“Almost right away. The little shit would have tried to run if I hadn’t been holding a gun on him. It would have been better for him if he had run—he might have gotten away. I was going to get the drive’s location out of him, but he surprised me on the path, and I shot him before I had a chance to really work on him.” A bloodless smirk curled one corner of Matty’s mouth. “And then you and North did me the service of getting rid of Regina. She was an incalculable cunt, by the way. And she’d been taking advantage of people, blackmailing them for years. People like you, Shaw. Guys that had never been with someone. Guys who weren’t ready to come out or who felt like they couldn’t come out. She used all their fear and self-hate against them. She got rich off it. I think you should thank me for letting you kill that bitch. With her gone and Mark dead, nobody could tie me back to this mess. I thought I’d just hang around and see if you guys could find the drive. But you were acting funny tonight, and I got this itch between my shoulder blades. I guess I just wasn’t willing to take the risk anymore.”

Shaw shrugged. He felt the ropes ride up, felt them catch on the chair’s upper frame, on the verge of slipping loose. He just had to keep Matty talking, just had to—

With a sigh, Matty stood. He laid the knife against Shaw’s chest again and slid an eighth of an inch into Shaw’s flesh, just below the sternum, and a red line snaked down Shaw’s skin. Shaw gasped and twisted. Something red sparked in the back of his head, and he was back in the alley, back with the West End Slasher, back with Carl who was already dead.

“Stay with me, baby,” Matty was saying, slapping Shaw hard once, then again, the tip of the knife still buried in Shaw’s flesh. “Stay with me just a little longer. Tell me where the flash drive is.”

“You—” Shaw was shaking. He bit his tongue, and blood sparked inside his mouth. “You’re just going to kill me.”

“Baby.” Matty slapped him again, then caught Shaw’s long hair, jerking his head back and up. “I’m going to kill you if you don’t. But first, I’ll take your balls off like that fuck-up tried to do when you were in college. And then I’ll take your dick off. And then I’ll take your nose and your lips and your eyes. And I’ll bury this knife in you somewhere to make sure you take a long time dying. A long time. Long enough that North sees the fucking monstrosity I made out of you, and that’ll be the only way he ever thinks about you for the rest of his life. Tell me, and tell me the truth, and I’ll go. You can keep panting after his freckled Irish ass like a bitch in heat, and we’ll never see each other again.”