He would sleep on the sofa tonight; he couldn’t sleep in the bedroom, the upstairs felt particularly haunted and while he had his wits about him right now it was manageable, but when he woke in the middle of the night, which he often did, then it became another matter altogether. The nightmares Parker had in this house were not nightmares, they were memories, even worse than most people could comprehend. Anyone who had been involved was now dead and the secrets of this house were deep inside Parker; though sometimes he felt as though the house were trying to pull them out again, make him relive it all.

He lay down and closed his eyes, focusing on the ticking grandfather clock in the alcove next to the bay window. He thought about Abbey and the baby they were due to have, the fear of passing on his genetic material, his deep-rooted badness, a real fear. He hoped that there was enough good in Abbey to override that. She made him a better person. She had always supported him and never made him feel like the monster he always imagined he was. Abbey was the light to his darkness. He tried to focus on his love for her and not the other feeling he was so desperate to ignore. It was excitement – excitement that he was hunting again, excitement at the prospect of killing again. He thought his anger would end with the death of the people who’d hurt him, but when they were gone the anger had stayed. There were other bad people though, other injustices he could avenge, other evils he could extinguish. His abusers had always told him he was rotten on the inside, maybe they were right. The malevolent whispers of the house lulled Parker to sleep, preparing him for the day tomorrow.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Two weeks ago

It was easy breaking into Helen Lassiter’s house. She had no security to speak of; not many people in this part of the country did. They felt safe without it. Helen’s house was empty, the kind of empty that indicated a holiday and not just a day at work. There were letters piled up on the welcome mat. Parker picked them up and looked through them, but there was nothing particularly interesting. He went through the house room by room. He found her computer and turned it on. Lots of photos, her work calendar – she was away on a school trip to Johns Hopkins University in America, the leading university in the study of genetics and molecular biology. She wouldn’t be back for over another ten days.

Frustrating as that news was, it meant Parker could spend time in her house without fear of detection. He went through every document folder and file in her computer, but there was really nothing suspect on there. He looked through the photographs of various school trips and conferences, away days and team-building exercises. Certainly nothing of any note. Each folder was labelled with a date and name of the occasion. The only folder that didn’t have a detailed label was one called Hibiscus.