knew it was you. You’d made the same mistake. Just like Travers all over again. I searched the web, even went to a few support groups looking for you. Eventually we found each other, online. You should have just met me. I could have ended this weeks ago. When we talked online, I realized you were not making mistakes, Ruth. You were enjoying the kill. And you were killing again, and again and again, not in search of me. But for the pleasure. You know how it feels to end a life. You have tasted that sweetness. Still, I couldn’t let you go. You might have accidentally targeted me one day. It’s a pity all of this had to end. Oh, what a very fine monster you are . . .’
Ruth could hear footsteps on the stairs, coming up fast. Shouting. Different voices, all calling her name. And a female voice, calling out for Billy.
The man picked out fresh contact lenses from a dispenser and with practised precision he raised his head and slipped them onto each eye, blinking to let them settle.
He stared down at her then, just as she felt a hand grabbing her shoulder from behind.
‘Ruth, Ruth, calm down, it’s okay. It’s Dr. Marin.’
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. She shook her head, raised her hand and pointed at Billy and shouted again.
‘That’s him! That’s him! That’s him!’
She heard Dr. Marin’s voice. ‘My God, you were right, Billy. She is displaying precisely the same paranoid behavior as the day she was first admitted . . .’
Just then, she felt something sharp biting her upper arm. Turning, she saw Dr. Marin pull a needle out of her shoulder.
She felt tired, and she couldn’t speak, and then she saw Detective Farrow and his partner, and Amanda. And she thought she was going mad, slipping into darkness, and she saw the chest, and the chains burst free, and she screamed again and felt as if she was falling.
Her fingers scrambled on the floor, her nails breaking, as the man called Billy stood over her again. His voice was the last thing she heard as darkness took her.
