Читать книгу The Insider - Ava McCarthy - Страница 15

12

Cameron stood outside the wrought-iron gates. The girl was inside the house, and had been there for almost an hour. He pressed himself up against the bars. He badly needed to finish what he’d started.

He dug his fingernails into his palms. The train station had been such a fuck-up. She’d been so light, like a child. But the instant he’d broken contact with her, the mob of commuters had barged in front of him, blocking his view. He’d heard the shrieking trains, seen them crashing by. But the crowd had robbed him of the sight of her fear.

Without that, it wasn’t finished.

He peered through the gate. The driveway looked like a landing strip with all those fucking lights. He made out the shape of the house ahead, two lit windows glowing in the dark. He leaned his face against the cold metal and imagined the girl in one of those rooms. Heat filled his groin.

But he’d been told to back off.

He shook the railings, testing their strength. They stretched at least twelve feet into the air, welded on either side to a concrete wall that rolled away into the shadowy road. A pole-mounted surveillance camera rotated above him, panning its way down the driveway back towards the gate. Cameron ducked to one side, out of its line of sight. Houses like this were all the same. Prison walls, fence-mounted sensors, infra-red cameras. Maximum perimeter protection. For all the good it did them. There was always a way inside.

He began to circle the property wall, trailing his hand against the ivy that had stitched itself into the brickwork. He could smell the damp woodiness of the forest around him. Something rustled in the undergrowth, a small mammal on the move. Cameron reached a side gate and gazed again at the long L-shaped house. How spectacular it would look swallowed up in flames.

But he’d been told no fire. Not yet.

Not many people understood fire the way Cameron did. Mostly they were afraid of it. But Cameron had spent time getting close to flames, so close that he could almost touch their trembling colours and slender tongues.

He moved further along the wall, caressing the ivy leaves. Trapping someone in fire was so much more satisfying than shoving them in front of a truck. You got to stay in the shadows and watch the effects of what you’d done. Not like a road accident, where everything was over in a single scream. With fires, the build-up of euphoria was gradual, ending in a trance-like state that sated his need to see things burn.

He’d heard that many serial killers were fire-setters in their adolescence. Son of Sam, for instance. He’d started thousands of fires. Cameron smiled. He wasn’t in that league yet. One day, maybe.

He tried the latch on the side gate. It was locked, but the steel bars felt crumbly, the paint peeling away in his hands. He took a closer look. The gate was older and rustier than the other one, the welding not so secure. Cameron’s breathing quickened.

He might have been told to back off for a while, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get close to her.