The Vampire Obsession

Chapter 4

Evelyn

I drove to the rental house with a police cruiser behind me.

Far enough to look subtle, but not enough to go unnoticed.

Anyone watching from a distance could’ve thought I was the killer.

My Airbnb was a small, cozy wooden cabin surrounded by the pine trees of the forest—close to the road, half an hour from the city center, and miles from the nearest neighborhood.

I parked in front of the house. Grabbed my bag from the passenger seat and took my gun from the glove compartment. I checked the bullets, engaged the safety, then slid it into the back waistband of my pants.

The men in the cruiser didn’t need to see it as I got out of the car.

And the fact that I was supposedly going to have twenty-four-hour surveillance didn’t make me feel safe enough to go without it. If anything, it made me feel like I needed it more.

I didn’t trust cops.

I knew that was an ironic thing to say as the daughter of one.

But maybe that was exactly why I didn’t trust them.

I knew the father I’d had.

The cabin’s interior was as warm and charming as its exterior: an open living room connected to the kitchen, one bedroom, one bathroom, and a spacious backyard. Fully furnished—enough to make it feel like home for a few weeks.

No matter how hard I tried to distract myself, the image of the corpse left on the forest floor wouldn’t leave my mind.

A perfect mirror of my father’s murder.

I needed to put my thoughts in order before they ate through my skull, and there was no more effective way to do that than dragging them out into the open.

I rushed to the bedroom. Grabbed my backpack, a roll of tape, and my folder containing every file, every photo, every news clipping I’d collected on the Grimwood Ripper over the past few years.

I flipped one of the framed pictures on the living room wall facedown and began building everything in a sequence of events—from the oldest crimes to the most recent. I taped photos to the back of the frame and drew connections from one image to another with a ballpoint pen.

I froze when a pair of almond-shaped eyes—terrifyingly similar to mine—stared back at me.

A photo of my father, taken a few months before his death. His hair had already begun to gray, his beard grown out, his police uniform pressed and familiar.

I swallowed hard and gripped the pen until my fingers trembled. Then, in one sharp motion, I drew a line—connecting his photo to the image of the officer who’d died today.

At Alan’s request, the officers in the cruiser across the curb had handed me a document containing the crime-scene photos.

I stepped back and studied my improvised murder board.

At the center was a photo of the note written in blood.

A deadly warning meant for me.

I had a board almost identical to this one in my office back in New Orleans. I’d built it to find what the deaths had in common.

This time, I was looking for what was different.

And I found it.

Me.

Whatever you did made him unpredictable. No one knows what his next move will be from here on out.

No one knew what he would do next, but I had my suspicions.

Something told me the Ripper wouldn’t kill again so soon.

He would wait for retaliation—from the police.

Or from me.

That’s what I would do if I were the killer.

I wondered what he knew about me. Whether he’d studied me as closely as I’d studied him.

Whether he’d followed me.

A cold breeze slipped through the open curtains, raising the hairs on my neck and making me shiver violently.

I ran to the windows and yanked the curtains shut, hard.

Then I exhaled, dragging a hand through my hair, exhausted.

It had been a long day, and I needed to clear my body and mind—or I wouldn’t get anywhere with this goddamn investigation.

I decided I’d take the night to breathe.

I took a scorching, relaxing shower, changed out of the clothes I’d worn all day into cool pajamas, and collapsed onto the living room couch.

If I’d been home, I would’ve baked brownies and poured myself a glass of wine—my therapy after a stressful day. It never failed. It always made me feel better.

But I hadn’t gone grocery shopping yet, so my dinner was a bag of chips I’d grabbed at a gas station on the drive into Grimwood. I devoured it while watching a movie about a killer clown on TV.

Horror movies always helped me relax.

Maybe it was the dopamine hit after the credits rolled, when the threat was defeated and the heroine got her victory.

I was so exhausted I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep during the movie—until I heard my phone ringing.

I jolted awake, startled, sitting up in one violent motion.

On the TV, a woman screamed as she was stabbed repeatedly in the back inside a mirror maze. Her bloody death multiplied in every reflection.

Half-asleep, I fumbled for my phone and found it under a cushion.

I unlocked the screen.

Unknown number.

Weird—but I answered anyway.

“Hello? Alan?” I guessed, because I’d forgotten to save his contact and no one besides him would call me that late on a night like this.

For a long moment, there was only heavy silence on the other end.

And the wind singing outside the cabin.

The trees rustled, and the force of the gusts made the windows tremble.

“Hello?” I repeated, impatient now, already about to hang up.

“Who’s your favorite killer?” a rough, unfamiliar male voice asked.

“What?” I tightened my grip on the phone, suddenly wondering if I was truly awake—or still dreaming.

“Don’t play shy with me now.” His voice sounded amused. “We both know the answer to that question, don’t we?”

“Is this a prank? Who is this?” My nerves tightened. Was it one of the students from the lecture? And if so—how the hell did they get my number?

I stood up from the couch, bare feet on the cabin’s icy floor.

I’d left one of the windows open when I fell asleep, and the whole place was flooded with bitter cold.

A deep male laugh rolled through the line. Velvet-dark and threatening, it slid over my skin like a serpent—making me feel strangely invaded.

“Come on, Evelyn.” The mysterious man’s voice was calm, unshakable. And when he said my name, there was the cadence of a foreign accent—Slavic.

A deadly discomfort spread through my stomach and infected my heart.

That wasn’t possible.

And yet there was only one person it could be.

“You’re him. The Grimwood Ripper.”