Page 15 of No Mercy In Red

A chill crawled up my spine. So, they were still looking for me. They’d been looking for quite some time, but never big scale, just the occasionalmissing persons flier hanging around town, with a note to be vigilant about possible foul play. I started shuffling papers around my desk to hide the tremble that was beginning to take over my hands, like I wasn’t listening to my own obituary being written.

Lara gave me a strange look, “You good?”

I painted a false smile across my face., “Yeah, just thinking about your relentless attempts to try and get me laid again.”

She huffed, rolling her eyes at me. “I do it because I love you. Anyway, got to go, just wanted to bring my favourite bitch some caffeine, love ya.”

I gave her a genuine smile, “Thank you, love you too slut.”

She forced a dramatic gasp, putting the back of her hand against her forehead, “Slut? How rude!” She said as she blew me a kiss on her way out.

I forced a laugh, but deep within me, an unease began to coil in my gut. People were looking for me now, and not just with causal interest. I was starting to wonder if I’d already met one of them, the stranger at the café. The one that felt familiar, but in a way I couldn’t describe.

The anxiety still clung to me as I stepped into Melinda’s Café after work, the file from earlier photocopied and stuffed into my bag. The place was warm and familiar, a comfort I desperately needed after today. I exhaled, moving to the counter, flashing Mel a tired smile.

“The usual?” She asked.

I nodded. “Please.”

I rubbed at my temple, trying to shake off the weight of the day before turning and heading towards my usual seat. And then, I saw him again. I froze. The same man, sitting in the corner, reading that same goddamn book. The tickle in the back of my mind turned into a full-body alarm. He was too familiar, too present, too intentional. Was I being watched?I took my coffee and sat down, keeping my movements causal, I wasn’t going to panic, despite my heartbeat thundering in my ears, the way my palms started to slick with sweat. But I was going to find out exactly who he was, because if someone was trying to hunt me? I’d hunt them first.

Nothing was going to get in the way of me continuing my father’s legacy.

Chapter 15

Max

The feeling wouldn’t go away, that prickling, stomach-knotting sense of being watched. It wasn’t paranoia, it wasn’t me losing my edge. It was real. When I got home, I found another black rose on my doorstep. I finally texted Dave, thanking him for the roses but telling him it was a little weird that he just kept leaving them, one at a time, on my doorstep.

’I haven’t left any roses. Game for round two?’

I swiftly blocked him after that. But if he wasn’t leaving them, who the fuck was? Could it be him, the guy from the café? Great, so now I had two men on my radar, two men to put my focus on. One I had been watching for weeks, the other had been watching me. One was a man I had every intention of killing; the other was a man I wasn’t sure I should be afraid of – or intrigued by. Either way, one of them wouldn’t be walking away from this.

Chris Whitmore was exactly the kind of man I hunted. Rich, powerful, untouchable. His ex-girlfriend had disappeared five months ago, no body, no evidence, only rumours. And then, two weeks ago, another woman – Rachel – a bartender at Mitzie’s, had accused him of drugging her. The case had disappeared overnight, that was enough for me. I had stolen his case file from work two weeks ago and had spent every night since reading every vile accusation, every whispered testimony. And just like the ones before him, he had money, which made him think hewas invincible. But unlike the other men I had killed, this guy made no fucking effort to hide his behaviour. He frequented Mitzie’s on Fridays, always left with a different woman, always making sure that she was too drunk to protest. That would be his downfall though, because this Friday? He’d be leaving with me.

I tapped my nails against my desk, eyes flicking from Chris’s file to my phone. I had spent three nights trying to dig up information on the guy from the café – the one with the dark, dangerous eyes and the smirk that sent a shiver down my spine. Nothing. No social media, no records, no trail, not that I had much to go off of. But I liked to consider myself quite the expert at finding people on social media. I’d done it for Lara a few times when she was speaking to those kinds of guys who claimed they didn’t do social media, but it actually just meant they had a whole other life. Normally, a whole wife and family that they didn’t want her to know about. Only this time I didn’t have a name to search, just his face. I scrolled through friends pages, looking at their friends, their friends, friends. But he wasn’t anywhere to be found. That was impossible, you couldn’t just not have social media in this day and age, damn, even an old profile would’ve been helpful. He didn’t give me law enforcement vibes, I knew how to spot a cop a mile off, Tony taught me the signs to look for, how they never play it cool, no matter how hard they tried. But he had the same presence, same subtle surveillance energy, that told me he wasn’t just a random man that randomly turned up to my favourite café one day. Every. Damn. Day. And that book, that fucking book.The Book Of Azrael.Out of all the book series in the world, he just so happened to be reading the one that had been recently added to my favourites list? I wasn’t stupid, this wasn’t coincidence. I didn’t know why, but I just knew that it wasn’t. It fucking wasn’t, I wasn’t going crazy, I wasn’t letting my paranoia set in. I glanced back over at the file, then back to my phone. Two men, two entirely different problems, yet I only had come up with one solution. One needed to die, but the other? I wasn’t sure yet.

When I walked into Melinda’s Café after work, I didn’t look at him right away, but I felt him. That familiar pull at the back of my mind, the weight of someone’s gaze just lingering long enough to make my skin itch, the hair on the back of my neck began to prickle. I ordered my coffee, offering small talk to Mel about life and Jez, took my seat, and waited. Sure enough, just like every fucking time, he turned a page in his book and glanced up at me. Not too fast, not too slow, it was calculated. I inhaled, deciding it was time to be a little reckless, I couldn’t let this keep eating at me. So I met his gaze, really met it, and something in my belly stirred, like butterflies fluttering around chaotically in a little glass jar. His dark brown eyes, framed by lashed I could only wish I had, didn’t waver. They held me in place, deep and unreadable. But I didn’t look away, and neither did he. Checkmate.

By the time I left the café, I had a plan. I didn’t need to waste my time looking into him anymore, that clearly wasn’t working. I needed to provoke him, see if he was truly watching me, and if he was watching me, he’d be watching me Friday night. I’d be at Mitzie’s, I would be baiting Chris, and if this guy was what I thought he was, which at this point, was a down right stalker, he’d be there too, and that would tell me everything that I needed to know. The thought of having a stalker should have scared me, worried me even. But there was something about him that had me feeling something quite the opposite of fear. I was excited, I was intrigued. What the fuck was wrong with me.

The days leading up to Friday night felt different. I had planned kills before, I had mapped out escapes, cleaned up blood, and helped disposed of bodies with Tony like clockwork. But this time? I wasn’t just counting down the days to a kill, I was counting down the days to see if he would appear. The man with the relentless eyes who invaded my life, my thoughts.

Lara was relentless.

“You’re seriously bailing on me again?” She flopped onto my couch, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “It’s been weeks since we went out, and you refuse to do it again, to go out and actually live your life.”

I sipped my wine, keeping my face neutral. I couldn’t tell her that I actually did have plans, not my plans anyway, she would never understand. I love Lara, and trust her with 99% of my life, but not that side. Nobody could ever know about that side, except for me and Tony.

“I’m just not in the mood, Lar.”

She groaned, “You were in the mood the other weekend!”

I smirked, “That was my birthday, different circumstances. And if I remember correctly, you didn’t actually give me much of a choice in that either.”

Lara rolled her eyes, grabbing a handful of chips from the bowl between us. “Come on, Max, you need to have fun. Get laid again or at least pretend to have fun for once. Life is more than just work and Melinda’s café.”

If only she knew, I had plenty of fun, it just didn’t look like hers. Instead of flirting, drinking and fucking random men, my kind of fun involved hunting my prey for a week or two, then binding him to a chair and making him confess for his vile sins. It included watching the light die from his eyes, knowing that he could ever hurt another woman again.

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