The Risk (Mindf*ck, #1)

by S.T. Abby

Einstein said, “The weak revenge. The strong forgive. The intelligent ignore.” Fuck that. Einstein wasn’t always right. Revenge is a dish best served cold… Now that I agree with. It means they forget you’re coming for them, and their screams sound so much prettier when the time finally comes.

Plenty of women will overlook his arrogance, confusing it for cockiness, possibly even find it charming. But I’m the wrong girl.

“You always so defensive?” he muses. “Are you constantly worried about the intentions of others? Or is it an extreme feminist position that keeps you on edge about a man doing something as mediocre as paying for your coffee and muffin?” He is reading me. I knew it.

“Life sucks,” he says randomly. “Then you die. Might as well live while you’re still alive,” he adds, sounding completely less insightful than earlier.

Screams pierce my ears, and I realize that moment of weakness with Mr. Profiler earlier doesn’t affect how pretty the screams sound.

“That means three pounds of flesh over the next three days,” I go on.

I don’t believe in mercy. Three pounds of flesh will be extracted while he’s awake. He’ll beg and plead. He’ll pray to pass out. But he will feel it all. Just like we did.

“Women serial killers statistically don’t torture. They’re actually far more efficient and harder to track down because of that,” Elise says dismissively. “Well, he has to be impotent. Most serial killers are,” Alan chimes in, joining us.

It’s possible the unsub hates the whole town, but why? Is it part vengeance?”

“So you really waited the standard three days to give me a call back?” “Technically, I waited a nonconventional four days.”

“Well, I never adopted a booger-eating habit. Drinking urine doesn’t appeal to me. I’ll just have a beer if I’m in the mood to drink something akin to piss. And I’ll hide my strap-on until you’re a little more comfortable with your sexuality to give it a go.”

My eyes close, and I expect to see the images of dead bodies like I always do. Instead, I’m lost in a set of haunted green eyes I’ll be seeing later.

I’m not sure what compelled me to call him, flirt with him, then agree to a date. Maybe it’s because I need to feel less like a cold monster and more like a woman.

He serves justice the best he can. I serve revenge in the way it needs to be.

I drop back down to my seat, wondering how planning out a brutal murder is easier than dating. The world is entirely too fucked up.

We’re so terribly mismatched that it’s not even funny. If he’d seen the evil I’ve seen, he’d understand why some people deserve to die.

Well, he’s killed numerous people the same way with the same methodology and reasoning…so technically he’s a serial killer too. It’s logically truthful. Other than wearing a badge to find it legally justifiable, we’re the same. Well, I torture my victims first, but that’s just nitpicking at facts.

The memories used to leave me curled in a ball and crying for hours. Now they fuel me. Feed my mission. Drive me forward. Make me a little murderous.

His whole life is nice and shiny. Just like all of them. I can’t wait to paint it red.

With the dead ends I’m finding on all my cases, I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t time for a career change. ME: If it makes you feel any better, I contemplated a career change too. Met a guy yesterday who was trading all his wife’s dildos for a pressure washer. -.- The wife was furious when I showed up to inspect the quality of her “toys.”

LOGAN: You seriously didn’t remember his name? ME: I only retain the names of people I like or want to kill.

Am I allowed to say yes to a last minute dinner invite? Or is it frowned upon to seem readily available on such short notice? ;)

Because Lana Myers has been in my head since the day I met her, and it’d be nice if someone noticed I was missing.

Tyler is the first one who is married, and apparently having an affair. I’ve been saving him for closer to last, but right now, I can’t afford to go home and sprint through so many.

It’s not like they’ll link any of it to me, of course. Lana Myers doesn’t exist in that town. Never has. Victoria Evans died ten years ago. I look nothing like her anymore.

The tenth year… The tenth year is when I decided to start killing one a month.

“Come on, pretty girl. Don’t tell me you’re not home after I broke rules and privacy laws to find you,” Logan drawls from the other side of the door.

Definitely moving too fast, but I don’t care. We’re doomed anyway. The monster never gets the prince. It’s always the sweet and innocent princess who wins.

It is perfect. Which is why I need to kill the monitoring channel in the living room so that it doesn’t work, lock my murder room, and make sure all my weapons stay in there from now on.

For the record, I’m not supposed to tell anyone.” “Then why did you tell me?” she scolds. “Because I want you to be someone one day.”

“He had a breakdown two nights later and said we took it too far. He fucking cried, dude. Cried like a little bitch. Said we were sick for what we did to them. It’s him. That fucker has finally cracked and now he’s doing this. He thinks he’s innocent since he didn’t get his dick dirty that night, and now he’s picking us off one by one.”

He may have just saved Dev ten fingers. And a tongue. His tongue was going to be gone too. It was a special column I was going to draw up just for him.

“Then I don’t know anyone else who would be enraged over a rapist’s whore daughter and fag son,” Lawrence says coldly.

Because of them, I was left without anyone. Because of them, the best man who has ever walked the face of the earth died before he could light the world with his smile.

And they think it’s okay because he was gay. They think it’s okay because I’d had sex with two guys before that night. They think it makes it alright to punish us so brutally for loving our father…

I have two kills to plan, a boyfriend to see, and a best friend to un-piss off. And not in that order. I’m just the typical American woman. Or is it the typical American Psycho?

He came into this alley as the predator. He’ll die as the prey.

True story: Most people are more terrified when they see a knife than when they see a gun. It’s a psychological thing, but it works out in my favor at the moment.