Hours passed in the agonizingly long car ride. I asked Gomez on more than one occasion if we were there yet. The stretched out feeling of being without Ava was simply torture. I needed to be with her. To protect her.

"What if something bad happens to her?" I asked Gomez as we drove through the night. "What if Taco tracks her down? If R.J. and Sean aren't dead? How am I going to protect her?"

Gomez gripped the steering wheel and grit his teeth together. "Luther, none of this would've happened if you had just done what I asked you to do and stay away from her." He turned his head to look at me. "Now look. You've fallen in love with her and we are in a great deal of trouble with the law." He clenched his jaw and turned his head back towards the road. "I have a bad feeling that she told."

"Why would she tell?" I asked. "She promised she wouldn't."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, Luther...you have so much to learn about girls." He brought the car onto a freeway entrance and sped up to meet the speed limit. "Why would she tell, you ask? Because she wants to get away from you, maybe? Because she is scared of you, of us, that you're going to try to hurt her again?"

I furrowed my brows and leaned back in my seat. He was right. I had vowed to myself, and to Ava, that I would never try to hurt her again. But, when she spoke of her dream, of the boys slicing her open, I suddenly longed to do it again. The adrenaline of torturing a human, the pleasure of murder, it all flooded back to me in one fell swoop. At that moment, there was nothing more that I wanted to do than to cut open her puny stomach and take a looksery inside. In fact, it made me giddy, thinking about it. I wouldn't do it to Ava. No matter how bad I wanted to. But, I would do it to someone.

"Gomez, how do I stop myself?"

"From what?"

"From...hurting people?" I stared at him expectantly, waiting for a legitimate answer.

He chuckled lightly and shook his head. "Well, muchacho, you gotta have some self control. It's your mind. Don't let it wander to darker places."

"Darker places?" I repeated. "That may prove to be very challenging."

"Anyone can be a killer. It takes full control to not be, however."

"Hm."

We finally arrived back to Gomez's house. Gomez rushed me out of the car and into the house. He closed all of the curtains and locked the doors. I sat at the kitchen table calmly while looking intently at my finger nails.

"You know, no one is going to look for you. No one knows your real name. Even if they did suspect you, they wouldn't know where to look."

Gomez twisted the final lock on a window. "I'm not worried about the cops finding you." He walked to the white refrigerator and opened it. He pulled out a can of bud light. "I'm worried about you finding the cops."

I looked around the room at all of the precautions that Gomez had just made. They were all to keep me locked up here. Furrowing my brows and scowling, I turned my head to glare at him. He took a sip of his beer and sauntered towards me. He sat at the table as well.

"Are you hungry?" he asked. "You didn't eat the whole time we were there."

I rolled my eyes and looked to the side. "Do I look hungry to you?"

"You always look hungry."

I glared daggers at him. "Gomez I have gone weeks at a time without food. I think I can go a few days without sustenance."

There was a long silence between the two of us. Gomez continued to sip on his beer until he was finished with it. He crushed it in his hand and let it rest on the table.

"Why did you do it?" he asked. I looked up at him and cocked my head slightly.

"Do what?"

"Kill your parents?"

I smiled and looked up as I chuckled to myself. "Oh, there were many reasons."

He gently put his fist on the table, scrunched up and knuckles white. "Your parents were good people. They were honest in their trade and benefitted greatly. They didn't screw people over and they were good parents. Why did you kill them?" His voice seemed to get higher and higher through out his whole monologue. I rolled my eyes once he was finished.

"My parents weren't that great, Gomez." He glared at me, his lips pursed. "They hated me. I was a troublesome, autistic child, and they abused me and despised my very existence!" I slammed my fist down on the table, causing Gomez to jump a little bit. "I hated them too, Gomez! So I killed them! I poisoned them and hung their necks and killed them!"

I sprung up from the table and ran to a random room in his house. I locked the door behind me. I hated talking about my parents. My first victims. I hated them more than anybody on the planet. Even more than I hated Gomez.

I hid inside of a closet and curled myself up. Gomez wouldn't come looking for me. He didn't care about me. No one did. But it gave me time to think.

Samantha. The girl who had called the police on me. She was going to regret ever making that idiotic decision.

I racked my brain. She lived in the neighborhood near the high school, the large one, with a church in the middle of it. She would be easy to find. Oh, so very easy.

Once I killed her, I could move on to everyone else. I could kill Nate. Ava's mother. Her uncle. And Gomez. And once I had killed all of her friends and family, all that she would have left, is me.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

So I'm kind of confused here, people. A lot of the people who stuck with this book earlier on have stopped commenting and voting completely. I don't get it. Do you not like the book anymore? Please vote and comment. And don't ask me to update, because you know I will.