Page 54 of Some Saviors Can Break You

“Lucky,” Jake agreed as he stood beside her.

Spread across the board were pictures of every single victim of the Dumpster Killer, both alive and deceased, and maps marking where each body would be disposed of. “Jake, look at this,” she said, directing her partner’s attention to a photo of a pretty blonde in her mid-twenties. “She’s not one of our victims.”

As far as she was concerned that could mean only one thing.

Michael had already chosen his next victim.

Apparently, Jake thought the same thing. “Michael isn’t here, and he isn’t at work.”

“He’s at her apartment.” Florence was already running out of the apartment and down the stairs, there would be time later to work through the treasure trove that Michael had left for them, but this woman’s time would be running out. Michael was already veering off his path, killing more and more frequently, there was every chance he wouldn’t keep any future victims alive for forty-eight hours, which meant that every second counted.

Jake was on her heels as they ran out onto the street. The apartment listed next to the woman was only a block away, it would be quicker for them to get there themselves than to call it in and have uniforms deployed to the building.

It was early afternoon, and the streets were busy, Florence had to weave her way around people as she ran as fast as she could and made it to the building in minutes.

At the apartment door, she and Jake paused, silently coordinating how they would proceed. They’d worked together long enough that they didn't need to go through things in detail, they knew each other well enough to know what the other was thinking, and knew how to play off each other.

With a nod, Jake reached for the doorknob. Florence had her gun out and ready to aim at Michael the second the door swung open.

As soon as it did, two heads snapped in their direction.

The woman—Rachel Oaks—began to weep in relief as she realized the cavalry had arrived and she wasn't about to die.

The man—Michael Stypes—looked panicked and then angry as his gaze darted to the table where a gun lay discarded. In that millisecond, he appeared to weigh his options, decide he would never make it to the weapon, and instead lunged for the chair the woman was bound to and ducked behind it, using his victim as a shield.

“It’s over, Michael,” she called out, weapon trained on the chair. Although she believed Michael to be unarmed, she wanted to try to talk him down before they did anything that might get an innocent victim hurt.

“It’s you,” he called back. “You saw me, but no one sees me, how did you do it?”

So he definitely knew who she was, Florence was sure that it was Michael who she’d felt watching her that morning Eli had arrived to take her to work. Maybe he viewed her as a threat whohad needed to be eliminated. “I look for details, Michael. The little things, the things no one else notices, that’s what makes me a good cop.”

“You ruined everything,” he seethed.

“What did I ruin, Michael? What are you trying to achieve by killing these women?” If she could get him talking, keep his focus on her, then hopefully he wouldn’t notice that Jake was slowly circling around the edge of the room to get behind him.

“They deserved what they got.”

“Why? Why did they deserve to die, Michael?”

“They didn't see me. They looked at me, and they saw straight through me. Take Rachel here.” He did something to the woman to make her cry out, and when she looked, Florence could see that Michael had his fingers tangled in the woman’s long hair.

“What did Rachel do?”

“Rachel is a friend of my older brother’s wife, at their wedding I was a groomsman, she was a bridesmaid, we walked down the aisle together. I asked her if we could dance together at the reception, she said yes, only then she spent the whole time gyrating against one of the other groomsmen. She left with him, she was drunk, filthy thing didn't even spare me a second thought.” He ripped Rachel’s head back, exposing her thin white neck, and Florence had no doubt that if he had a knife in his hand he would have slit it.

“I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt you, did you, Rachel?”

“N-no. The other g-groomsman was my boyfriend at the time. I l-looked for you, but I d-didn't see y-you,” Rachel stammered.

“Of course you didn't,” Michael roared. “No one ever does. Not my parents, not women, not you. No one ever sees me. Except you,” he growled in her direction.

“I'm sorry that you’ve felt invisible, Michael. I'm sorry that you feel like no one cares about you, but you have our attention now. I see you, I hear you, you are not invisible.” She knew what it was like to feel invisible, to think that no one cared about you, and it hurt. It made you feel like there was something wrong with you, like it was your fault that there was no one who cared whether you lived or died. She had felt that way all her life, even after she’d built a new life for herself in New York, she’d felt more alone than she’d ever realized.

Until Eli came into her life.

Now for the first time ever, she felt like she had someone.

“Are you patronizing me?” Michael demanded.

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