And I do.
I slam the door behind me and scramble to the driver’s side to lock him out. I yank the front of my dress up as I settle into the driver’s side. I’m shaking as I release the parking brake. I kick off my heels and fumble for the pedals.
I’ve taken driver’s ed, but I don’t have my license yet. Still, I know where stuff is. Get it in reverse! I tell myself. Press the brake pedal. Find the shift thing and get it in reverse!
He bangs on the window. I find the brake and grab the shifter. Something grinds as I get it in reverse.
He’s pounding on the window. No—punching it.
The van jerks to life, and I’m backing away. I’m going fast, driving crazy, but I’m doing it— backing the way we came. I see him illuminated in the headlights, running after me, powered by pure fury.
I can’t let him catch me now. I won’t like what happens—he promised as much.
I keep going backward. I can’t see anything. I’m hitting and crunching things. He’s catching up.
A loud clunk. My neck jerks as the van slams to a stop.
He’s closing in. I shift into drive and move forward. He jumps to the side as I pass, but then he’s back, driving his fist into the passenger-side window over and over. The glass breaks with a crackling sound.
I step on the gas, but he’s got the door open. No!
He gets in, smashing over me like I’m not even there. He jams his foot over mine, onto the brake. He shifts it into park and gets out, yanking me right out with him by the arm.
“That wasn’t smart at all.”
I clutch my dress to my front as he shoves me forward.
I fall onto something hard—a downed tree, maybe. He’s right there, picking me up.
I kick and struggle, but he just lifts me into the air, squeezing me so tight against him that I can’t do anything at all—one arm under my knees, holding my legs together, and one around my shoulders—and he’s somehow got my arms pinned together.
“No,” I beg.
“Shhh,” he says.
“Help!” I yell. “Help!”
“Nobody’ll hear you out here, little bird,” he says, sounding almost sad. Not angry at all, like I expected. He killed the other guy out of anger, but me he’s killing out of sadness. It pours out of him as he walks to the river, carrying me there. “That’s what you’re like, you know? A pretty little bird and you keep singing, thinking someone’s going to understand. But all we hear is a song.”
I hear the slosh of the water around his feet. He keeps going, eyes dark, fixed up above, like he’s concentrating really, really hard on the moon.
“Please.”
“Stop talking.” Still he stares at the moon, wading into the river. He keeps walking, deeper and deeper. I gasp when the water hits my bare feet. He seems to clutch me a little tighter.
He’s going to drown me.
I struggle with everything I have, but it’s like fighting steel.
He doesn’t react to the cold, rushing water at all, just goes deeper and deeper. I feel its icy fingers climb my bare back where the zipper to my dress gapes open. I hold him tighter.
I get a new idea—I won’t let him go. He can’t drown me if I don’t let go of him. But then I realize he probably can. He can do anything.
If he goes deep enough, he’ll be able to breathe and I won’t. I’ll drown and die, clinging onto him.
And then I’ll die and stop clinging to him. And he’ll let me go.
No—he’ll let my body go. I’ll just be a body.
I kick and fight for all I’m worth, but he just clutches me harder. My pulse races. It’s the weirdest thing, somebody killing you while they’re holding you so tightly.
I try to remember the last time somebody held me so tightly, and I can’t. Certainly not my parents. Things have been bad with them for a long time. Halfhearted hugs and air kisses. My friends would never hug me like this, with every muscle.
Just this guy. And he’s murdering me.
So this is what you have to do to get a hug around here? I think wildly. You have to die?
My face is hot, and I realize I’m crying. I push my face to his shirt, which is still warm. A weird last consolation, like the food, clinging to my own killer.
He’ll be watching the moon, still. He won’t ever look at me again. Nobody will ever see me alive ever again. They’ll just see my body. The water is up to my waist and knees, up to his chest.
I imagine floating off, my dress billowing out around me, floating off. They’ll find my body mostly naked. “Can I ask you one thing?” I say.
“No,” he growls.
“Please?” I say. “Can you zip my dress back up?”
He stops walking. “What?” The water rushes around us, freezing.
“I don’t want them to find me…”
He stands still for so long I think he doesn’t understand. Or maybe he’s not going to do it. Why would he? Then he turns and goes to the shallower water and sets me down. Water rushes around my ankles. He looks at me hard. “Hold up your hair.”
I hold up my hair and turn around. He pulls my zipper up a tiny ways, or at least he tries. The zipper won’t budge. He tugs at the dress, trying to get the two sides together, just like my mom did a world ago. But the sides won’t come together, and the zipper keeps cutting into my back. He swears, and I hear a snap and see the flash of metal. I suck in a breath and pull away, but he has my dress, and he yanks me back. There’s a rip and a snap again. And then the sound of a zipper going up.
He cut the dress. I imagine a tear down the back of it. But at least I won’t be naked.
“Thank you,” I sob.
He presses down the sides to get it looking more together, I suppose. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck.”
We stand like that for a few seconds that may as well be an eternity. I’m lost in the harsh sounds of our breaths. Isn’t it strange how they mingle, even though he’s working against me? Even though he’s about to extinguish mine? All I can feel is the cold water at my legs and his hands hot on my hips.
The world goes upside down as he hauls me up over his shoulder.
And carries me out of the river.
He sets me down on the bank and stands over me, dripping wet, burning green eyes rimmed with thick black lashes. “You remember what I said about your phone? It’s still in the front seat of the van.”
I’m huddled at his feet. I don’t know what he’s saying.
“How I could kill all the people you called last? Remember?”
“Yeah,” I say, shivering in the cold.
“But there’s a chance I won’t kill them. If I read in the news about a girl found in the woods. She witnessed a murder outside her party, but she didn’t see the guy’s face. She tried to call 911, but he came up behind her and he put a bag over her head—a pillowcase or something. He drove her here, and she got away. That’s all she knows. She remembers nothing. She never saw this.” He points to the white scar design on his arm. “She definitely doesn't do something stupid like tell the cops what really happened when they promise to keep it out of the paper. Because he finds out.”
It dawns on me slowly. I don’t know why I take so long to get it, except that I’m freezing from the river and in shock from the violence—and full for the first time in years.
He’s going to let me go.
It doesn’t feel real that he would take me captive. It feels even less real that he would let me go.
“I won’t,” I whisper. “I won’t tell.”
I don’t know whether I’m telling the truth. I don’t know what I’ll say if my mom and dad are looking at me, if a police officer is asking me questions. It’s a future that may never happen. It’s more of a dream than even this.
He must see uncertainty in my eyes or hear it in my voice. He shoves large wet hands into my hair and pulls me up to face him. His grip brings tears to my eyes, but I don’t whimper. I don’t fight.
His mouth is close to mine. Almost
like a kiss, that’s how close.
Is this how you get your first kiss?
I can almost feel his lips, his breath tactile against mine. We’re both breathing hard, both fighting. I know why I’m fighting—for my life, for tomorrow. For a future I can barely imagine. I don’t know why he’s fighting, why he could kill that old man but not me.
His voice is low, fierce. “I’ll find them, but I won’t kill them right away. I’ll kill them slow and I’ll make you watch.”
The images flash through my mind, my mother on the ground, my father bleeding. My friend Chelsea crying, bewildered. Thwap.
And only then do I know for sure—I’ll never let that happen.
I grip his arm. It’s still wet from the river. My hand is wet too. We’re slick together, but I hold on tight. This is important. I need him to understand how serious I am. I need him to see that I mean it. “I swear to you—” My voice is trembling but not with fear this time. With determination.
The intensity in his stare doesn’t lessen one bit. He gives me a shake with my hair.
I know what he wants. “Your scars,” I say on a gasp, because the pain in my scalp burns. “I’ll never tell a single soul about your scars. I swear to you.”
I don’t bother swearing to God. I think a man like him doesn’t have faith in anything.
He’s studying my eyes, hands tightening around the back of my head. He’s not sure. Second-guessing his decision. I can’t let him do it—I can’t.
I’m good in school, an A student. This is what we do in school—we get told things and tell them back. I do it now, just for him.
“I was hiding, calling 911, and he came up behind me,” I whisper. “He put something over my head and forced me into a vehicle. One of the vans, maybe. We drove around forever. I was so scared, I don’t remember anything, or how much time passed. Nothing. He said if I took it off, he’d kill me.”
He watches my eyes. “He stopped and got out once, but that’s all you remember.”
“He stopped and got out once,” I repeat. “I don’t know where we were. That thing was over my head.”
“They can’t make you tell something you don’t remember,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
“Did you hear any other sounds?” he asks.
This is a test, just like they have in school. I can do this. “That’s all I remember.” I let the hysteria I feel creep into my voice. “We just drove around and stopped once.”
“He let you out here, and you whipped the sack off your head and ran.”
“I whipped the sack off my head and ran.”
“What direction?” he asks, fingertips digging into my skull, gemlike gaze fixed on my face.
“I don’t remember,” I say.
“Did he chase you?”
“I don’t know. I ran.”
He releases me. I stumble back, fall onto the mud.
He just watches me. “The people you love are counting on you to keep that up.”
I swallow, afraid even to move. He has no reason to leave me alive, no reason to trust me. Even if he believes I mean what I’m saying, he can’t be sure I’ll keep my word. Leaving me alive is a risk. He’s a stranger, he’s an animal, but he’s taking this risk to let me live.
Something drops by my hand onto the riverbed, a clatter of metal on plastic. I don’t look down.
I’m afraid to know what he’s left me.
“Find the nearest woman,” he says gruffly. “Tell her what I told you.”
He turns and walks away without a single backward glance. The van makes a turn as it pulls from its perch, headlights flashing onto me, lighting up my torn dress and blinding me all at once. For a second I think this might be it, that he’s decided to run me over instead of drowning me. Then the van turns away. It jolts and bounces its way back onto the road. In a matter of seconds, the red taillights fade into nothing.
It’s surreal, being out here alone. Like this really was a bad dream.
My ruined dress proves otherwise.
A laugh bursts out of me, hysteria and grief and leftover fear. I’m not safe yet. I still have to get out of here. I have to hope I don’t run into some man who would take advantage of my state. Find the nearest woman, he told me. As if he was worried about my safety.
I look down at the small silver thing on the white river rocks. A knife. He left me something to protect myself with. As if somebody like me knows how to use a knife.
Chapter 4
Stone
I glance at my watch. Dead.
The water must have gotten inside. The hands are stuck at eleven and twelve. It’s late, well past the time I should have checked back in with my guys. They’ll be worried about me. They’ll be pissed.
I don’t mind pissing them off, but I don’t like making them worry.
Any other time, I would have headed straight back to the hotel. Or at the very least, I would have found one of the few pay phones that are still around and called the secure number. Instead I’m sitting here, hidden by brush and a goddamn rock face, soaking wet, watching.
It didn’t take her long to find someone. She’d only walked a few yards down the road before a car slowed down. I could see her dark nipples through the pale wet fabric of her dress. I tensed until an older woman got out. Not that I trust women, much. But I inherently distrust all men aside from my crew. I watched from my hiding spot while the girl gave her sob story, crying and pointing to the river.
It wasn’t the stuff about Girl Scouts that got me, or the way she ate the fries, or the way she struggled to stay alive once she knew what I was doing. It was her desperation to be found with her clothes on. Fighting for that last bit of dignity, even when she was losing everything. That’s what spoke to me.
You always hang on to what you can.
You never let them take everything. Some people don’t get that. They think dead is dead, and it won’t matter if you’re dressed or not, if you kept your dignity at the end. When you’ve seen as much death as I have, you know it matters.
I keep to the shadows while the woman pulls a jacket from her back seat and presses it around her. And makes a call. An ambulance, maybe. I should already be gone from here. The girl will find her way back home. She’ll be safe, most likely. But the world is a scary place. I know that more than most. What if she met someone worse than me? Someone who wouldn’t feed her a burger and then let her go? And so I stay, watching, longer than I should.
I see Brooke talking, shaking her head. That’s her name, according to her phone. Her password is one-two-one-two. She really needs a better one than that.
The woman is looking around. Sensing somebody watching, maybe.
I made a gamble, but I don’t think it’s a bad one. Brooke’s a good girl, the kind who’ll cut out little pieces of her own heart before hurting anybody else. She’ll protect her people from me. She thinks I’m a monster, and she’s right.
By the time the red and blue lights flash over the treetops, I should have been gone. I shouldn’t be within a mile of cops if I can help it. It’s not only about the danger to me, but about the fact that I could lead them to the rest of the crew.
Fuck.
It’s because of the girl. Because of the strange feeling I get when I look at her, the tightness in my chest. Which proves I shouldn’t be near her either.
I back away through the trees, making myself invisible.
It’ll be a long time before they get organized enough for a search, and by then there won’t be a trace of me. Except when I reach the end of the woods, where I left the van, something feels off. I move slower, silent and so damn careful. That’s when I see it parked about half a mile back from the white van. A dark sedan. It’s not a white cop car with reflective lights and bold lettering. No, I recognize the make and model. This is a detective’s car. And there’s only one detective who would be watching the radar close enough to suspect Brooke’s call had to do with me.
Detective Rivera has been a thorn in m
y fucking side.
And now he might catch me. I’m alone out here. No backup.
There’s the crack of a twig ten feet to my left. He’s in the woods with me. For a second I’m worried—about the crew and what they’d do if I landed in jail. Who’d be there to watch over them?
This spurs me into action. I crash through the woods, heading west, where there’s nothing but miles of trees. No use being quiet when he already knows I’m here.
Then there’s a bark. Fuck. He brought search dogs?
I turn toward the darkest part of the forest and plunge inside.
Chapter 5
Stone
“Cruz won’t want that. I'm telling you,” Knox growls as he signals and merges onto the highway. “You should have left it in the woods.”
“The search dogs would have found it,” I say, rubbing the place in my leg where one of them bit me. He took me down, and it was a close call. I had a knife, but I didn’t want to hurt the beast. It wasn’t his fault he’s good at his damn job.
I got away. Barely.
Made it to the city where I could dial Knox for an extraction.
It was too bad I lost the caterer’s van before I could torch it, but Knox’s ride is a lot nicer; a vintage Porsche that’s probably had blood in it a few times over the years. At least I had the ring in my pocket when I left the van behind.
“He wants it.”
“He won’t even look at it.” Knox is wearing a crisp purple button-down and slacks, like he’s going to some swanky hot spot for happy hour after work instead of picking up his boss from a manhunt.
“He’ll look at it,” I say. “You’ll see.”
Cruz needs somebody in this fucking life to come through for him. That’s my job. With all my brothers. Make sure they get what they need. Sometimes that means vintage cars. Sometimes that means closure in the form of a bloodstained ring.
I pull it out and take another look. It’s fat and gold with some emblem of a fancy university imprinted on it. This is the ring I promised to bring him as I held his shaking, sobbing body, and now he gets it. It took a good twelve years, but I would have searched for that fucker for another twelve if I had to. I mean to keep each and every promise I made back when we were kids, back when we were being made to do things with men that no kid should ever be made to do.
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 86
