Twist (Book 1): The Abnorm Chronicles-Twist (18 page)

Chapter
46

The moment she saw Adam Lee roll away from the window, Selene moved. She had been watching him for hours, waiting for him to move from that spot.

A worthless human being! Damaged, occupying space, a creep who spied on everyone
—and a Twist bastard on top of all that.

He had reported to the police, though she couldn’t be sure what he had
witnessed. The hairs she’d torn from Thumper’s head and planted in the wig would throw the cops off the scent for a while, but if Adam had been watching, he might have seen . . . It made her skin crawl to think about his eyes on her, leering from afar, using his freakish powers. Who knew what he could do?

T
he details fit together in a grand and complex pattern in her mind, the threads of an enormous tapestry that could unravel at any time. As if she needed any other reason to take out a worthless Twist. Upping the percentages for the normal human race.

Killing the
talented freaks was usually a challenge, but she doubted a wheelchair-bound cripple could cause much difficulty—although doing it in broad daylight posed a different sort of problem entirely. But she couldn’t wait. She could see the pattern and map out a way to do it.

She didn
’t know if she had seconds or minutes to get out, but having read his file among the stack she’d taken from Dr. Wolverton, Selene knew exactly what his Twist gift was. Even the paralyzed lump of flesh had abnormal skills that hardworking, downtrodden
humans
didn’t. To think she had felt sorry for him once! Selene shook her head and fought down the roiling disgust. No time. No time at all.

She
slipped out of the apartment building, bypassed the elevator, and slipped out the emergency side door into the alley. He could see the street from his window, but she could dart around the building, come up on the sidewalk in front of the Lion’s Regency. Unless he had pulled forward and was peering straight down, he wouldn’t see her.

She paused in the alley.
The pockets of her black cargo pants were clunky. Secreted in each thigh pocket was an empty bottle. Sparkling, clear glass that would make a jagged, razor edge.

M
aintaining cover as best she could in the daylight, she looked up at the top floor of the rundown Section 8 apartments. The Twist’s window was empty. She took advantage of the opportunity and got ready to dart across the street.

Then a
car pulled up to the curb and parked in front of the Lion’s Regency—in a hurry. She froze as she recognized the two men from the night before. They had been investigating the crime scene, where she’d taken out the two cops lurking in front of her own building.

Cautious, s
he melted back into the shadows and stepped behind the Dumpster. She watched as the two men hurried through the main entrance into Adam’s building. Her mind spun.

Seven floors, no working elevator
—Dr. Wolverton’s file had been very specific about that. It seemed to be a key to Adam Lee’s isolation. The two investigators would be making their way up there, climbing the stairs.

Her mind ran through the math:
seven floors, maybe fifteen seconds per floor, no make it ten because they seemed to be in a hurry. If she moved slower, stealthier, it would take her twenty to twenty-five seconds for each landing. She would have to time this precisely, and she would need to be ready to act in an instant.

Counting to ninety under her breath, she pulled the two bottles out of her pockets and
with a practiced flick broke them against the brick wall of the alley. Shards of glass littered the mouth of the alley and left her holding a ring of angry crystal saw blades. Just like what her father had used to kill her mother, just like how he had tried to kill her.
Worthless!

S
he looked out of the alley, saw a lull in pedestrian traffic, glanced up to see Adam Lee’s window still vacant. She tucked the broken bottles in her pants, careful not to cut herself nor to damage the delicate jagged edges, then hunched her head down and walked across the street.

Once inside the Lion
’s Regency Apartments, she could smell the place, worse than her own building. A sour, old odor, as if weary hopelessness had seeped into the paint and carpet.

She saw the elevator
—”Out of Order”—and made for the stairwell as if she did it every day, just another tenant. After she entered the stairwell, she paused to listen for other footsteps, a scuff of shoes plodding up flight after flight. Nothing. The two investigators were already gone.

Selene moved
up one flight and then the next, pausing at each landing to listen. If someone else came, she could duck into a different floor and wait. But she had the stairwell to herself. Seven floors.

Adrenaline gave her energy,
and by the time she reached the top floor, she felt keyed up, full of anticipation. This was the dangerous part, where she was most likely to get caught.

What did the cripple Twist know? What had he told the other investigators? Obviously, he had called them
about something, and she knew it had something to do with her. She wondered if the cops had tracked down Thumper yet. A thin smile crossed her face as she imagined the prick denying any involvement. No one would believe him, and the DNA wouldn’t lie.

But Adam Lee had been watching her. She knew that.
Maybe she would use part of the bottle to gouge out his eyes, too. For good measure.

Before she
stepped out onto the seventh floor, where the two investigators must have gone, she pressed her ear against the door. No sounds came from the other side.

Softly, she opened the door
. The hall was clear. Wrapping herself in an imaginary disguise, an I-belong-here saunter, she tucked her head again in case anyone was spying through door peepholes. She walked down the hall, nonchalant, listening carefully as she passed Adam’s apartment. She tried not to slow perceptibly, drinking in all the details she could snatch in the brief moment.

She heard voices inside, two men talking. She would wait
them out. The gamble had paid off.

At the end of the hallway
she found a separate roof-access door, the type common in most buildings around the neighborhood. They had all been built the same time, same design. As her inner clock ticked louder and louder, Selene reached the door, twisted the handle.
Locked
. Closing her eyes, she focused her breathing and her mind.
I won’t be defeated. I must have the tools.
If the detectives left Adam’s apartment and found her standing there in the hall . . .

Breathe in, breathe out.

In order to provide ready access to the tenants, the roof door had a generic lock, one that could be opened by the same key to the building
’s front door. Selene had that key—taken from the ring she’d pried from Ingrid Wolverton’s twitching hand as she lay bleeding to death in the hospital parking structure. The doctor had even conveniently marked the key with tape: “Adam.”

She slipped it into the roof-access lock, turned it.
Ghosting through the door, she closed it until there was just a sliver of light between her and the hallway. Safe in her hidey hole, she put her ear to the tiny crack, listened, and waited.

In the tense lull, her
mind worked on the problems at hand. She had begun her mission more than four weeks ago, methodically working her way through the list she had obtained through the VA Slow and steady gets the job done.

Even though she had done everything right,
however, her life had exploded over the last four days. She wasn’t supposed to get caught! She was doing a necessary job for humanity, something to make her important rather than worthless—cleaning up the gene pool. Shouldn’t there be some government agency to do that? Was she the only one who saw the threat the freaks posed?

Selene suspected that Twists had infiltrated their way into high offices and were manipulating society.
Like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Sooner or later, the Twists would herd up Normals into concentration camps, turn them into slaves.

Now the police were closing in on her. After losing her job at the
VA Hospital, she no longer had the resources, so she needed to make the most of the time she had left. She had to do something drastic, wipe the slate clean.

Adam Lee was the place to start.

After that, she could lay low, move, start over. She didn’t have to keep hunting in Denver. Twists were everywhere. The thought filled her with disgust. Every single one of them and their filthy gifts was an affront, a reminder that she had been born with no advantages.
Worthless!

Selene
only had to wait a few minutes. Her pulse began pounding as she heard a door open down the hallway, two male voices talking. She peered through the crack in the roof-access door, saw the two investigators leaving. They seemed to be in a hurry as they made a beeline toward the stairwell that led down to the street.

Selene
counted to thirty under her breath, giving them a chance to get down the stairs. Her window of opportunity was here. She opened the roof-access door and glided out into the hall, making her way to Adam’s entryway.

Details thrummed around her. The hall was so silent it seemed to be breathing.
Adam had a custom door, and she had Dr. Wolverton’s key—she could just let herself in, but the man in the wheelchair might be on the other side of the room. She wanted him here on the threshold, like all the others.

No hesitation.
Be bold.
She knocked on the door, then slid the two bottles out of her pockets and gripped them in gloved hands. She stood poised, waiting—

The door swung abruptly inward.
“What did you guys forget?” Selene saw a tall man standing there, muscular build, dark skin, dressed like a detective. “It’s only been—”

He saw her, started to backpedal
in surprise. His hand flickered toward the gun in his shoulder holster.

Selene immediately reassessed, revised her plan, mapped out several moves, and
lunged forward. She jerked the broken bottle in her left hand, swung it toward his throat.

The man must have had
advanced combat training, though. Even with her surprise attack, he reacted quickly—not as quickly as a Twist, but still beyond what Selene expected. He pushed himself back out of the arc of her lethal swing, but not quite far enough. The glass blade just nipped him.

Selene
drove forward, vicious, thrusting, slashing, and the razor edge of the bottle caught him on the side of the neck. Flesh tore, and he staggered back, grabbing for his throat. But there was no satisfying arterial spray of a clean kill.

As the big man fell, Selene
pressed her advantage and shoved him, using his momentum. She jabbed him with the bottle, breaking more pieces of sharp glass into his arms as he raised them to defend himself; then she jabbed his chest, his ribs. He never stood a chance. In less than three seconds he was down, torn and bloody.

Adam Lee was her target.
The bottle in her gloved left hand was a shattered waste now, most of the sharp pieces broken off. Uncurling her fingers, she dropped it. She still had the second bottle.

Panting, she
also looked at the cop’s gun still in its shoulder holster.
Gun or bottle?
She smiled at Adam who stared at her like a lump in his wheelchair.
Worthless Twist!
The answer was clear to her.
Bottle.

She
shifted the second bottle to her left hand and walked forward. Adam was staring at her, his face frozen in horror, more appalled by what she had done to his bodyguard than in fear of what she intended to do to him.

She strode forward.
“Fucking privileged Twist.”

Adam
’s lips went white as he clenched his jaw. Rage was clearly visible behind his eyes, but with his broken body, he could not fight her. He didn’t have a chance. Instead, he spoke. “I know you, Selene. I know your life. I know how much you hurt. You don’t have to do this.”

She wanted to spit in his face.
“You don’t know me. You don’t know what normal people have to live with. You have everything that I don’t, everything that I’ve never had.”

Though he couldn’t move the rest of his body,
Adam twitched his head from side to side. “I can use my mind and one arm, nothing else. What do I have? Tell me, Selene.”

She stalked closer, holding the bottle.
“It isn’t my fault that you wasted what you were given. You squandered your chance. You still got more than I did. I was born worthless, and you were born with
something
. And you threw it away—that makes you even more despicable.” She raised her arm, let him see the bottle. Then she came for him.

#

Yes, Adam did know her. He had watched Selene nearly every day for more than a year. He had observed how she interacted with the men she lured home, how she goaded them into hurting her to reinforce her lack of self-worth.