Free The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen Page B

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I read that and I felt for a moment like I couldn’t breathe. Like I hurt so hard I’d fly apart.
It was the question, you see, that it brought to my mind: Will I ever have someone to say those words to? Will I? Will anyone ever feel that way about me?
Is there a man out there who’s going to kiss me and find out what I am and keep kissing me anyway and forever? And if there is, will I recognize him when he appears?
I know, I know, I’m on a journey, and it’s a marathon, not a sprint. But sometimes, I doubt. I doubt myself, I doubt my decisions. Sometimes, I’m ashamed to say, I even doubt God.
How could I doubt God? God is the only one who’s always been there for me.
I’m sorry, God.
Sometimes I just get so damn lonely.
     
    I finish this passage and clear my throat. I move to the next, written two days after the first one.
     
Nana’s dead. No surprise, but still, it hurts. Nana was a racist, Nana wouldn’t have accepted me the way I am now, but I loved her anyway, I just can’t help it. After all, Nana always kept my secret. THE secret. She kept on loving me even after that terrible thing I did, the most shameful act I ever committed, when I
     
    I frown. It ends there. I run a finger along the inside and realize that pages of the journal have been removed, ripped out. I flip through the later pages.
    Then I see it.
    And I freeze.
    My hands tremble a little bit as I open the journal wider to look, to make sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing.
    At the top of one page, a hand-drawn symbol.
    A skull and crossbones.
    Below that, a single line:
     
What do I collect? That’s the question, and that’s the key. Answer it soon, or more will die.
     
    I drop the journal onto the desktop. My heart is racing.
    Him. He’d been here. The man on the plane.
    The man who killed Lisa.

 
    7
    “SO HE’S LEAVING CLUES.”
    Alan phrases it as a statement, and not a happy one.
    “And he’s set a clock. Catch me or I kill again.”
    The moment I know, for certain, that a killer is serial, everything stops. It’s a moment of total silence, an indrawn breath. The earth stops rotating and a low hum fills my head and thrums through my veins.
    It’s a terrible pause, a necessary minute where I accept the burden of my profession: until I catch him (or her or them), the killing rolls on. Anyone who dies now is my responsibility.
    It’s one thing to know that they don’t stop until we catch them. It’s another thing entirely for them to say outright that they’re already homing in on the next victim. A whole different level of pressure.
    “Fuck.” He sighs. “I sure get tired of these guys. Don’t they know they’ll never be original?”
    “It’s always new to them.”
    “Yeah. What do you want to do?”
    I’d called Alan first, without really giving it too much thought. I’d needed to talk to someone, to tell them what I’d found. The shock of adrenaline is fading now.
    “What are you working on?” I ask.
    “He used a credit card to buy his plane ticket. It’s a valid card, turns out it was issued a few years ago. I got an address and I’m headed over there now.”
    My heart sinks.
    “What was the name on the card?”
    “Richard Ambrose.”
    “The real Ambrose, whoever he was, is dead, Alan.”
    “Yeah.”
    If our perp had manufactured this identity from whole cloth, the credit card would have been issued recently.
    “He probably found a guy that came close to his own physical description,” I muse. “That will help, at least.”
    “You want me to continue with what I’m doing, or come to you?”
    “Get over to Ambrose’s place. I’m fine here. It was just a shock.”
    “Ned and I will take a look and I’ll call you.”
    When Alan was being trained for