“You do anything other than stalk the hall?”

She laughed and they came to a stop before the elevator, her finger reaching out and jabbing at the down arrow. “I just moved to town for a new job. I’m just crashing at Simon’s till I find a place. Not sure which part of town to look in.” She looked up at him. “Where do you live?”

He coughed, gesturing her forward when the doors opened. “In Bethany Park.”

“Ooh… fancy,” she cooed. “Unfortunately I think that’s out of a cop’s price range.”

I’m not a cop. He started to say it, then realized that she was talking about herself. He turned his head. “You’re a cop?” It shouldn’t have put a pain in his stomach. It shouldn’t have made his palms sweat, his heartbeat increase. He had never, from the day he’d been born, broken a law. Committed a crime. Done anything to warrant a thickening in his chest. But it was there. Just like when a police car pulled up behind him. Just like when he got a letter from the IRS.

She grinned at the question. “The nerdy kind. Forensics. So… don’t bother killing anyone.” She leaned into his personal space, and he smelled the faint scent of lavender as she whispered. “’Cause I’ll catch ya.”

CHAPTER 30

Past

FETISHES ARE MY bread and butter. The freakier a kink, the more the afflicted feels the need to hide it, to explore it in the anonymity of the Internet as opposed to an actual face-to-face experience with someone who might reject them. And that’s where my alter ego, JessReilly19, comes in. I, like the thousands of camgirls online, breathe digital life into their kinks and let them blossom.

I understand my clients’ shame. Their fear of rejection. I get the glee of discovery that can only be fully celebrated in private, without judgment peeking around the corner with a giant YOU ARE A FREAK sign. My fetish isn’t sexual, but it still is that, a fetish: a course of action to which one has an excessive and irrational commitment. My course of action is killing. My commitment is excessive and irrational. So I don’t judge my clients. I don’t judge the things that bring them pleasure. It’s not my place to be the hypocrite.

A day after my blowup with Jeremy, the current client of the hour was Justin488, who jerked off to his next-door neighbor, an elderly woman who liked to prune her roses and take naps in her front porch rocking chair. Justin, from the sound of his voice in my ear, the hiccups of his orgasm, seemed to be in his twenties. A boy who took no issue with my young appearance, but who told me, at the end of the chat, that I gave “good old woman.” Awesome. Maybe this job does have some longevity.

I thanked him for the chat and hung up my cell. Logged back into free chat and watched twenty greetings fill the screen.

Freeloader22: hey sexy

BigDick4You99: hey

---ShaunUofM enters room

FinDomFreak44: hey Jessica. Up for some FinDom?

“Hey, guys. Sure, Fin. Open up that wallet and get ready to pay up.” I grinned and rolled onto my stomach. Ignored my cell when it buzzed beside me.

AlaskaPaul: hey Jess

I smiled, surprised. “Hey, Paul. Surprised to see you here.”

AlaskaPaul: got off early. Private?

“Sure. Hit me up on my site.”

I logged out of the camsite and onto my personal site, where 95 percent of Paul’s $6.99 per minute would go into my bank account, versus the pathetic cut I got on the corporately controlled camsite. Paul sat, where he always did, in one of my private rooms, and I started the chat, the pull on his credit card beginning.

A minute later, my cell rang.

“Hey, babe.” I closed my laptop and stood, walking to the lights and turning them off, the room instantly cooler. I headed to the thermostat to turn the air conditioner off.

“Hey. How’s your day going?” Paul sounded, as always, happy. He’s always happy. I’ve chatted with him at least twice a week for over two years, and I’ve never heard him be anything other than cheerful. On a normal individual, in an ordinary situation, it’d be downright annoying. Like that cheery coworker that you secretly wish would trip and fall into a muddy puddle. But with Paul, it’s endearing. Even more endearing since I was earning four hundred dollars an hour to chat with his cheerful self.

“It’s good. Slow. It feels weird, talking to you this early.” Given Paul’s Alaskan time zone, I typically talk to him late in the morning, when he’s headed to work, or late at night, when he’s on his way home from the pipelines.

“Yeah. A blizzard’s coming in. We all headed in early to hunker down. I got the fire on now. Me and Oscar are warm and happy.”

I smiled at the thought of his husky, stretched out before the fire. In my mind it’s on a fur rug, in a cozy house filled with books and the smell of cinnamon. In real life he’s probably in a doublewide, this chat pushing his credit card debt a couple hundred bucks higher. I took the moment to bag up the kitchen trash. Propped the phone on my shoulder as I yanked the ties tight and carried it to the door, leaning it against the wall. I’ll stick it in the hall tonight and Simon will get it. Carry it down to the Dumpster when he locks me in. “How long will the blizzard last?”

“They’re saying six or seven hours. Nothing too bad. But it ruins the orgy I had planned.”

I laughed, snagging the closest cardboard box and dragging it to the table. Heavy. Used a pen to break the plastic tape and rip it off. “Damn blizzard. How dare it.”

“Exactly. What are you up to tonight?”

“Working till ten. Then I’m going out with my roommate.” My lie comes out easily. They all do.

“Where?”

I pulled the cardboard box open. Bottled water. A hundred Fijis. I opened the fridge and began stocking it. “There’s a house party she was invited to. It’s a theme party. Toga, but we’re gonna be rebels and dress cute.”

He chuckled. “Wild thing.”

“Oh, you know it. Not to mention, it’s too damn cold for togas. The party organizers should be ashamed of themselves.” Six six-packs fit on one shelf of my fridge. I stopped stocking and shut the lid. Grabbed a Sharpie and labeled the side of the box. Then I slid it back, letting it join the sea of others, this time on the bottom of the “Food” tower of boxes. My madness was nothing if not organized. I lifted over the next unclaimed box and broke it open. Did a mini-celebration when I saw the tampons. Just in time. And, with 480 applicators of different absorbencies enclosed, I should be covered for the next year, easy.

I counted out a dozen tampons and headed for the bathroom, tossing them into the basket under the sink. “You ever get toga parties in Alaska?” Paul didn’t go to college. He grew up in Oregon and was recruited out of high school for the pipeline. Stood out as a big kid. Moved to Alaska three months after graduation. That was fourteen years ago.

Another laugh. “No. But promise me, if you do decide to yield to peer pressure and dress in a toga, that you’ll take a picture for me.”

I smiled. “Promise. But I can guarantee you that I won’t.”

“Oh… never say never. You might get a few drinks in you and end up stealing some poor guy’s sheets.”

I folded the tampon box back into place and labeled it. “You know I don’t drink.”

You know I don’t drink. One truth. I think, looking back, that it was the only one I offered during that fifty-four-minute conversation.

Don’t tell Dr. Derek, but I’ve become much more comfortable with lying than I’ve ever been with telling the truth.