Game Read Online Free Page B

bloodstream? He had no idea. Didn’t even want to speculate. But priests managed to live lifetimes without sex, right?
    Well, some of them managed.
    Poor Connie. She pretended like she didn’t mind missing out on sex, but especially in the last couple of months, it had become obvious to Jazz that she was ready—eager, even—to take things to the next level. And he just couldn’t do it.
    He had to be strong. For both of them.
    Rolling out of bed, he crept down the stairs. There was a bathroom upstairs, but it shared a wall with Gramma’s room, and flushing the toilet would wake her up.
    Washing his hands in the sink, he caught his bare torso in the mirror, and there it was: I HUNT KILLERS , tattooed in a V along his collarbone in those tall, black Gothic letters. It was tattooed backward so that he could read it in the mirror.
    That’s what I thought I was. A stalker of stalkers. A predator preying on predators.
    Sounded good. In theory. But the reality was this: He wasjust a messed-up kid living in a little town called Lobo’s Nod. What could he do? Hop on a plane to New York at a moment’s notice? Right. Who would watch Gramma? Who would take care of her and keep her deteriorating mental state a secret if he went off gallivanting to the big city to… do what? Sit in a squad room somewhere and regale a bunch of cops with tales of growing up under Billy’s thumb? Would that really accomplish anything?
    He turned this way and that in the mirror. In addition to his own tattoo, he also had four others: a massive pistol-packin’ Yosemite Sam on his back, a stylized CP3 (for basketballer Chris Paul) on one shoulder, a string of Korean characters around his right biceps, and the latest addition: a flaming basketball on the other shoulder. These weren’t really his tats—they were just renting space on his body. Howie’s hemophilia prohibited him from getting tattoos, so Jazz had volunteered his body as Howie’s personal billboard. He had always felt that this gesture was a point in his favor, something a true sociopath would never do. Now he wasn’t so sure. Offering up his body like that? Permanently marring it without even really thinking about it? Was that the height of friendship or the height of lunacy?
    He dried his hands and sneaked back upstairs without waking Gramma.
    He’d gotten lucky with the Impressionist. Simple as that. The man had been obsessed with Billy, and that obsession bled over to Jazz. It would have been nearly impossible
not
to catch the Impressionist. The man had literally come knocking at Jazz’s front door.
    I don’t hunt killers. I couldn’t save Ginny Davis. I couldn’t save Melissa Hoover. I almost couldn’t save myself. Who am I kidding?
    The Impressionist had been taking pictures and video of Jazz while he’d been in Lobo’s Nod. Where he’d found the time between murdering Helen Myerson and Jazz’s drama teacher and the others, Jazz had no idea. But the cops had recovered the pictures and video from the killer’s cell phone when they’d arrested him. As soon as Jazz found out about them, he’d insisted on seeing them.
    G. William, of course, had resisted. But Jazz was very persuasive. Natural gift for the progeny of a sociopath.
    We’re the most convincing people in the world
, Billy liked to say.
Everyone wants to do us favors. Everyone wants to make us happy. Until they know what it
really
takes to make us happy. Then they tend to put up a fight.
He grinned here.
By then, it’s usually too late for the fighting. But I guess they think they gotta try.
    So it had been a fait accompli—Jazz saw what his stalker had seen. Jazz outside the police station. On his way to the Coff-E-Shop. Hanging out with Howie. Holding hands with Connie on the way to play practice. A shot of his bedroom window at night, the light dimming.
    “This is what it feels like,” Jazz had murmured, clicking through the photos on G. William’s computer.
    “What what feels like?” the sheriff