Cut and Run by Ridley Pearson Page B

bothered to look, he realized he’d gone a little deep with the razor. The pink leotard had been lying on her back at the time, stretching her legs up and apart. He’d overreacted. The wound would require butterfly bandages, but he carried them with him wherever he went.
    For a moment he was not alone. For a moment he’d done nothing wrong. For a moment he felt at balance with the world and his own place within it. These feelings would change, would forsake him over the next several hours—he’d been here enough times to know. The kill might return in his dreams, might linger for days or even weeks. That he’d fucked her while she died beneath him only made matters worse: his moment of creation, hers of destruction. But he took opportunities when they arose and paid for them later in his own way, as he did now.
    He might rest later, but now the adrenaline from this painful act would carry him. He sometimes stayed awake days without sleep, never bothered by it, never fully understanding it. He couldn’t remember if or when he’d last eaten and reminded himself to eat something before continuing.
    Under the glare of a fluorescent tube, he wetted a towel and cleaned himself.
    His black hair wet and combed back, he left the room for a twenty-four-hour diner, envisioning pancakes and a hot cup of coffee, an aging redhead in a tight shirt who would call him “Hon.”
    A bead of blood seeped through and stained his shirt despite the butterfly bandages. He failed to notice it, his body numbed and distant. His mind whirring. He felt right again. And that was all that mattered.

CHAPTER TEN
    Alice Dunbar’s Jefferson Square loft apartment lacked a view of the St. Louis arch or the Mississippi. Instead, it looked out onto what only a few years earlier had been a needle park. Gentrification had relocated the drugs and dealers a few blocks south and east. Now the park offered Penny a place to play on the jungle gym or to swing on the swings during the steamy, sultry afternoons.
    But Penny wasn’t in the mood for playing. She stared at her mother, tears pooled in oversized blue eyes, poisoned by betrayal. “But we just got here . . .”
    Alice packed furiously, a maternal storm leaving debris in its wake. She’d been through this before, she reminded herself, wanting to stay calm. Only months ago, in fact.
    She felt bad for uprooting Penny for the third time in her five short years. This time Penny had found a set of kids at day care to call her friends, and her mother hated to lose that.
    Until this most recent move Penny had pretty much kept to herself. She liked American Girl dolls and to be read the accompanying stories. McDonald’s Happy Meals, her hamburgers with onions, mustard, and ketchup. She’d outgrown a macaroni-and-cheese phase. Now it was frozen Gogurts, pancakes, and flank steak when Mommy could afford it.
    She liked for her mom to read to her before bed, her baths hot, and her pillowcase cold.
    She’d learned to watch her mother for signals when on the bus or the street. With little in the way of discussion, instruction, or explanation, she’d intuited that they lived a secret life, a different life from others.
    â€œIt’s not forever,” Alice lied. In fact, Alice had no idea when they might stop running. “We’re not moving, we’re just leaving for a while. Like vacation.”
    â€œNot me! I’m not going anywhere! I’ll run away! I will.”
    â€œThat’s the point: We’re running away
together
, sweetheart,” Alice said in as loving a voice as she could muster. “We’ll be back.”
    Despite this outburst, Penny was significantly more mature, more worldly and sophisticated than her peers. It no doubt stemmed from their nomadic, secluded life. Whether those qualities would benefit her remained to be seen. She acted like a five-year-old, but she read at a sixth-grade level and spoke with an