Mind Games

Then, to boost his mood, to revisit that indescribable rush of power, he thought about the people he’d killed.

* * *

She came back to her room, a little shaky, a little breathless.

Others? There were others, like her mom and dad? Curling up, she hugged herself, struggling to stop the shakes, the rise of panic.

She was in her own room, sitting in the closet of her own room. She could see the sunlight on the floor and hear Rem laugh across the hall.

Riggs couldn’t touch her. He sat in a cage, and he couldn’t see the sunlight.

He’d killed more people, and he’d thought of each one like, like trophies in a case.

Did the police know?

He wanted to do it again, kill again. For the fun of it, she realized.

Could he do that? Could he somehow push someone to suicide?

Could she stop him?

While her grandmother worked with Rem, Thea went downstairs to the kitchen phone and looked up Detective Howard’s number in her grandmother’s book.

“Detective Howard.”

“Um, Detective Howard, this is Thea Fox.”

“Hey there, Thea. How are you?”

“I’m … okay. I … Detective Howard, there were others.”

“Others?”

“More people, like my parents. Riggs killed more people before. Before. And there’s another inmate at the prison, Jerome Foster, and Riggs wants to kill him, and—”

“Thea. I need you to slow down. Take a breath. Slow down.”

“I’m—I’m going to get some water.”

She poured some out of the tap, chugged it down. Then nearly sicked it back up again.

“Okay,” she managed. “Okay.”

“Have you been in contact with Riggs, Thea?”

“Not exactly. I just know. And he knows about a guard who’s cheating on his wife and wants to try to use that for something. Um. Douberman. I just know. He knows things, too. He has what I do.”

“You’re saying Riggs is psychic?”

“It’s why he took my picture. He knew there was something. He knows I helped put him in prison. He killed other people before my parents.”

“We linked him to a double murder in Maryland.”

“Before that, before. Three—three—three—”

She squeezed her eyes shut, bore down. “Three times before.”

“Three other murders?”