He disappears inside but I stay out on the terrace. I step onto the round metal table and pull myself up to stand on the edge of the wall, looking down at the street below. The police car is still parked out front but they’re watching the door not the roof.
I imagine stepping off the edge. Not because I have any desire to end my life but because I somehow instinctively know that for however long that fall lasted, the constant pressure in my head would dissipate.
My entire life, I’ve been chasing the quiet. Doing dangerous and reckless things just to feel that release. Nothing else ever worked. Until Hazel.
I don’t want to let her go. But I also don’t want to hurt her.
And the one thing Hope would never forgive me for is putting an innocent woman in danger.
7
DON’T WORRY, I’VE GOT A SERIAL KILLER ON SPEED DIAL
Hazel
I’min my night shirt again, standing in the middle of my bedroom, staring at my phone and trying to decide whether or not to message my ex. I really shouldn’t. Tommy had a temper. He never actually hit me, but the smash of glass on the wall next to me will be forever etched into my nervous system. I didn’t realize how bad things were getting until Wright saw the fingerprint bruises on my wrist. Tommy is the last person I should be going anywhere near. But he’s also the reason I recognized the tattoo on Garret Sleet’s wrist.
Tommy used to draw the same design on his arm. Used to say one day it would be real. That he’d be pledged into the Kings Society and then he’d be set for life. He never told me what exactly the Kings Society was, and I don’t know whether he ever got in or not. The night Wright saw the bruises she told me in no uncertain terms that I was breaking up with him so I stood him up for our date, blocked his number, and hid in Wright’s dorm room.
I only saw him once after that, when he turned up at Wright’s dorm, bloody and beaten. He’d tried to break the door down with a chair, shouting that it was all my fault and he was going to make me pay. He didn’t go away until Wright called campussecurity and threatened to cut his dick off. I sat under her desk, shaking, for hours after he left.
God this is stupid, what would I even say to him?
Hey, I know you’re an abusive asshole who I haven’t spoken to in four years, but I was just wondering if you could tell me more about that tattoo you used to draw on your arm like a ten-year-old boy. Like, for example, why a serial killer might want to murder the members of the secret society you were obsessed with.
Ugh, I should just forget about it. Why does it matter who Flynn is killing? Why do I care that maybe he has a good reason for murdering eight people? It’s still murder.
I do care though.
Screw it.
I pick up my phone and type out a message to Tommy then throw the phone back on my bed like it might bite me.
I hug my chest, grimacing at the black screen. It lights up with a message and my heart clenches, but I put on my big girl panties and take a look. Only the message isn’t from Tommy.
Olivia
911. Wright.
Shit.Wright was planning on going out vigilante style tonight and we have a rule that I’m only contacted in absolute emergencies.
Olivia sends another message, sharing Wright’s live location, and I grab some clothes out of the closet. I type out a response with one hand as I grab my backpack.
Hazel
Is she hurt?
Olivia
Only her ego.
My chest unknots a little and I slip my shoes on by the door. I get another message as soon as I step outside and I open it without thinking, assuming it’s Olivia because apparently I totally forgot I have a stalker now.
Dexter
It’s late, Lilac. Where are you going?
I skid to a stop.
