Valentine Killer: Die For Me Part 36

She shook her head. No.

"Then you're even more screwed up than I am."

He took the knife and sliced it along her left arm. When the blood started to flow, she refused to cry.

He smiled down at her, then he asked, "Do you want to die?"

Pain pulsed in her arm. It wasn't like it was the first time she'd been cut. As a teen, she'd cut herself plenty of times.

She'd felt alive then.

She felt alive now.

"Do you?" He pressed, sounding mildly curious.

She wouldn't shake her head. Wouldn't nod. If he wanted her answer, he'd have to let her talk. Take off the tape.

"You think you're the smart one, don't you, Dr. Knight?"

He was putting the knife down, so, yes, she rather did think she was smart.

His fingers came up, strong, long, golden, and pulled the tape from her mouth. She barely felt the tug against her lips.

"Got some last words for me?"

"Not...last." She hated that he'd drugged her. It had been so unnecessary. But at least he hadn't given her a dose that was too strong. Not like she'd given to Amy and Savannah.

I was helping them. Making their deaths easier.

He frowned down at her. She smiled back up at him. She'd enjoyed the way he looked before, but this was even better. Wonderful. Perfect.

"I know you." She whispered this secret.

One brow rose. "Do you." Not a question.

But she responded as if it were. "I know so much about you...your life...your kills."

He stiffened. "Give someone a fistful of degrees and they think they know everything."

"Not everything." She shook her head. Tried to control her smile. It's him. "Only you."

He wasn't reaching for the knife. He was studying her as if she were some kind of mystery.

He didn't understand yet. She was his other half. The person he needed.

Not Katherine.

"I started studying your case when I was finis.h.i.+ng up my PhD. I read everything about you, did as much research as I could." Her words came faster. "Then Katherine-Kat-I saw her by chance one day in the Quarter. I knew who she was-the dark hair didn't change her. We started talking. I told her what I did for a living." And Katherine had been curious...and hopeful.

"Kat told you about me." Now there was definite interest in his voice.

She nodded. "She didn't want to talk about you." Anger cracked through the words. "But I told her it was necessary for her therapy to progress. I made her tell me." Evelyn had pried the details out of Katherine, one precious secret at a time.

His eyes narrowed. "You're one of them."

Now he was disgusted. No, no that wouldn't work. "Them?"

His hand lifted. Stroked her cheek. Sent a lick of heat unfurling in her belly. "Those broken women who get off," he murmured, "on f.u.c.king killers."

She flinched at that. Jerked against the rope. "No! Haven't you seen what I've done?" And she was hurt by his accusation.

She knew him so well.

Couldn't he try to know her better?

"What you've done is..." His fingers were still at her cheek. "You've stirred up the past. Started a new manhunt for me. Killed, pretending to be me."

Laughter slipped from her. "I gave you a present. I made everyone remember you again."

He shook his head. "You made them hunt me. Until you started, I was just a memory to most folks. You made me a nightmare again."

Ah, yes, he did understand. She stared into his eyes and whispered, "You're welcome."

Dane paced the narrow hospital hallway. Everywhere he turned, there were f.u.c.king red, heart-shaped balloons or bundles of roses being delivered to patients. They were like slaps in his face. Valentine, taunting him. "Where would he take her?" Dammit, Valentine wasn't slipping away again. "Where?"

The profiler eased up beside him. Katherine and Mac were still in Ronnie's room, talking quietly with the ME.

"Valentine is angry with Evelyn," Marcus said. "He's going to punish her."

Dane whirled to face him. "Evelyn was the one who drugged Katherine." She had been there, right there, in that cafe. Evelyn had probably slipped the drugs into Katherine's drink when she'd been distracted.

"That's what will anger him the most," Marcus said with a nod. "Evelyn tried to hurt the one person Valentine thinks he loves."

Valentine's house was gone. Blown to h.e.l.l. Evelyn's house was under a lockdown by the police.

Where else would the man go?

"Evelyn made it personal by attacking Katherine, so he'll make his own attack on her have extra significance..."

Extra significance.

Dane stilled. "Her office."

Because Katherine had been there in that office, revealing all of her secrets about Valentine.

None of the staff would be there. The place had been shut down because of Trent's death. It would be empty, deserted at this hour.

And Dane already knew there weren't security cameras on that floor.

The perfect kill spot.

"Mac!" Dane stormed back into the hospital room. "I think I know where the b.a.s.t.a.r.d is hiding."

And killing.

"You made a mistake picking Kat," Evelyn told him. She wished he would cut away the ropes, but they'd get to that soon enough. For now, they'd talk. She'd been wanting to talk to him for so long. "She never understood you."

Frowning now, he bent over her and shoved up the sleeves of her s.h.i.+rt. His hands ran over her upper arms, and she knew he was feeling the old scars.

"I survived," she whispered, "just like you. Do you know what I've done for you?" she asked. "I killed for you."

He smiled at her, revealing perfect white teeth. "No, you did that for you. Because you're broken and twisted. You've got a monster in you. One that's been wanting to get out for a long time."

"No, no, I was helping you-"

"I heard people become shrinks because they're screwed up inside." He reached for his knife. "That's why people become serial killers, too. I mean, I know I'm twisted. I shouldn't like killing. I shouldn't enjoy it when I see the life fade from someone's eyes...but I do." He lifted the knife. Watched the light glint off the blade. "But what are you going to do? We are who we are."

"Don't!" He was coming at her with the knife.

"You cut yourself when you were a teen," he said, the words a dark rumble. "What set you off, Evelyn? What twisted you?"

She remembered the old house she'd once lived in. With the beautiful roses that her mother had loved. "My mother died when I was five."

He waited. Watched.

"My father remarried a few years later, and I hated her."

His eyes didn't blink.

"When my father was out of town, she'd have men over. I told him. He didn't believe me. No one ever believed me." Softer.

"Those men, what did they do?"

Just one man. "He hurt me." He'd been drunk. He'd caught her alone. His hands had been big and pale and freckled.

She'd bled.

Her stepmother had laughed when she told her the story. Denise with her long, dark hair and her pale, perfect skin.

Denise had stopped laughing when Evelyn had pushed her down the stairs. An accident, or so the police had thought.

They'd thought wrong.

"Have there been others?" he asked quietly. "Others you've killed?"

His eyes said he knew about her stepmother.

Did he know about the man she'd picked up at the bar on her twenty-first birthday? When she'd changed her mind about the pickup and become afraid, he'd been angry. He'd pushed for more from her. Tried to take more than she wanted to give, and she'd pulled her knife from her purse. She always kept her knife close. She needed it to feel safe.

The knife had wound up in that frat boy's throat.

"Oh, Evelyn..." His sigh was sad. "You didn't kill for me. You did all of that for you."

"We're alike!" she told him, desperate for him to see. There wasn't anything damaged about her. She was stronger, better, just like him. They were a match. "We survived. We grew stronger."

He nodded. "Yes."

Yes.

"I can be better for you than Kat." Her words came so quickly. "I can be just what you need. I can be everything-"

"Kat was abused when she was a kid. Hurt, again and again. She didn't..." His eyes were on the knife. "She didn't turn out like us."

"Kat's weak. She jumps at her own shadow. She-"

His head snapped up. Rage was boiling in his eyes. Scaring her. "She's stronger than you are. Stronger than all the others. Unbroken. Pure. She wasn't like the other women."

The women he'd killed in Boston? Or had there been even more?

Jealousy twisted her gut.

"The others didn't give a s.h.i.+t about anyone or anything. Kat did. Kat cared. She...loved me."

"No!" The denial burst from her. "She loved who she thought you were! I love you!" All of him.

"Kat's good," he whispered. "She didn't do drugs, didn't wh.o.r.e herself out like the others who had our p.i.s.s-f.u.c.king-poor start in life. She was better." A muscle jerked in his jaw. "She made me want to be better."

"You are better-"

"And you tried to kill her." His eyes blazed.

Her breath caught in her throat.

"You think I didn't know it was you? You with your drugs. Such a f.u.c.king sloppy way to kill. First Savannah, then Amy. Then you went after my Kat."

Rage splintered her. "Katherine is not better than me!" Kat was as damaged as they came. Evelyn knew she should have killed that scrawny b.i.t.c.h months ago. The first time Trent had looked at her.

Trent.

"You killed Trent," Evelyn said. At first, she truly had been devastated by Trent's death. She'd never planned for him to die, but when she realized what his death truly meant- Valentine was there.

Her pain had faded then, and she'd taken the necessary steps to eliminate Kat. Only Kat hadn't died.

"I've killed a lot of different people." Deliberately vague. He used the knife to cut open her s.h.i.+rt.

She wasn't afraid. "Trent Lancaster. I thought maybe Kat had done it...but it was you."

"He shouldn't have hurt her."