Page 106 of Psychopath

Quinn shook his head, looking down at his notes.

“I had a motive. The intent. The means, and the evidence supports that I did what I set out to. Their blood was all over the place, and I wanted them dead, Quinn. I wanted them to suffer, for no one to find them, and that’s exactly what happened. I did what I set out to.”

“You say the right things,” Quinn whispered. “But you just don’t make me believe it.”

“It’s not about making you believe it. The evidence speaks for itself. Your study speaks for itself.”

“You contradict it.”

Quinn flipped over the page and ticked a few boxes.

“What happens now?” Zane asked.

Quinn narrowed his eyes at the overall score on the sheet.

31.

Zane had scored 31 points.

Virgil 36.

Harris 33.

Richard 31.

Tony 25.

Noah 22.

“Quinn?” Zane pressed. “You okay?”

“Huh? Right.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “We can move on to the next stage of the study.”

“Which is?”

“The MRI scans.” Quinn glanced at Zane. “There’s only four of you now.”

“Who pulled out?”

Quinn shook his head. “They didn’t meet the criteria for the MRI scans. It’s you, Harris, Virgil and Richard left.”

“Lucky us.”

Quinn hummed and gathered his papers. “Lucky you.”

18

Quinn rubbed his temples and took a deep breath. His head pounded. Painkillers didn’t help, and he resorted to breathing techniques. He was on the final straight of the study but had hit a massive roadblock.

The MRI scan was vital, but getting a hospital to allow four dangerous inmates in through their doors was anything but easy. After much grovelling, Quinn had managed to convince a hospital to test his participants. The word trust had been said to him over and over, and only after he hung up the phone, did the weight of the word hit him.

He was relying on the inmates of Greenwood not to fight or try to escape.

They had to be on their best behaviour, but all of them were on life sentences.

For some of them, this would be their only chance of freedom.

Quinn looked at Mars curled up on his lap. “No pressure then…”

---