had the pleasure of starring in one of your own traps.”
I push the hood off and unzip my jacket. “What’s in the container?”
“A concentrated sulfuric acid compound,” he replies. “Your recipe.”
I smirk and toss my jacket aside. “A copycat down to the last detail.” But I realize London’s exposed flesh will be submerged in the mixture with no barrier to mute the damage. This sobers me.
“That’s just the perfectionist in me. I do have a whimsical side. Like the addition of the locks…just for you. It’s a metaphor.”
I’m already tired of his voice. “Very clever.” I glance around and notice a covered rubber tub beneath the dangling locks.
“Go ahead. Open it.”
I stride to the tub and toe the lid open.
Keys.
At least a hundred gleaming keys fill the bottom of the bin…and they’ve been filed into lethal-looking weapons. The edges knife-sharp.
A hiss echoes through the garage, and the hydraulic lift lowers a notch. I look up at London. She’s strong, but her body reacts from the jolting motion, her muscles quaking with involuntary tremors as she sways only feet above the container.
The weighted locks above my head clang together, moving another few inches higher.
“I knew from the moment I found the doctor alive that she was the key to you,” Nelson says. “I admit, for a while, you eluded me. You’re a conundrum. A psychopathic killer in love… Not only is it ridiculous, but it goes against every FBI profile we have.”
“I’m not a profile.”
“You will be now. See, I struggled—with every kill—to get inside your head, but I don’t have to share your obsession to beat you. I just needed her.”
London is so much more than a mere obsession.
“If you try to remove her from the trap,” Nelson continues, “I push the button on the lift controls. She might survive the acid dunk…but she won’t be very pretty anymore.”
I grit my teeth and whirl around, looking for the man behind the voice. “You could just shoot us both. Save us the trouble.”
He tsks. “Do you think I’m doing this for you? For her? I don’t give a fuck how you two twists kill each other in the end. She dies by your hand—by your death trap—that means I get to go back.”
“You’re not going back, Nelson. You enjoy my persona too much. It might have started out as a way to get inside my head, to hunt me, but as time went on, you got comfortable in my skin. Because otherwise, I’m here.” I raise my hands. “You’ve caught me.”
My voice echos around the garage.
I let my arms drop. “You don’t want to capture me. You want me dead. So you can continue to use my methods to kill. It’s the perfect ruse.”
At his intense silence, I have my answer. Nelson doesn’t intend for either me or London to leave here alive.
“Being on the run is exhausting,” I say. “I know. It wears on a man. Shows us what we’re made of. I’m never going to stop hunting you, Nelson. The FBI is the least of your worries.”
Another shrill whistle from the gears on the lift, and London descends lower. A warning that Nelson is ready to start the game.
Even if I save her, we’re not simply walking away. The only way Nelson gets to be the hero is if we die. He’ll become the insulted agent who went rogue to capture an escaped killer.
Except London becomes a victim in the process.
Two deaths have to happen here. That’s what’s needed.
“Only one key unlocks her shackles,” Nelson says. “Dig in.”
I look up at London, beautiful and angelic. Her dark hair tangled in disarray, mascara smudged down her porcelain cheeks. Masking tape covers her eyes and mouth, and yet she’s speaking to me, urging me on.