Free Killing Fear by Allison Brennan Page A

Either his disguise was more than adequate—he’d threaded his brown hair with gray and popped in over-the-counter contacts to change his blue eyes to brown—or the police were even dumber than he thought.
    More likely, the police didn’t expect him to hang out in the middle of their own territory. They’d assume he would hide out in a motel or run for the border after taking care of Sherry. Now he needed information, but he wasn’t confident his disguise would pass intense scrutiny—if Hooper saw him, for example.
    That made sitting here even more exciting.
    Theodore craved adrenaline. He’d shoplifted as a child not because he needed anything, and certainly not for the attention, but for the punch of adrenaline when he staked out a shop, monitored the staff, avoided cameras, grabbed anything from candy to money in a change drawer. The activity bored him after a time, because no matter how many risks he took, he’d never been caught. He was that good.
    Team sports held no allure for him. He’d tried, but he was better than everyone else and the idiot coaches would insist that everyone have a turn. Even the stupid fat-ass sissies who would run away from the ball instead of toward it. Theodore couldn’t fathom doing that for years before finally being old enough to make a team that would truly value talent.
    He went for individual sports. He ran. When he came in first in any given race, it was over. Once he’d proved he was the best, there was no other place to go. He didn’t need twelve first place trophies.
    He’d discovered skateboarding young, then dirt bikes, then motorbikes. His parents gave him whatever he asked for because they recognized that he was special. He could accomplish anything he set his mind to.
    When he fell—and he often did at first—a rage came over him. Even when he had no injuries, his failure physically hurt, a knife twisting in his skull, telling him he couldn’t . Only in conquering that failure could he seize on the power that gave him the high and reward he needed.
    But eventually, the adrenaline from personal achievement wasn’t enough. How many times could he sky-dive? How many times could he bungee jump off a bridge? He’d traveled all over the country seeking thrills that needed to be bigger, better, more dangerous just to get the same satisfaction.
    Until he killed.
    The strippers weren’t the first. The first time was two years before them. Spontaneous.
    Theodore was still in law school the first time he BASE jumped, over the Royal Gorge in Colorado. The first time he jumped had been the most exhilarating experience of his life. Free-falling, before he pulled the parachute cord, Glenn felt a euphoric high that lasted for weeks. No subsequent jump gave him that intense thrill. He couldn’t go back to bungee jumping, which seemed so childish by that time, and instead tried a variety of other BASE jump locations. Nothing satisfied him, not the same way. The more he failed to get the rush, the more he craved it.
    So he went back to the Royal Gorge one weekend, to regain the excitement that he was the best and jumped.
    The thrill was gone. He might as well have been jumping off a two-story house. He’d done the Gorge once, he knew what it felt like, and the second time he felt nothing. Nothing! It was like being a kid again, watching the other kids laugh and play and smile and not know what the fuck they were finding so fun.
    If Dirk Lofton, a prick he’d jumped with before, hadn’t walked up just then, after Theodore made a perfect landing in the Gorge, Lofton would still be alive.
    “Nice landing,” Lofton said. “’Course you had perfect weather. No updrafts.”
    Lofton had always been competitive. While others might have called it “friendly,” it twisted and festered in Theodore’s stomach. Churning until all he wanted to do was snap the asshole’s neck.
    Picturing Lofton lying dead at his feet gave Theodore a rush. And an idea.
    The next morning Lofton