“We need to leave in no less than twenty minutes. We cannot be late.”

Megan stops peering at herself in the mirror to shift her remorseful eyes to me. She’s not looking at me as a psychotic maniac with no grasp on life. She’s peering past the layers, seeking the source of my disturbing behavior.

She will be searching a very long time. Nearly twenty-nine years, to be precise.

“There is no need to put in an effort, Megan. My father won’t judge you on how you look.” He’ll be too busy formulating how you bleed to assess the clothes you’re wearing.

She sets down the makeup kit I had delivered this morning before standing to her feet. Instead of wearing the clothes I purchased for her when we escaped Meadow Fields, she has on the knee-length skirt and three-quarter-sleeved knitted jacket. The instant I spotted the ensemble in the boutique store of our hotel, I knew it was designed for her. The subtle palette adds to her innocence, and the green foliage enhances her diamond eyes.

My father will be pleased when he sees her. She is the very essence of pure.

After placing her hand on my chest, Megan gives me a look that reveals she’s nervously excited. When I told her we were going to visit my father, she misunderstood the situation entirely. She thought I was laying down foundations. I am—somewhat—just not in the way she predicted.

She knows of my secrets, of my inability to keep a rational head when in the depths of a nightmare. For that alone, she will never be my pet. This is the exact reason why I never slept in a woman’s bed. I try to maintain control over every aspect of my life, but there are some things I can’t regulate, such as my dreams.

I guess the same could be said for Cleo’s dad when he killed Shelley. Maybe it was just an accident, and no one was at fault as Megan suggested last night. When it’s your time, it’s your time. That’s what I’ve been continually telling Megan the past sixteen hours.

Argh! I’m talking like I have a cunt between my legs.

I need to get this woman out of my head. She is making me unhinged. Even more than usual.

My reaction to the bruise circling her wrist was all the indication I needed to know it’s time to finalize this part of my playbook. I don’t pursue women who remind me of my mother because I am infatuated with her. I hate her so much, I hurt woman who look like her because I can’t hurt her. Every tear they shed, every scream ripped from their throat, I pretend came from her.

My manic behavior is disturbing but is easily excused. Many years ago, I was diagnosed as having Sadistic Personality Disorder among other comorbid mental illness. In laymen’s terms, I’m several shades of fucked up. I don’t just have one mental illness. I have many.

Aren’t I lucky?

I laugh at my hilarious inner monologue. It isn’t a smart thing to do. Megan is giving me that look again, not the sympathetic one, the one she gave me in the cabin days ago. She’s looking at me with love in her eyes.

I snatch her hand off my chest before raising it to my mouth. When the vein in her neck flutters in excitement, I draw my lips over my teeth, halving the impact of my bite. I don’t do it because I’m an upstanding guy who buys a dozen roses for a first date. I do it to weaken her eagerness. She wants me to bite her. Not just her wrist, her entire body. I don’t answer to anyone’s pleas. I do what I want, when I want. Except when it comes to my father.

Feeling my qualm slipping, I ask, “You ready?”

Not waiting for Megan to answer me, I head for the door. Recalling my request for her to wear running shoes instead of the strappy shoes she’s been getting around in the past few days, she tugs them on before shadowing me to the elevator bank. With our suite the entire top floor of the hotel, the elevator car comes straight to us, the important guests.

We ride the first ten floors in silence. The tension firing in the air is electrifying. It has the same dramatic edge that kickstarts my pulse before every hunt, but in a unique way. It is a foreign feeling that is extremely hard to explain. If I had to put it into words, I could explain it as if I’ve swallowed the antidote for crazy—like that’s even possible.

Pushing aside the unexplainable as a consequence of arriving to a hunt with the target in tow, I continue counting our descent. Only thirty-four floors to go.

My wish to evade the confines of an enclosed box triples when the elevator comes to a stop at the twelfth floor. Because the uniformed officer is deep in conversation with a plain-clothed detective, he doesn’t immediately notice Megan and me standing at the back of the empty car.

I have a cap hanging low over my eyes, but Megan’s face is completely exposed. She looks identical to the photos every news agency in the country has been broadcasting hourly since our escape, and she knows it.

A vein in her neck twangs as her eyes calculate the distance between her and the officer’s gun. She’ll never make it in time. His gun case is clipped shut, meaning she’d be shot by the detective before she could remove the gun from his partner’s hip.

Not calculating the risk as expertly as me, Megan steps toward the officer. Before she gets us both killed, I grab her wrist, pin her to the wall, then seal my mouth over hers.

The squeak she releases when my tongue delves between her cherry balm-flavored lips alerts the officers that they are not alone. They balk before cocking their heads to the side to watch the spectacle of Megan climbing my frame so she can grind against my stiffening shaft.

As my tongue strokes the roof of Megan’s mouth, I watch the officers in the mirrored wall of the elevator. I’m hoping the presidential suite keychain dangling from my back pocket will enhance my ruse.

It does. . . along with Megan’s hearty moans.

Every stroke of my tongue along the ridges of her mouth triples her husky groans, and I’m not going to mention her prolonged grinding against my crotch. She kisses me like she’s starved of taste, like I’m the only man who has ever caressed her in such a way. She kisses me until I forget why we are kissing. Then she kisses me some more.

My tongue doesn’t need to continue the exploration of her mouth. The officers’ grumbled comment about impatient honeymooners ensured we were left to ride the elevator alone, but no matter how many times my brain commands me to withdraw, my mouth refuses to listen. Megan tastes like heaven and hell wrapped up in one sadistic little skitzo package.

It is only when a computerized voice announces we have arrived in the underground parking garage do my teeth relinquish Megan’s lip from its torture. The meow she releases when I place her onto her feet is her heartiest of the weekend.

“Soon.”

Failing to hear the deceit in my tone, Megan skips out of the elevator car, my promise lightening her steps. Our hike to a row of cars far away from prying eyes slows when a deep voice shouts for us to stop. Although their demand isn’t one you’d expect upon discovering two escaped inmates from a mental institution, it still prickles my skin with hesitation. It was laced with authority, the tone an officer uses when making an inquiry.

“Remain calm,” I instruct Megan while tugging her to my side.

When we spin around to face the voice, my intuition is proved spot on. A young officer I’d guess to be mid-twenties has a clipboard balancing on his washboard stomach. He stands to the right of a group of rental cars. He appears to be matching the tags with the guests of this hotel.

Goddammit—I knew we should have left yesterday. I’m getting careless. She’s making me weak.

I stop glaring at Megan to raise my eyes to the rookie officer. “Can we help you, officer?” I keep my tone friendly, even though I am anything but.

He stops peering at his clipboard to lock his eyes with mine. It is virtually impossible with how low the rim of my cap is. “License and registration, please. No vehicles can enter or exit this garage without being jotted down on my sheet.”

He taps his pencil on his clipboard as his smirk increases to a smile. He’s not smiling to be friendly. He has Megan in his sights. I’m not surprised. For each day she is weaned from medication, the more beautiful she becomes. The healthy dose of psycho in her eyes has done wonders for her complexion.

“Hey, you look familiar,” the officer croons, heading our way. “Are you from around these parts—”

“Should I be concerned about the number of officers here this evening, Sir? My wife, she’s pregnant. I don’t want anything to happen to her and our unborn son.”

Megan’s eyes rocket to mine as swiftly as the officer’s drop to her stomach. He’s inspecting her enticing frame for a bump it doesn’t have. His gawk only lasts a matter of seconds, but it is long enough for me to advise Megan of our plan of attack.

After slipping me the razor from the hidden pocket of her dress, Megan clutches her stomach. Her throat-curdling cry startles the officer’s legs into gear. He gallops across the oil-stained concrete, his keys jingling on his hip with every step he takes.

Curling his arm around Megan’s shoulders, he guides her to a bench seat. “It’s okay, ma’am. There is no reason to be scared. I’ll keep you safe.”

His promise causes my eye to twitch.

It also spares him his life.

I smack him over the head with a fire extinguisher attached to the wall instead of slitting his throat as planned. I don’t know why I offer him clemency. I’ve never given anyone a pardon before, much less a member of law enforcement. Perhaps it was his last-ditch attempt to show Megan not all men are evil? He may very well be the last gentleman she will encounter in her lifetime.

“Grab his keys,” I demand of Megan, nudging my head to his belt. My voice is high with the adrenaline it usually exerts when I’ve killed, but my thirst for blood isn’t close to being quenched.

Soon, I tell myself.

Once Megan has the officer’s keys in her hand, I hook my arms under his sweaty pits and drag him to his patrol car. Recognizing my strategy, Megan pops open his trunk before removing her sweater to clear away the drops of blood the wound in the back of his head left on the concrete.

After a quick glance at the clipboard balancing on his chest, I slam the trunk shut. As suspected, police located the stolen truck yesterday morning. Although they haven’t linked its theft to us, I’m not taking any risks. I’ve amassed enough the past four days. I can’t possibly fit any more in.

My eyes stray to the passenger door of the cruiser. “Jump in.”

Megan glares at me like I am insane. It is a look I’ve been given numerous times in my life.

“We’re only taking him for a little ride until we can switch cars.”

Her glare grows, wordlessly expressing her demands.

“I promise,” I growl through clenched teeth, more peeved at her fondness for the officer than her demand for less carnage.

After Megan slips into the passenger seat, I get behind the steering wheel. I take the exit of the underground garage forcefully, ensuring the sizeable speed bump issues the officer the hit I am unable to give him. Yet.

With flashing lights and a loud siren, we travel twenty miles at a record-setting pace. Safeguarding the promise I made to Megan, I take advantage of our mode of transport by pulling over a Ferrari roaring down the freeway. It is only right I confiscate his car for his bad judgment. The laws are there for a reason. If every Tom, Dick and Harry did what they want, when they want, the country would be overrun with people like Megan and me. Nobody wants that. Not even me. There is a certain uniqueness that comes from being batshit crazy; not everyone can be this remarkable.

“Tie their shoelaces together.”

Megan slants her head to the side and arches a brow. The low hang of the sun bouncing off her shining eyes makes it harder to look annoyed.

“It will be funny. When they try to run, they’ll trip over.” I barge her with my hip, adding some playfulness to my request. It is either barge her or kiss her again. Considering we’re only five miles from my father’s estate, I settle for the friendly vibe instead of a passionate one.

With a roll of her eyes, Megan does as instructed. I knew she would. She’s a good little pet.

While she knots the officer’s shoes with the Ferrari owner’s loafers, my eyes drift to the speedster’s Rolex. “Shit, we’re going to be late.”

I yank Megan away from the police cruiser before slamming down the trunk. She lands in the Ferrari’s leather-stitched seat with a thud when I toss her inside. She grunts, unappreciative of my manhandling. She’ll thank me when she discovers my father’s dislike of tardiness.

When I floor my foot on the gas pedal, the tires fail to gain traction the first ten seconds. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for us to weaving through the traffic surrounding us.

We arrive at my father’s estate with barely a minute to spare. I don’t care that it is by the skin of our teeth. A second early is still not late.

As I guide the Ferrari down a gravel driveway I’ve traveled many times, Megan’s eyes go crazy. Just like many before her, when I referred to my father’s estate as the “stables,” she envisioned a rundown country estate. That isn’t the case. Not in the slightest.

The grandeur of his home is as extravagant as a palace. Large clay bricks hold up the four-story, twenty-two bedroom, sixteen-bathroom design on over twenty-five hundred acres of estate. It is the derelict stables in the middle of his hunting ground four miles from here that gave it its title. This is where he brings his favorite pets, the ones he plans to keep longer than a night or two.

Confusion slides my foot from the gas pedal to the brake. Is that why he asked me to bring Megan here? He wants to make her his?

Before I can answer myself, a man emerging out of the hatch above the main entrance stairs steals my focus. My father gallops down the stairs of his palace, his smile big enough to compete with the moon.

Megan grunts, requesting to know if the man with snow-white hair and black-as-death eyes is my father. With my throat closing up, I nod, answering her question with as many words as she used to ask it.

She smiles as if pleased. She shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Not all stories between the covers are fiction. Some are factual.

My father is a brilliant man. He obtained his substantial wealth in a way many hope to emulate but will most likely never achieve. He writes books. I’m not talking hearts and flowers romance stories women like Megan like to read. I’m talking blood and gore, psychological thrillers with missing women and frenzied maniacs who love the scent of blood and crave their next kill like a drug.

His stories have been adapted into major motion pictures. His name is well-known amongst celebrities, politicians, and even the president of our great country. He has them all fooled, believing the words he pens are fiction. I know for a fact they are not. Every story he has written is a true story, even the one that includes the death of my mother.

As Megan is aided from her seat by Charles, my father’s long-term butler/deviant, my father jogs to my side of the car. He greets me with the eagerness of a man many years younger. His excitement about his upcoming hunt is beaming out of him.

“Moose.” He ruffles my hair like he did when I was a child before pulling my head down to his chest, which is no easy feat considering I am four inches taller than him. “I didn’t think you were going to make it on time. I had my stick ready.”

He’s not speaking figuratively. He has a broom stick with a nail stuck in one end. If you are a couple minutes late, you’re struck in the head with the non-sharp end of the stick. If you are five minutes or more tardy, you’re hit with the nail end. The amount of hits and the strength used is determined by my father on the spot. There is no sense to his madness.

“Who is this?” my father questions when Megan stops at my side. He isn’t asking in interest. He sounds annoyed.

“This is Megan. My pet.” My last two words are whispered but delivered loud enough both Megan and my father hear them.

“This isn’t who I am waiting on,” my father snarls, snubbing Megan’s offer of a handshake.

His rejection should relieve me, but all I am feeling is concern.

“Who is this woman, Dexter?”

My worry grows. The quick revert from Moose to Dexter is a telltale sign his paranoia is at an all-time high.

“This is Megan.” I speak slow, as if he is hard of hearing. “She helped me escape—”

“No. No. No. No. No!” He tugs on his hair, sending the perfectly straight strands into spikes. “She is not the woman we discussed over the phone.”

His hand falls from his hair so he can click his fingers together. Charles arrives at his side two seconds later.

“This is your pet.”

He slaps the silver tray Charles is balancing on his palm three times before pivoting away from me. His psychosis lapse is nothing new to me, but Megan appears a little unsure how to handle it. She floats a few paces back before fixating her eyes on the ground.

It takes me several seconds glancing at the photo to recognize the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman peering back at me. It is the goth-lover, Ashlee, before she went to the dark side.

“She escaped at the same time as us, but she isn’t with us,” I explain to my father.

When he roars like an animal, I quickly add on, “I could get her for you.”

That secures his attention.

“You can?” He sounds like a child being promised a bike for Christmas.

I nod while deliberating how to deliver my next sentence. “But she doesn’t look like that anymore. She’s. . .ah. . . impure,” I settle on.

Anyone would swear I admitted to lacing his drink with arsenic for how loud he gags. “She’s not innocent?”

“No.” I drag out the short word dramatically. Ashlee’s photo makes her look like a preacher’s daughter. She certainly isn’t one of them. Well, not anymore.

“But she is?”

My father steps closer to Megan, his interest now notable. He trails his eyes down her frame partly hidden by my body, loitering on the modest length of her skirt longer than her eyes.

“She looks pure, just in a different way.” He returns his eyes to mine. “Is she like us?”

He doesn’t mean mentally challenged. He’s asking if she’s a fighter. He likes his targets to be innocent, but with a hostile edge that will push the hunt into overtime.

It takes a mammoth effort, but I squeak out, “Yes.”

My father smiles a grin like Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs before holding out his hand in offering to Megan. She takes it, although hesitantly. She is good at reading people. She knows she is amongst greatness.

Her eyes rocket to mine when my father leans in to take a deep whiff of her hair.

“It’s okay,” I silently mouth when his nose trails down her neck, over the bumps of her erratically heaving chest and past her quivering stomach.

She squeaks when he thrusts his nose between her thighs to authenticate her purity, but since she trusts me, she doesn’t slap him away as predicted. Although disappointed by her lack of gall, I’m appreciative of her submissiveness.

My father growls, his stamp of approval delivered without words. “Who would have known? The lack of purity these days had me wondering if women were born devirginized.”

He laughs, prompting me to mimic him. I either laugh or be subjected to torture. Nobody wants the latter, not even a madman like me. I prefer delivering the punishments, not being on the receiving end of them.

“Charles!” my dad barks.

Like magic, Charles appears out of nowhere.

“Take. . .”

“Megan,” I fill in.

“Megan to her room and order her some supper. . .”

“We’ve already eaten.”

My father continues talking as if I never did, “Then draw her a bath. Let’s relax her muscles before exhausting them.”

When Charles places his hand on Megan’s back to guide her into my father’s manor, her eyes stray to mine.

“Go on,” I say, demanding she follows Charles’ lead.

I’m not going to lie; it isn’t easy for me to do. She killed for me. She maimed for me. She would go to the ends of earth for me. But everything she has or will do for me, the man standing next to me has already done.

“What time will the show begin?”

My father stops watching Megan’s reluctant retreat to shift on his feet to face me. His pupils are massive, his excitement palpable. Although he doesn’t like my deep snarl, he isn’t stunned by it. Hunting has never been my thing. I like a slow, panther-like game, the watching from afar before creeping up on them unaware. I don’t like my women reeking of fear, sweat, and blood before sleeping with them. I like them smelling that way once I’m done with them.

After absorbing the low-hanging sun for a few seconds, my father returns his eyes to mine. “An hour. Possibly two.”

His eagerness to get the hunt underway isn’t surprising. He’s on the brink of a mental breakdown. That’s why he’s acting so manically. Megan is his ticket out of Crazyville. She will give him the relief he needs without requiring him to move a piece on his chessboard.

He’ll just destroy mine instead.

“Are we doing it here or at the stables?”

My father’s lips quirk. “We? You’re joining the hunt?”

Ignoring the bile burning my throat, I nod.

“Good.” My father smiles, welcoming the challenge. “We’ll do it at the stables. I don’t want to scare my little pet too soon.”

His reply would make most people assume he is referring to Megan. I’m not most people. If he already has a pet, why does he want Megan?

My unasked question is answered when my father curls his arm around my shoulders to guide me into the house. “Come, son. Let me introduce you to your new mother.”

My father’s choice in captive is nothing out of the ordinary. Early thirties, big worldly eyes, slim frame, and naked head to toe. Her hair is the same burned charcoal color my mother’s was, and her nipples are a similar shade of brown. She is pretty, but with her eyes brimming with fear instead of psychotic tendencies, she is demure. Boring. Nothing like Megan.

“Please,” she whispers when we return to the hall. I assume her plea is for me until she adds on, “I did as you asked. I won’t disobey you again.”

Now my father’s desire to hunt makes sense. He wants to punish his latest plaything for disobedience by showing her what will happen if she doesn’t follow his command to the T. He could hunt her instead of Megan, but since she is nearly an exact replica of my mother at the age she was before he killed her, he’s giving her one final chance to make amends.

He offered the same mercy to my mother.

She didn’t conform.

I can only hope Megan doesn’t follow her footsteps.