Marrow

JACK

Three days.

And in that time, I’ve found pieces of Mason in my daily lunches. Toenails in my yogurt. Testes buried in my tofu salad. Entrails in my travel mug of egg drop soup.

When I approached Kyrie to inquire about her antics, her response was: “You said to dispose of the body… Digestion is a fantastic form of disposal, Jack.”

I’ve since decided it’s time to cremate the bodily evidence she’s gifted to me with my half of Mason. All evidence to be incinerated and ashes to fertilize my Himalayan poppies.

All except the femur.

I’ll keep that in a safe place. When it comes to Kyrie and her volatile temperament, it’s wise to have at least one piece of evidence in reserve.

As the fall breeze scatters orange and red leaves across Main Street, I seat myself on a sidewalk bench and flip through my sketchbook. The drawings of Colby are all I’ve seen of my prey in as many days, also.

Colby has gone missing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts turning up in my salads next.

Flipping to a fresh sheet, I lightly trace my pencil over the Bristol page, the sound of graphite scratching the surface deeply satisfying. My preference is typically a rougher, heavier tooth charcoal paper. I like the texture, the finely broken lines in each stroke. But for this particular sketch, a softer surface is required in order to capture all the delicate nuances of the features.

I glance up at my subject, pencil paused over the page, before I begin shading the high cheekbones.

By the time I have the color of the irises matched to a near perfect shade of pale, crystalline blue, I see the subject of my drawing emerge from the table through the picture window of the bar. She effortlessly mingles with a group of rowdy college kids as they exit, making sure she’s hidden among them as they head down the sidewalk.

I smile to myself at just how clever she is. Hiding in plain sight. Not easy for a beautiful woman who captures attention easily. I wonder if her overly expressive personality is a part of her method; making sure everyone knows how outspoken, outgoing, and delightful she is, so that when she’s on the prowl, no one will remember the quiet, docile woman who blended into a crowd.

“That wasn’t the first time we met.”

I find it difficult to believe I’d simply forget someone as memorable as Kyrie. And using the rivalry to buy time and figure it out has only resulted in Agent Hayes lingering far too long.

The truth is, the more I dig into Dr. Kyrie Roth, the less I uncover. For such a remarkable woman, her life before West Paine seems rather unremarkable, if not very well orchestrated. I can’t seem to find anything messy or unique about Kyrie Leigh Roth. Except for, that is, her type.

I know the kind of victim that captures her eye.

After I’ve packed away my supplies in my satchel, I pop the ballcap on my head and cross the street.

I borrowed some clothes from Brad’s closet, and took the ballcap he likes to wear after work from his office desk. Before I enter the bar, I lower the bill over my eyes and push through the door. An obnoxious blast of pop music greets me first.

I find the table near the back corner where Kyrie sat for the past half hour. From this viewpoint, I spot her target right away, drunkenly and aggressively flirting with a twenty-something young woman across the dimly lit room.

She likes her victims to be of the womanizing variety.

When a waitress approaches, I order a Scotch and put it on Brad’s credit card. It only takes twenty minutes before I catch Kyrie’s target slipping a crushed pill into the girl’s beer.

The adrenaline for the hunt stirs in my veins.

As the target guides the impaired girl out into the chilly night air, I follow not too far behind, making sure the camera mounted at the top of the display shelves catches Brad’s ballcap on my way out.

The plan fell into place naturally. Brad admitted to Agent Hayes in the initial meeting that Mason brought his concerns directly to him.

Then Mason went missing.

Now, I’m practically handing Agent Hayes a prime suspect with evidence on a silver serving platter.

Although I’d like to claim this is all for Thunderdome, the wild heat sizzling my blood states otherwise. I’ve been denying myself too long, urges building. And the gratification of the kill is only partially what’s making my heart drum inside my chest.

Like me, the target is too eager, and his impulsive nature has his victim lured into an alley only a few blocks from the bar.

I hang back around the corner and prep the syringe. When I hear the telltale sound of a lowering zipper, I attack.

Anchoring my arm around his shoulders, I pull him off the drugged girl and drive the needle into his neck. I have the plunger depressed before he has a chance to fight back. As he sags against my chest, I deposit him on the asphalt, then make quick work of checking the girl’s vitals and moving her out of the alleyway.

From her phone, I send an SOS text to her most recent contacts, but ultimately leave her to chance. I’m already playing a game of risk by hunting with a fed in the vicinity. I can’t chance self-preservation to make sure one girl is safe.

“If I’m going down by the feds,” I say, dragging Kyrie’s victim to the end of the alley by his ankle, “I might as well go out in a bloody blaze of glory.”

I chuckle, feeling a rare euphoria. Or maybe she’s just driven me completely out of my mind. I’m being brought down by a girl with poppy blue eyes and bubbly smile. The sheer weakness of it.

I close the trunk of my car with a rewarding click, sealing the victim inside.

DEFLESHING METHODS CAN VARY. Known more accurately as excarnation among my peers, the removal of soft tissue and organs from the skeleton, wherein not to affect or damage the bones, is a delicate process that takes time and patience.

And a lot of bleach.

This is a process I take great pride and pleasure in. The subject is typically deceased when performing the defleshing…but they don’t have to be.

I might not have the time necessary to be as thorough and delicate as required to preserve the bones—but there is a certain appreciation for the more antiquated method.

I look at the naked victim on the steel table as I run the blade of my fillet knife over the sharpening stone. He’s on my slab to serve a purpose. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t take pleasure in my work.

A tube feeds the near-empty contents of a Banana Bag into his arm via an IV drip. The mineral and saline solution will help sober him from the sedative much quicker.

To test the blade’s sharpness, I set the stone aside and lay my gloved hand to his shin, right below the kneecap. His skin is cool to the touch, my personal cold room in my home set five degrees lower than the room at the university.

Positioning the blade at a sixty degree angle, I slice into his flesh, making a clean incision.

Blood pools around the cut and drips bright-red onto the steel surface. My heart rate—which almost always never accelerates above resting—spikes as adrenaline floods my adrenals.

I feel the loss of the moment when he starts to rouse. Groggy, Kyrie’s victim blinks several times as he becomes conscious and attempts to clear his vision. He immediately tries to move his arm, realizing slowly in his inebriated state that he’s strapped down.

Then his gaze locks on me.

“There’s still a good amount of sedative in your system,” I say to him. I wipe the blood off the blade with a clean towelette. “You’ll appreciate that here in a moment.”

As I reach under the slab for my garrote, he stammers the usual tired questions: Who are you. Where am I. What are you going to do to me. Followed by the useless screams and pleas and tears, then finally, threats.

“Good,” I say, stretching the wire out above him. “It’s good to end on a strong note.”

While he continues to threaten my life, I grip the wooden toggles and lower the garrote, resting the wire ligature below the notch of his Adam’s apple on the larynx.

Fighting, he shakes his head back and forth, and I stay right here to savor the moment. The rush, the anticipation. The closest there is to bliss—driving right through the Teflon layer that shrouds me from those elusive feelings.

My gaze settles on the vase of flowers across the steel room. The Himalayan blue poppies frozen in time, the color of the petals preserved at the exact beautiful shade of her eyes.

I imagine her just as she was in the Bass Fields. Mere inches from me, her proximity a heated current against my skin as she rested her finger alongside the trigger. Her reluctant hunter’s gaze homed in on the sick animal.

She loved that coyote.

A fucking coyote, with the inability to reciprocate her feelings, who’d likely maul her face off if she tried to pet it.

And she named it fucking Sunny Bunny.

Since the second she entered my department, I’ve been trying to figure this woman out. Knowing now that we’re kindred should explain the fixation I’ve had on her; that I sensed a killer.

But there’s still something elusive keeping me from wrapping my ligature around her neck.

Her confession burns through my muscles. The pain in her eyes when she pulled the trigger spears beneath my rib cage, her kill felt with every emotion her body couldn’t contain.

The whimper below hauls me out of the memory and, in a fraught effort to regain control, I wrap the ligature around her victim’s neck and pull tight, throttling his scream. The garbled chokes and wheezes for air caress my skin.

When the chorus of sounds die away, I give the wire some slack, allowing him just enough air to do our dance all over again.

I pull the wire taut until my muscles burn. Until the mental image of Kyrie’s smiling face morphs into one of anguish. Her mouth parted, lips pale and trembling. The way she looked at me as I choked her neck in the cold room.

“Dammit…” I release the wire, and the victim gasps. His broken coughs and desperate pleas blend with the sound of Kyrie in my head.

“Get the fuck out—” I snap the wire tight, and his skin splits beneath the ligature. His eyes bulge. Capillaries burst, and a plume of red fills the white.

As I stare into his eyes—my favorite part—waiting to feel the moment his body stops fighting death, her eyes invade my dark soul.

And all I see is her.

Her fucking hard nipples in the freezing cold room…and imagine what noise she’d make as I bit one.

“Christ.” I drop the handles and back away from the table.

Furiously driving a hand through my hair, I bite out another curse. My blood roars inside my ears. I come around the table and grab the knife.

The guy on the slab panics. “Holy shit… Please! Oh fuck, don’t do this—”

With a groan, I hook the blade under a restraint and slice the strap. I cut the rest of the straps away before I flip the steel table over and send it and the victim crashing to the floor.

Chest heaving, I watch as he scrambles to his feet. Using the IV pole for support, he gains balance, first looking at me, then the door.

“Do it,” I dare him.

This isn’t how I operate.

Clean. Precise. Meticulous.

But when she invaded my turf, she fucked up more than just my routine.

As the guy weighs his options, he lifts the shiny silver pole to utilize as a weapon. Keeping my predator gaze on him, I roll my head along my shoulders, feeling every tense muscle lock around my vertebrae.

Blood drips down his shin, and hunger ignites.

He makes a move toward the door.

Like a feral beast scenting blood, I dart forward. He gets a few wobbly steps before he trips over the tube. I allow him to right himself and face me. He thrusts the pole, jabbing it into my stomach.

The pain hits the mark. Teeth gritted, I grind out, “Again.”

He’s shaking now, adrenaline and fear pouring off his slick body, but he comes at me like a man who wants to live. He repeatedly slams the pole against me. Striking my ribs, arms, shoulders. I take the beating. I take each blow as punishment for my failure. The pain webs my body like a fine mesh to coat the numbness.

But I still see her—feel her.

Want her.

When he goes for my face, a roar tears from the base of my chest and I latch on to him. I rip the pole from his hand and thrust his back against the wall. Shoulder braced across his chest, I stare down into his face as I drive the blade into his sternum.

Eyes flared wide, he releases a silent wail, the horror of his doom trapped in a scream that will never be free.

I lose myself to the lust. I stick the knife in his stomach and drive the tip of the blade up beneath his ribs. I stab him again. Over and over, I sink the blade deep, mutilating his core until I taste the coppery tang of his blood as it mists my face.

His gaze has long lost the flicker of life. Breaths sawing my lungs, I remove my arm and let him drop to the floor. He sprawls over the clear tarp, and I step back and watch the blood pool around his lifeless form.

All I can think about is wrapping my hand around Kyrie’s throat and shoving her to the bloody floor. My grip loosens around the hilt of the knife, and I drop to my knees as it clatters next to me.

My damn cock is rock-hard and strains painfully against my jeans. I drag the zipper down and free the thick girth from the confines of my briefs. Wrapping a blood-stained hand around the base, I hiss through clenched teeth at the erotic feel of my wet, warm palm.

I’m staring at the morbid display of death and destruction on my cold room floor, but the imagery in my head takes me to her—to where her nails dig into my hand as I choke up on her throat, her lips as pale-blue as her eyes, her tits perfect and begging me to fuck them.

“Ah…fuck.” I rub my cock, the titanium studs cool against my palm as I pass over them with each stroke.

Then Kyrie is fading, losing consciousness. Her heart rate slows, breathing shallows, until she’s completely subdued and helpless beneath me. I release her neck and move down her lax body and toe her skirt and panties past her ankles. Slipping between her thighs, I anxiously surround my mouth over her sweet pussy.

My strokes speed as I imagine lapping at her silky lips, scraping my teeth over her clit, hearing her breathy moans and feeling her undulate as her body begs for release. I’m a glutton as I tear into her tender flesh and push inside her first with my tongue, then finger, as I die to have her perfect cunt wrapped around my cock.

The throb builds in intensity until I slap the tarped concrete with my free hand, palm bracing my body as my hips thrust. Her shuttered lids twitch, and I know when I sink inside her, her eyes will open, and those soulful fucking orbs will be on me…

“Oh…goddamn. Fuck.” The orgasm takes hold, threading my spine with pinpricks of electricity as my cock pulses, and a thick ribbon of ejaculate spills free.

I pump my cock harder as the blaze engulfs my bones. I’m shaking with the release. Panting through the pleasurable shockwaves that roll through me.

It’s not enough.

I want more.

Getting to my feet, I tuck my dick into my pants and take in the demolished state of my cold room. Blood, cum, and chaos.

A fucking wreck. Just like my mind.

BEFORE I LEAVE the little ranch house, I set the ballcap on the entryway table, then splash the threshold with gasoline.

I close the door and walk out into the backyard, letting the contents of the gas can spill behind me. Getting Kyrie’s victim into the basement was the easy part. Once Brad left for karaoke night, I knew I had enough time to stage the scene. Making sure authorities show up before all the evidence is destroyed is the more difficult challenge.

But I play for keeps.

In one methodical move, I slide my knight into position in anticipation for the checkmate—a daring move to remove both Brad and Agent Hayes from the board.

Then I’ll claim West Paine as mine.

The queen, however, is still in possession of a very sentimental trophy. Missing the feel of my lighter in my hand, I strike the match and drop it to the trail of gasoline.

Then I watch Brad’s house go up in flames.

As I leave the scene, I send a text to Kyrie: ♟💀. Your move.