Читать книгу Before He Lapses - Блейк Пирс - Страница 5

Murder had not been at all what he had expected. He had thought there would be some degree of what have I done? Maybe a moment of life-defining guilt or a sense that he had somehow altered the entire course of a family’s life. But there had been none of that. The only thing he had felt after the murders—after killing both of his victims—was an overwhelming sense of paranoia.

And, if he was being honest, joy.

Perhaps he had been stupid to go about it so casually. He had been surprised by just how normal it had felt. He’d been terrified about the idea until he actually put his hands to their necks—until he squeezed down and robbed the life right out of their beautiful bodies. The best part had been watching the light go out in their eyes. It had been unexpectedly erotic—the most vulnerable thing he had ever seen.

The paranoia, though, was worse than he could have ever imagined. He had not been able to sleep for three days after he’d killed the first one. He had prepared for such an obstacle after the second, though. A few glasses of red wine and an Ambien directly after the murder and he had slept quite well, actually.

The other thing that was bothering him was how hard it had been to leave the scene of the crime the second time around. The way she had fallen, the way the life had gone out of her eyes in an instant…it had made him want to stay there, to stare into those freshly dead eyes to see what secrets might be in there. He’d never felt such a craving before, though to be fair, he would have never dreamed of killing anyone up until about a year or so ago. So apparently, much like taste buds, a person’s morals were apt to change from time to time.

He thought about this as he sat in front of his fireplace. His entire house was quiet, so eerily still that he could hear the sound of his fingers moving against the stem of his wine glass. He watched the fire burn and pop as he drank from a glass of dark red wine.

This is your life now, he told himself. You have killed not one but two people. Sure, they were necessary. You had to do it or your life might very well have been over. While neither of those girls technically deserved to die, it was all out of necessity.

He told himself this over and over again. It was one of the reasons the guilt he had been expecting had not yet crippled him. It might also be why there was so much room for that paranoia to creep in and take root.

He was waiting for a knock at his door at any moment, with a police officer standing on the other side. Or maybe a SWAT team, complete with a battering ram. And the hell of it was that he knew he deserved it. He had no illusion about getting away with this. He figured that some day, the truth would be revealed. That’s just the way the world worked now. There was no such thing as privacy, no such thing as living your own life.

So when the time came, he thought he’d be able to take whatever justice was dealt to him standing up like a man. The only question that remained was how many more would he have to kill? A small part of him begged him to stop, trying to convince him that his work was done now and that no one else had to die.

But he was pretty certain that was not true.

And worst of all, the prospect of having to go out and do it again stirred an excitement within him that shimmered and burned just like the fire in front of him.