Page 69 of Psychopath

“I’ll be along to let Zane through shortly,” she said before disappearing.

Quinn bit his lip. “I want to apologise again for any distress my error may have caused you—”

“Distress?”

“Cleo told me you haven’t been yourself since I removed you from the study. She said you’re barely eating…you’re often unresponsive.”

“I’m fine, Doctor Quinn. Better than fine.”

“So.” Quinn shifted in his chair. “Debrief time—”

“It’s Friday.”

“It is,” Quin agreed.

“Your session today is with Zane.”

Quinn cleared his throat, then covered the notes on the table with his forearm.

“Do you regret it?” Mackie asked.

“Regret what?”

“Picking him over me?”

Quinn averted his gaze. “That’s not what happened. I made an error—”

“You’re lying.”

“We’re not here to talk about Zane.”

Mackie leaned over the table. “I told you he wraps people around his finger, and that’s what he did to you. He got you to remove me from the study.”

“That’s not what happened—”

“That’s exactly what happened, Doctor Quinn. Just tell me the truth.”

Quinn took a deep breath. “Thank you for taking part in this study. My aim was to find a correlation between—”

“It took three days to kill my dad.”

Quinn’s breath caught.

Mackie smirked and relaxed back in his chair. “I mean, I could’ve killed him in minutes, seconds even, but I took three days.”

“We don’t need to discuss—”

“They were the best days of my life, and maybe if he’d have stopped lying to my face, I would’ve made it quicker…”

Quinn swallowed. “I remember you said he apologised for hurting you, said he was sorry for what he did.”

Mackie nodded. “That’s right. But that wasn’t the only thing he lied about during those three days. Do you know what else he lied about?”

“I don’t wan—”

“He kept telling me he couldn’t take anymore, but that wasn’t true, because he did, and did, and did, but right at the end, he finally told the truth because when he said he couldn’t take anymore, he couldn’t. He died. But it took such a long time to get to that point.”

Quinn leaned closer to the red button.

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