by Lexie Ray
HIDDEN
To Love a Killer, Book 1
L E X I E R A Y
Copyright © 2014
Published by: Rascal Hearts
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at [email protected]
Cover Art: Rosy England Fisher
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
Hunter wiped her thumb down the side of her glass, swiping away condensation and getting lost in the ambient noises around her. She had given up focus, resting her soft gaze on her water glass, half empty and growing warm with each passing minute. It had to be a hundred degrees outside. The cotton tee she was wearing clung uncomfortably to her rounded back, soaking up sweat as she slumped forward unwilling to lean against the back of her chair. She could feel sweat beading at her hairline. Raising her hand to blot it away with a napkin produced such a feeling of exhaustion it almost wasn’t worth it.
There was no air in the restaurant. Every breath Hunter drew in felt heavy and thick. The ceiling fan overhead turned slowly. No breeze graced down to alleviate the stagnant humidity. The open door some two tables down did nothing but dangle the possibility of relief.
She realized her glass was suddenly empty. She was so out of it she hadn’t noticed finishing it. Her eyelids were growing heavy and it crossed Hunter’s mind that she shouldn’t have taken the second pill. Her mouth had grown dry as cotton. When she looked around the restaurant she spotted a waitress smiling brightly and holding her slick hair off her dewy neck in front of the half bar. The waitress slapped a tin bell and a cook from behind the bar raised his brows, smiling back. But no one sensed Hunter was fading hard at her table, losing her faculties, desperate for water.
Hunter reminded herself to hang in there, ride this out. Her date would be back soon, hopefully. These cramped downtown restaurants were always packed beyond capacity, torturing any customer who had to use the restroom with an atrocious line. There he was, next in line. The back of his button up shirt was stained damp. He had no idea Hunter was on Vicodin. He had no idea she couldn’t remember his name. He smiled back at her, shrugging casually, as if to establish some kind of inside joke with her. He seemed sweet, but Hunter found it impossible to relate to anyone. Long ago her heart had been cracked by darkness and a rift had been growing ever since, straining her sense of compassion, empathy, love. Part of her knew she was damaged beyond repair, that the rift would not cease until it had broken her completely. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if that weren’t true, if there was some degree of hope, if there was some way to become whole? When she had first moved to Brooklyn that was what these dinner dates had been about, but date after date Hunter realized she didn’t understand these people. Their lives were strange, their dreams foreign. And eventually she admitted to herself that the reason she showed up was not to find a connection and feel less alone, but simply to eat.
A cascade of water pooled into her glass, and when Hunter lifted her gaze, her date had also returned. He made some innocent comments, chucking his way around the waitress, as she tipped the pitcher upright momentarily then poured once again into the date’s glass. She never once let her toothy grin slip. It shouldn’t have been obnoxious, but it was.
“I’m not sure I’m feeling well. I’m so sorry, I think I have to go,” said Hunter lowly in a velvety tone. She wished her voice didn’t sound like that, seductive. It had instantly softened him. He didn’t even realize he had begun leaning in or that the edges of his mouth were curling up. Hunter had a way of saying what she meant, but implying she was up for anything. Truthfully, it was a quality she hated about herself and if she could have stopped it, she would have. It seemed whenever she wanted to run, hide, escape, or drive someone away, her sultry tone instead beckoned, invited, and agreed. The illusion of submission had kept her alive when she was younger, but she no longer needed it. This wasn’t merely a habit. If it was, it would’ve been easy to shake. This was an instinct so deeply ingrained in her that she wouldn’t know herself without it. So when her date raised his eyebrows and offered to walk her home, Hunter knew she had brought it upon herself. She knew that getting rid of him would require taming the darkness within.
The street was no better. Hunter still felt humid, exhausted, and unable to breathe. At first they walked in silence. Her mind a haze of swirling regrets, she couldn’t remember why she had agreed to meet this guy or why she needed so many pills. They passed heaps of trash bags. A few roaches jutted out in their path, but Hunter was unfazed. Her date said something sarcastic about the most expensive city in the country, but Hunter was deaf to it. She crossed her arms and kept her head down. She wasn’t going to encourage him. At least it was night. Walking in shadows had always helped her feel safe.
They rounded the corner, arriving at her stoop. Its bricks were so cracked and eroded that even the cover of night couldn’t mask that this was an old, rundown, slumlord building. Judging by the shine on his shoes, Hunter figured this guy could do a lot better than a girl like her. Which meant only one thing, he had walked her home so that he could come upstairs, leave afterwards, and never call. It was the last thing she wanted, unless it came with cash. But she knew she would need at least one more pill to get through it, and he did not look like the paying type.
She ascended the first step, the faint click of her kitten heel barely competing with the honking traffic and drunken screams from the avenue.
“You look pale,” he said, his eyes warm with concern. “And you haven’t even eaten. I could come up? We could order delivery?”
When she didn’t respond, his smile turned dark, forced. His expression was hardening. Hunter realized how thick his body was, strong, like a wall. It was intimidating. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. By the time it slid down his neck, his smile had vanished. He gripped the railing. His knuckles turned white, alarming her.
Was this happening? Was he going to pressure her into letting him up? There was something petrifying about the situation. It was as though she was waiting to be released, excused. It was as though she didn’t have the freedom to do as she pleased, but was this real? Or was this her past creeping in, controlling her, paralyzing her? If this were normal date behavior, Hunter wouldn’t have had a prayer of recognizing it in the first place. At least the pills had worn off enough so that she had regained her ability to reason. She reminded herself that she owed him nothing and assured herself that there was nothing she needed from him.
“I’m sorry to cut things short, but this is goodnight,” she said firmly with only a hint of seduction.
His brow furrowed under the contradiction of her words and tone, as a slight smirk softened his demeanor once again. But Hunter had backed up, ascending to the top of the stoop and refusing further eye contact. He was now behind her.
She keyed into the lobby, making sure the glass door had shut and latched behind her. She could feel him standing there, staring. And the feeling of being watched didn’t leave her until she had climbed the five flights of stairs that separated her apartment from the dangers of the street below.
Just before she
slid the key into the deadbolt lock, she flinched at a noise, the clanking of metal against brick. It was the trash shoot slapping shut. Up the hall a man turned away from it. Their eyes met. He paused. Hunter did as well, though her fingers absentmindedly jiggled the metal key in the socket, proceeding with the task of unlocking her apartment.
The hallway was dim, but that didn’t prevent Hunter from noting his delicate features, broad shoulders, and youthfulness. The realization that she had never seen him before also struck her. It was unlike her to stare. In a city like New York, holding someone’s gaze for too long could welcome a world of trouble, but she was unable to look away. She felt like she was falling into his eyes, as dark and unexpressive as they were. They seemed to captivate her. Something lurked beneath their surface, shadows perhaps concealing deeper pain. That’s when Hunter realized why she couldn’t look away. He was a reflection. When she looked at him, she saw her own turmoil. She wasn’t afraid of him. She felt one with him.
The deadbolt unlocked finally, causing her steel door to buckle in. She tripped forward with it, which jarred her out of whatever fantasy she had managed to create around this man. That’s what it felt like as she righted her balance, a fantasy. She looked over her shoulder to where he once stood, but the man was gone.
Music was playing in her apartment. She heard it the second she stepped inside. As the quiet melody filled her head, her blood ran cold. She knew that song. It used to play at a deafening volume to drown out her screams all those years ago.
Hunter drew in a sharp breath under the great force of her pounding heart. Growing terrified, she sipped in breath after breath as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The blood pumping through her veins had expelled any calm the Vicodin had established. Her thoughts raced, desperately searching for a memory of having turned her stereo on earlier that evening, but she hadn’t. She wouldn’t have. Noise of any kind disturbed her. The only time she listened to music was quietly under the headphones while drinking.
Other than the song playing, there were no unusual noises. She listened keenly, but heard nothing. No footsteps, no signs that someone was still here. As she trained her hearing even more intently to be certain, Hunter noticed that the sounds of the street below seemed louder than they should.
Was the window open?
When she flipped on the hall light, she discovered her hands were shaking. Her legs felt rubbery as she walked deeper into her studio apartment. , as she emerged from the hall, the full view of her apartment came into view. Her I-Pod glowed in the stereo dock. The window was open, in fact. Her room, however, appeared exactly as she had left it. The thin top sheet on her bed was a crumpled mess. Her pillow was on the floor. Her journal was laying, pages spread, at an awkward angle on her desk. Next to it was a stack of bills and junk mail splayed out, all exactly as it had been.
She pressed pause on her stereo, averting her eyes from seeing the name of the song and artist. She didn’t want to be reminded, even though she already had been. Whoever had come here was somewhere beyond the open window. Though her racing heart had settled, she knew whoever they were, they would be back.
Hunter had always known this day would come. She had been living in the shadow of that fact ever since she escaped, and now it seemed her days were numbered.
It took all her strength to close the window. Forcing the latch to lock was no easy task. By the time it was securely shut, her hands were black with dust and grease. She rubbed them together in effort to avoid a trip to the sink.
As she sat on the edge of her bed, her reflection appeared in the windowpane. She looked so thin, the hollows of her cheeks like two dark pits. The shape of her eyes was barely discernible in the low light. Her mouth was nothing more than a gray slit. She looked like a ghost, yet she had never been more alive, more free. She didn’t want to lose that.
She needed a gun.
The task of obtaining one seemed beyond overwhelming.
Hunter found her thoughts turning towards her neighbor, the strange man from the hall. Those black eyes, foreboding and familiar, had contained a possibility. Had he found her alluring? It was beyond logic and rationality, but she wondered if he’d be willing to help. Then she stopped herself. She was being insane.
It was barely 11:00 p.m. according to her cell. She dumped the contents of her purse onto the bed. Sorting through folded receipts, gum wrappers, a few tubes of chapstick, and her loose debit and credit cards she found only eight dollars and a handful of change.
Suddenly her cat, Luthor, jumped up, attracted to the scratching of her nails against the bed sheets. His eyes grew black, dilating, as he sharpened into a hunting spell. Hunter rubbed his head roughly and he instantly melted, arching his back and leaning into the firm caress, trading one pleasure for another.
Hunter fingered her debit card, trying to remember her bank balance, as her cat meowed long and loud in protest of the now motionless hand. She told him to hush but ultimately resumed stroking him long and hard, transforming his distressed meows into a lowly vibrating purr. After a moment, she returned the mess of items to her purse with her free hand. Tonight was the night.
Luthor flopped over, calm. He was lounging on his side without a hint of gratitude, though he seemed both amused and annoyed she was still there. She gave one last long stroke to her cat from chin to tail before leaving her apartment.
In the hallway she struggled to lock the deadbolt, jiggling the key as she had when she entered. It unnerved her to be making so much noise. The thought of drawing attention to herself put Hunter on edge. Eventually she felt the deadbolt turn under the force of the key. No sooner than she yanked the key out and returned it to her purse, she felt eyes on her.
“City that never sleeps.”
The voice was deep and smooth, the tone confident and pure. It enraptured her before she even turned around.
When she did, the man from down the hall was looking at her and walking soundlessly in her direction. He lingered before passing her. No shadows veiled his face this time nor swirled behind his eyes. In fact, Hunter noted his eyes weren’t black, but steel blue. They angled slightly up at the corners, giving him a playful, smoldering look.
He was going out as well. That’s what he was referring to, that neither of them was sleeping, a comment that aligned perfectly with the city’s entire reputation.
Enthralled, though trying to conceal it, Hunter’s gaze floated down the length of him from his broad chest, which was tightly hugged by a thin gray tee, to his long and muscular legs that were perfectly encased in close fitting worn out jeans. Her impression was that her new neighbor was exceedingly hot.
But if he had anything to do with her he would be in danger. The feeling was unshakable.
She allowed him to pass, offering nothing more than a slight smirk that acknowledged his presence, but welcomed nothing further.
After a moment, when the man disappeared into the stairwell, Hunter realized she had been holding her breath. She exhaled hard then pulled as much air as possible into her lungs. The faint scent of burning cigarettes and sour trash wasn’t helping to clear her head. The desire to be around him, the hope that he would come back, was overtaking her thoughts.
By now he had to be on the street. It was safe for her to proceed without awkwardly running into him. After descending the staircase to the ground floor, Hunter stepped out onto the street ready for the long and difficult night ahead.
The Gowanus was easily one of the seediest parts of Brooklyn. Rundown with abandoned warehouses and vacant lots that lined the canal, it was not a place Hunter ever wanted to return to, especially at this hour. It was her best bet, however, for obtaining a weapon. And since it was close enough to her own neighborhood, she could avoid the subway by walking.
When she had first fled to New York she stayed in the Gowanus, sleeping every night in an old sugar factory with a bunch of other runaways. The gang of kids she had connected with was by far the cleanest. They wanted no trouble, only a safe place to rest.
And she had made living there work for nearly two years before she had enough cash to rent an apartment. There were a lot of things from those years that Hunter had tried hard to forget, but the fact that dealers and gangbangers came around wasn’t one of them. She remembered the first time someone had tried to sell her a gun. She had been out looking for pills to take the edge off and help her sleep. Instead of Vicodin, this skinny Latino kid had offered up a hot piece like it was nothing. His rough life had aged him. The lines on his face were unforgettable. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but he had looked forty. Hunter should’ve bought a gun back then, but she hadn’t been ready. At twenty she hadn’t been willing to admit to herself that her past could ever find her. Now, at twenty-five, she knew better. The anxiety had crept in and was living with her. Every direction she turned, every face she saw, was a threat hiding, waiting, watching for the right moment to drag her back to New Hampshire.
The sugar factory was situated across the street just as it had been all those years ago. It’s wide steel door, indented up its center from decades of harsh weather, was slightly ajar. Deep inside, trashcan fires burned brightly, illuminating the clusters of runaways that drank around them.
She should’ve changed her clothes. She felt exposed, sexual, on display in her black kitten heels, jean skirt that had been intentionally torn at a short angle, and thin tee that hugged her curves, hanging heavy with sweat. She glanced down at her figure. Where would she even put a gun?
Hunter was growing more and more uncomfortable standing on the sidewalk and peering into the warehouse. Hesitating was awkward, and made her stick out like a sore thumb, but she was apprehensive about going in. It was unlikely that she would run into anyone from all those years ago, but the possibility was nagging at her. That would be the last thing she needed, to explain herself while grubby hands begged for loose change.
