Psycho, page 2
“He’s pretty, isn’t he? Too bad he’s crazy.”
“Who is he?” August finally asked.
She gave a dreamy sigh. “Lucas Blackwell, Adjunct Professor of Criminal Psychology.”
August took another sip of his coffee. “Lucas Blackwell,” he repeated, liking the way the moniker felt on his tongue. “That doesn’t sound like a real name. They hired a crazy person to take O’Malley’s job? Doesn’t that seem counterproductive?”
“The whole psych department is batshit crazy. He’ll fit right in.”
“You seem to know a lot about him,” August observed.
Bianca snorted. “You really don’t know who he is?”
August’s brow furrowed. “Should I?”
Bianca looked him up and down. “You should write hopelessly oblivious professor on that form. The faculty has been positively ravenous for all the scandalous details for weeks, ever since Everly hired him. But, before that, he was all over the news.”
“Why’s that? He a Kennedy or something?”
She shook her head. “Former darling of the FBI’s behavioral profiling unit. Whiz kid. Recruited straight from college because he spoke three languages and had near perfect test scores on his entrance exam.”
Lucas Blackwell couldn’t have been more than thirty at most. “Former? Was he injured?”
“You could say that. Suffered some kind of massive nervous breakdown and was put on permanent desk duty. They offered him a teaching gig at Quantico, but he bailed for our school.”
“How do you know all this?” August asked, somewhat in awe of her ability to study the asteroseismology of white dwarfs and stay up to date on the latest campus gossip.
“How do you not know this? I know you’re usually taxing that big brain of yours with entanglement theories or whatever, but you love all that spooky shit, and Lucas Blackwell… He’s spooky.”
“How so?” August’s love of ‘spooky shit’ was well known around campus. Theoretical physicists weren’t really known for their love of parapsychology. But they just considered it another one of his quirks. He supposed it was.
Bianca leaned in a bit as the rain began to splash their shoes. “You know how most behavioral profiling is done at a desk?”
He nodded. “It’s basically making a living out of educated guessing. I doubt that requires much leg work.”
She snickered. “Well, Lucas was real hands on. Too hands on. Liked to handle evidence and visit crime scenes. Said it helped his process.”
“I’m failing to see the spooky,” August said, wanting Bianca to get to the point before the wind blew the rain any farther under the overhang.
“It’s pretty fucking out there. Rumor has it, he thinks he’s… What’s the word when you can get, like, psychic visions by touching things?”
August’s brows ran for his hairline. “Clairvoyant?”
“Yes! He claims he’s clairvoyant.”
“So, our university hired a mentally unstable criminologist who claims to have supernatural abilities?”
“Yep.”
August chuckled. “He’ll fit right in.”
Bianca laughed. “You know, this is the most I’ve ever heard you ask about another human being and I’ve known you for six years.”
He turned, tossing his coffee cup in the trash. “True, but your life is mundane. No offense.”
She rushed to keep up with him as he made his way back towards his office to grab his things.
“You can’t just say no offense after saying something offensive,” Bianca said, though she didn’t seem offended in the least.
Nobody could afford to worry about feelings in a field like theirs. Half the professors on this side of campus had brains far too complex to hold even the simplest of conversations. They were all varying degrees of neurodiverse. The sad truth was, the smarter a person was the less they bothered with societal expectations. They spoke in blunt terms without any worry about sentiment.
Scientists couldn’t afford ego. When you dealt in theory, there was always somebody standing in line ready to tell you you’re insane or trying to debunk your research. That was the nature of their work. August was only as…domesticated as he was because his father had insisted on it. Being a quirky genius was fine. Being an unfeeling, uncaring psychopath was not—not in public, anyway.
“There’s a faculty meeting at four. Will you be there?”
“Is it mandatory?” August asked.
Bianca nodded. “Yes.”
August shrugged. “Probably not. I’m having lunch with my brother before he leaves for the airport.”
“August…”
“I’m a tenured professor. What are they going to do? Fire me?” he repeated, shooting her a grin.
August went left to the hallway where his office lay, and Bianca went right to take the long way to the other side of the campus. When he was alone once more, he replaced his headphones. Vivaldi had finished, and Chopin now filled his ears. He let himself disassociate, mulling over his research assistant’s topic for her thesis.
He didn’t see the other man until they collided. Hard. August’s phone flew from his fingers. The other man’s hands shot out, grasping for anything to keep him upright. August grabbed the man’s forearm just as he gripped August’s shoulders.
That was when August got a good look at him. Lucas Blackwell. The moment they touched, the other man wrenched away with a gasp, falling to the ground and scrambling away from August like he was a serial killer.
Which, technically, August supposed he was. But Lucas Blackwell didn’t know that.
Though it was beside the point, August couldn’t help but notice the terrified man was even more beautiful up close, like a sculpture come to life. High cheekbones, square jaw, full lips. Lips that were pulled back in horror.
August extended his hand to help him up, but Lucas flinched away. “Don’t. Don’t…touch me.”
Apparently, it wasn’t just the physics department that lacked any sense of decorum. He pulled his now useless headphones from his ears. “I’m sorry. I was so into my music that I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Lucas said nothing, flushing when he noticed the other faculty members staring at him. He stood, giving one last panicked look over his shoulder before all but sprinting down the hallway.
August picked up his phone, sighing at the now cracked screen. He’d been called off-putting before but usually only by his brothers after a particularly gruesome kill. And there were many. August liked the wet work. Liked getting his hands dirty. Killing gave him a thrill like nothing else did.
He was almost to his car when it hit him. Bianca said Lucas Blackwell was clairvoyant. That he could see the past—or the future, August supposed—simply by touching an object. August was a logical man. While he found the paranormal fascinating, he recognized it for what it was, pseudoscience. There was no way Lucas Blackwell was actually clairvoyant.
He couldn’t be.
Yet, he’d looked at August like he was a monster. Which he was. But there was no way Lucas could know that. It was impossible. But what if he did? What would that mean for him? His family lived by a code. They didn’t kill the innocent. But they’d only ever run into this situation once before, months ago when his brother had decided to fall in…not love, but maybe obsession, with a little wounded bird named Noah.
Noah knew their secret, had figured it out before he’d even met Adam face to face. But Noah was like them. He understood some people just didn’t deserve to live. Noah had killed alongside them. He had an investment in keeping them all off the police’s radar.
But Lucas was a former Fed. He probably believed strongly in trials and justice and the long arm of the law. He probably wasn’t a fan of vigilante justice. Which didn’t bode well for his life expectancy if he truly had somehow figured out exactly who August was when the mask was off.
Shit.
As much as August loved killing, the idea of chopping up the pretty blond professor into bite-size pieces left him feeling hollow. August had never met a problem he couldn’t solve, but Lucas Blackwell was going to be a problem. A big one. And August had no idea what the hell he was going to do about it.
Lucas couldn’t get to his office fast enough. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he shut the door and locked it, as if the devil himself chased him. Maybe he did. The things Lucas had seen when he’d touched him, the man he’d thought attractive just moments before... He blinked the sweat from his eyes, willing his heart to stop thundering in his chest before he lost consciousness.
It was his first day. His first fucking day. There had to be some sort of explanation for the blood and the screaming. Maybe he’d been in the military and seen combat? Maybe he worked in law enforcement? No. That didn’t make any sense. Those screams… Those men were being tortured.
He brought his knees up, bracing his elbows on them to cradle his head in his hands. Lucas knew better than anyone that serial predators hid in plain sight. Sometimes, right under your nose. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes until little sparks of light danced behind them. This was his first. Fucking. Day. He couldn’t go accusing a coworker of being a murderer. Not after last time. He couldn’t handle anybody else looking at him like a…crazy person. He’d just left that environment.
“Have you thought, perhaps, you’re projecting your impulses onto your co-worker?”
“You must admit it’s far-fetched, Lucas.”
“You have to understand our concerns given your behavior.”
“He’s a federal agent. We think, perhaps, you just need a break.”
“You’re not well.”
“You can’t just attack people.”
Their words swirled around in his head on repeat. There was nothing worse than having people who once respected him suddenly look at him as if he were crazy. He’d spent his life as an outcast. As a child, he was too small, too quiet. An easy target. Afraid of everything. Every object had the potential to send him into a downward spiral of pain and suffering. But, at the bureau, he’d had a home.
Unlike many law enforcement agencies, the FBI had lots of people like him. People who were more brain than brawn. People who were accountants and statisticians. He’d had a home there, even as the book nerd. But that was all gone, ripped away from him because he’d had the audacity to put aside his self-preservation to let his higher ups know they had a wolf among them.
They’d repaid him by branding him a lunatic and throwing him in an institution for weeks. He shook his head. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was crazy. Things he’d once been so sure of now seemed impossible. The meds they put him on just made it worse, made him doubt who he was and what he saw. Made it harder to shield himself from unwanted visions.
When his heartbeat settled into a normal rhythm, he stood, walking to his desk, attempting to mentally pull himself back together. There was no way his peers weren’t out there gossiping about his collision and hasty escape. The man—the one he collided with—had to be faculty. He’d had a lanyard around his neck like Lucas. But he hadn’t been able to view what it said.
He needed to stop being so reactionary and do what he’d been trained to do… Investigate. He pulled up the directory for the school. It only took two pages of scrolling the faculty before he had a name. August Mulvaney, Ph.D. Professor of Quantum Physics.
That man was a physicist? He was in good shape. There was no hiding that. When they’d collided, Lucas felt like he’d hit a brick wall. Torturing people was probably taxing on the body. He concentrated on the man—August’s—face, hoping maybe he could pick up any more flashes without having to touch him. Sometimes, it worked with photographs, but this wasn’t a photo. It was a computer monitor.
Lucas placed his hand over the picture on the screen. Nothing. He sighed. August Mulvaney looked like that actor. The one from all those kid movies. Daniel something? But taller and with broader shoulders.
Harry Potter!
That was it. Harry Potter…if he moonlighted as a stripper. Lucas didn’t consider himself a person who made assumptions, but he imagined physics professors as older nerdy guys with pocket protectors and glasses. Men who wore blazers with patches on the elbows.
August had thick brown hair that swept away from his face in a wave and the beginnings of a beard over a strong jaw. His nose was just the tiniest bit crooked, like he’d broken it, and his top lip was slightly smaller than his bottom, which in no way detracted from his attractiveness.
Lucas dragged his gaze away from the man to his profile. Christ. A brief scan of his curriculum vitae showed the man not only held a Ph.D. in quantum physics but also in biomedical engineering and two masters degrees, one in applied mathematics and the other in…Russian literature?
Who the fuck was this guy? That many degrees didn’t seem remotely possible. He couldn’t be much older than Lucas. He clicked on the awards tab, brows raising when he had to scroll to see them all. There were pages full of honors with names like the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and Rackham Graduate School One Term Dissertation Fellowship. Lucas wasn’t dumb, but he didn’t know what any of that shit meant.
Lucas closed out the tab and pulled up Google, typing in August Mulvaney, expecting to find a link to the same CV listed on the school’s website and maybe a LinkedIn profile. Instead, he found article after article about not only August but the entire Mulvaney family.
August Mulvaney was the second oldest son of billionaire Thomas Mulvaney. One of seven adopted children. August’s list of accomplishments were well documented. He could read and write at a college level by five. He had an IQ that rivaled the likes of Einstein and Hawking. Was the second youngest member to ever be inducted into MENSA at age six. Finished high school level classes before he reached double digits, attended college when most kids were hitting puberty. Achieved his first Ph.D. at eighteen. That had to be enough to make anybody a little crazy. Right?
Lucas opened his drawer and popped two of his clonazepam before leaning back in his chair. He ran the flashes over and over in his mind. Blood. Knives. Screaming. Body parts. Nothing made sense other than murder. A shiver of fear ran along his spine.
Lucas couldn’t go accusing the genius son of a famous billionaire of being a serial killer, especially without proof. And Lucas had learned the hard way that passing off an ability people didn’t understand as intuition only got him so far. The Fox Mulder and X-Files references used to be funny, just camaraderie among colleagues.
Until one of those colleagues turned out to be a killer. A killer, who was still getting away with murder. Fuck. Lucas had already lost his reputation, his credibility, his job. He couldn’t very well tell authorities that he’d touched a fellow professor in a hallway and saw, psychically, that he’d tortured people. He sounded like a fucking nut, even to himself.
Maybe he was crazy…like his mother. They’d practically run her out of town with all her talk of visions and auras and psychic bonds. Even Lucas hadn’t believed her until it started happening to him. By then, it was too late. His mother was long gone and he was left alone with his grandfather, who was determined to beat Lucas into toughening up. He learned to hide quickly—not just his abilities but his love of books, his soft heart, and his attraction to boys, not girls.
Lucas shook off his memories. His past didn’t matter. If August Mulvaney was a murderer, why did Lucas even care? The last time he’d stuck his neck out for what he believed was right, the FBI had lopped it off. They’d ruined his life. He no longer believed in the infallibility of the police. He no longer believed in much of anything.
There was a soft knock at the door. Lucas ran his hands over his face and shut out of his browser before turning the lock and swinging the door open to find…August Mulvaney.
He looked so…normal. His expression affable, his hands tucked into the pockets of his perfectly tailored pants. Lucas’s heart rate began to gallop once again. August was even hotter now that they were face to face. Not that it should matter. The man was likely a murderer. His brain seemed completely okay with that. Lucas ran a hand through his messy hair but then crossed his arms to keep from fidgeting.
“Can we talk?” August asked, voice deep and smooth, almost cheery.
Lucas sniffed. “I’m not really feeling that great. I skipped lunch and I think my blood sugar is low.”
“Let me take you to lunch,” August offered. When Lucas opened his mouth to refuse, August held up a hand. “We can go somewhere public if you like, say the faculty lounge.”
Lucas’s tongue shot out, licking over his lower lip. Did he know? Did he know Lucas could…see things? Of course, he did. He’d been the talk of the campus for weeks. But why would August care what Lucas saw if he had nothing to hide? And, if he had nothing to hide, why would he think Lucas would only want to talk in public? Wasn’t that as good as an admission of guilt?
Something withered within him as reality sank in. Admission to who? Him? Lucas already knew he was right. Clearly, August did, too.
“Why? Why would I want to go to lunch with you?” Lucas asked, unsure how else to frame it.
August took a single step, just one expensive loafer crossing the threshold. But it was enough for Lucas to smell his expensive cologne, something spicy that made Lucas want to lean in, to press his face against August’s throat where the scent would be strongest.
“I think you know.”
Lucas swallowed hard. “Do I?”
August’s smile was wolfish. “You know, I don’t believe in psychics or mediums. But, given the way you reacted when you touched me, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucas lied.
August examined his face. “You’re really very pretty.”
Lucas blinked at the unexpected compliment. “What?”
“When I saw you on the quad, I thought you were attractive, but up close…you’re almost pretty. Delicate even. I always pictured cops as being these big, tough, former military types, but you’re…kind of sweet looking.”
