It was perfect. Exactly the kind of dress women everywhere dreamed of wearing on a first date. A simple A-line that stopped just above the top of her knees. Her mother had always told her if one wanted to trap a man then she should never reveal too much until later.
It was brilliant red, like her lips, and her nails, and the perfect little rose she twirled between her fingers as she waited. She’d picked it from Artemis’s plot. It had been the best in the bunch, just like Artemis, her little golden-haired gift. Her little lamb. She smiled as she remembered the time Artemis had come home from school with a pack of seeds and declared her intention to turn their entire yard into a jungle of flowers.
She raised the flower to her lips and gave it a sniff just as the doorbell rang.
He was dressed to the nines in a sharp suit she knew he couldn’t afford. This she had discovered in her pre-date snooping. But it didn’t matter because in all the ways that did matter he was perfect.
He had golden eyes like the wolf that he resembled. She smiled wide, her own teeth bared straight and sparkling white.
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“Ah I could just eat you up,” he declared with a grin just as wide.
“I’m sure you could,” she replied smoothly, sensually, and with just the right amount of eye contact she knew would make him lust for more.
“Where shall we go?” he asked. “I hear the carnival’s in town, we could ride the Ferris wheel, eat candyfloss, maybe even get our palms read?”
She gave another demure duck of the eyes, a twist of the lips. “Oh I have somewhere else in mind.”
She directed while he drove. He didn’t ask questions, evidently enjoying the surprise. The road twisted up and away from town.
“I hear the view is beautiful from up here at night,” she explained as they got out of the car. “But it’s best if you see it all at once.” She reached into her handbag. Her hand sliding past a white envelope before pulling out a blindfold.
He let her put it on him and lead him through the trees toward the cliff edge.
Once he was close enough she pulled it off and stepped back.
She took a deep breath and when he least expected it she stepped behind him and gave him a hard shove forward.
“Now who is the hunted?” she asked to the empty air. No one answered.
She laid the rose at the cliff edge. It almost seemed to glow in the moonlight but its red was deeper than before now, much like the colour of the blood that she was certain must be seeping from his body on the rocks below.
It suited the moment. After all, she thought as her fingers tightened around the envelope containing the DNA report of her daughter’s killer, he had been the perfect match.