Prologue
The Prince Charles Medical Centre, VA
The night sky was a canvas, saturated with ink and barely visible above the dense grey shroud of fog. It enveloped the silhouettes of the trees that stood like tall sentinels on either side of the hospital walkway, long shadows cast by the muted glow of the iron street lights that, all things considered, were doing a poor job of keeping the area well-lit against the rolling tides of mist.
Underneath the reaching shadow of an evergreen tree, a shapeless man stood waiting, the corners of his mouth twitching in a warped smile. It couldn't have turned out more perfectly if he'd been able to manufacture the weather himself, and this made him happy. Everything had fallen into place. The man lifted his wrist to check the time on his silver rolex, his dark eyes well enough adjusted to the gloom that he could glance at the watch face. It was late. It was foggy. It was perfect.
He'd been watching the woman, obsessively, for nearly four months, and he was so close to reaping the rewards of his dedication that he could almost taste the sweetness on the tip of his tongue. He knew everything of importance about this woman. He almost felt as if he had built her himself, from the ground up. To begin with, it had been her physical appearance that had attracted him. The woman had long, dark hair that he had noted was more likely to be caught up in a ponytail than spilling over her shoulders. She had pale eyes that could look blue in the open beams of sunlight, grey in the downcast effect of clouds overflowing with rain, green in the hesitant growth of spring. She was slim, she was intelligent, she was a thousand different things that made every hair on his body prickle with anticipation. There had been two particular reasons that, in the man's mind, had confirmed that this woman was meant for him. She was addicted to her work above all else, which consequently lead to the second reason- she was really quite alone. She was attractive, but focused. She had a handful of friends, namely the colleagues that she spent the majority of her waking hours with. She occasionally had sexual partners, but never anything serious. The man could tell that this woman, the object of his every fantasy and desire, had carefully constructed walls around herself; and he intended on breaking them apart, brick by brick and layer by layer.
Of course he knew the woman's name -he knew everything- but he didn't care about whatever superfluous label her parents had given her at birth. What mattered, what really mattered, was that she had been chosen to be his first. Not his first fuck, nor his first kill. But she would be the first of something.
The man was roused from deep within his thoughts by the sudden sound of a twig snapping and a flurry of movement from underneath a shrub a few feet away. He felt his breath catch in the back of his throat, and only when a small rabbit popped out from the foliage did he let it go. He had been building up to this point for months, but he would call it off in a heartbeat if he deemed it necessary, He must protect himself above everything else, even if that meant he must let this woman go and search for another one. The man was confident, however, that this would not be necessary.
He waited until it was 23:41, when he could just make out that the light had been switched off in the office on the third floor, fourth window from the left. Her window. Her office. He felt his pulse quickening with expectation as he crept across the grass, towards the parking lot, his silent form cloaked by the pitch black stain of the night and the haze of the rising fog. He was ready. He was so, so ready for this. He could feel his right eye twitching, a nervous tic that had emerged during a particularly anxious childhood and had stayed with him ever since. He forced himself to halt, to take a few deep breaths before he continued. This was not a night for mistakes.
As he had expected, the car park's nightly guard was fast asleep at his station, his hip flask filled with Irish whiskey poorly concealed in his jacket pocket. The man smirked at the incredible, convenient idiocy of the general population, tipping the rim of his hat in a mock salute at the intoxicated guard. Quickly lowering his head as he passed, he pulled the collar of his black trench coat to cover his face, turning away from the single security camera as he passed it. He knew no one would be watching. There would only be two witnesses to what was about to happen, and he intended one of them to be dead within ten days. He had a system.
The woman was tired after working almost fifteen hours straight, her thoughts elsewhere, as he had been certain would be the case. If she noticed him lurking in the shadows in her peripheral vision, then she didn't react fast enough to do anything about it. The man was a tightly coiled serpent, and when he sprang forward from the cover of darkness, he had the woman in his arms in a fraction of a second. One hand clamped a damp cloth over her mouth, the other pulled her body close against his.
"Sweet dreams." He whispered, as the woman melted into his waiting arms.
