Mind Games - Page 234

His vision wavered for a second, brought on a sudden, spiking pain behind his eyes. Something told him to walk away, but he wanted that fucking watch. More, he wanted to kill that rich, better-than-you bitch.

He walked away, but he waited, waited in his fine new car, then he followed. Everything so familiar … it gave him the heebies. Familiar because he knew what he was doing. As he sat and watched the big, fancy house, he beat a fist on the steering wheel.

He knew what the fuck he was doing. He’d done it all before, he’d do it all again.

Get some eats, bide his time. He could just head south, but he wanted that watch and the money, the shiny things inside that big house. He wanted the rush of the kill.

And that face, the bitch’s face. He knew that face, wanted to smash it, obliterate it. Had to.

The toothy, zit-faced boy who handed him his food said, “Have a miserable day, asshole.”

“What the fuck did you say?”

But the boy was gone, the food was gone. Riggs stood in the dark, glass cutter in hand. The hand shook.

Then he remembered why he was here.

His back itched the way it did when someone watched him. But when he looked around, he stood alone in the night. No one could stop him from taking what he wanted.

He went inside, put the glass cutter in the duffle, pulled out the gun. The gun he’d taken from a rich bitch he’d killed who’d lived in a big house. Even bigger than this one.

Hate, already rooted, sprouted its thorny stems, opened its poisonous blooms as he wandered through.

The pictures stopped him. He would have sneered, but that face, the girl, stopped him. She looked right at him, looked into him.

The girl. The woman. The girl.

The spike of pain struck again. Something warm trickled out of his left ear. He balled a fist, and barely stopped himself from smashing it into that face.

Have to be quiet, Ray, someone whispered inside his head. Don’t want to wake them up.

“Don’t want to wake them up,” he muttered, and continued up the steps.

And there they were, the rich assholes who had what he wanted. What he’d have.

“You’re wrong, Ray. You’ll never have what they had.”

Thea walked to the foot of the bed.

“Look at them, Ray. Really look. They never hurt anyone. They had such good in their lives. They loved each other. You never had that, did you? Someone to love, to love you back. And you never will.”

“This is bullshit. You’re bullshit. They’re already dead because I made them dead.”

“That’s right, Ray. You took their lives. Congratulations. I wonder, though—please tell me what you think—would you have done it, would you have done all this if you’d known it would cost you your life?”

Turning toward him, she put him in his cell, just for a moment, just to make him feel that isolation.

To make him know it as a little blood dribbled from his nose.

“If you’d looked ahead and seen yourself sitting in that little room, hours and hours, days and days, years and years? Would it be worth it to you knowing a little girl would see to it that you never walked down a city street or country road again? Never ordered another pizza or bought an ice cream cone? Never went to a baseball game or drove a car? If you’d known I’d make sure your life was four walls inside more walls?”

“I’m not going back. I’m out. I told you I’d get out. I’m standing here, and they’re dead.”

In the bed, her parents lay, pillows over their faces, hands linked. And it tore at her heart.

And it made her stronger.

“No, I can’t change the past. I can’t bring them back. There’s no remorse at all inside you, is there?”