Page 27 of Lethal Weakness

I’m a lone wolf. That’s how it’s meant to be.

Except even after planting the bug and ghosting through the shadows to safety, I find myself at my neighbor’s backdoor. Not my own.

I slip inside too easily. But I won’t encourage her to reinforce her locks because I’m the only one getting inside. I’d protect her from anything else that dared.

The kitchen is clean like it normally is, other than a few errant coloring pages. The living room is nearly empty besides an old couch and some sort of tufted egg chair.

Down the dark hallway is one small room with all of Avery’s toys. The walls ring true to Linden’s education background. It could pass as a preschool in here. Alphabet and number posters. A chalkboard and probably every paper Avery has ever laid a crayon to.

My steps are slow and even, not a single floorboard creaking as I enter the other bedroom.

The two of them are cocooned in the center of this raggedy air mattress that is steadily losing air. If I could come up with any excuse, I’d buy them a bed. But Jack O’Connor doesn’t know about their sleeping situation; only this ghost that’s haunting them does.

Linden shifts in her sleep, probably because she’s miserably uncomfortable, and I don’t take my chances in case she wakes up. I disappear out of the room and back to the kitchen.

My eyes catch something on the counter that I didn’t notice before. A pink piece of construction paper with my name printed across the top. Linden obviously wrote it, but below my name is a cascade of scribbles and shapes. Lots of colors.

They made me a picture?

I pinch the soft paper between my thumb and pointer finger, fighting the urge to take it with me. It takes more effort than I’ll ever admit to set it back down.

A deep pain in my chest blooms, but a noise from behind me forces me silently out the back door.

Only a minute later, Linden emerges from her back door. She doesn’t see me hiding in the shadows, of course. I’m an expert at being invisible.

She settles into one of her porch chairs like a ball with a throw blanket wrapped around her, tipping her head back to look at the moon.

I look too, wanting to see what she sees. It’s only a small crescent away from being full. The light hits her face like a spotlight, making her look like the very thing that the heavens would love to steal away.

Then a tear rolls down her cheek, and it makes me want to destroy anything that tries to take her.

My fingers grip the top of my balaclava, and I slip it off my head. I can’t approach her. No version of me can.

But I can pretend that in any other universe I could wipe the tears off her face.

Her new fuel pump arrives tomorrow. That means she’ll have a working car. A Social Security card, and every reason to leave this place.

I know there is more that I don’t know about her situation, but I hope she runs anyway. I want her to take Avery far away and never look back.

As much as the thought of never seeing them again makes the dull ache in my chest sharper.

Her eyes droop closed, and I watch her body drift into a deep sleep, right out in the open, unsecured.

But it’s alright, because I’m watching her.

I’m always watching.

Chapter Ten

Linden

Iwake up with hair stuck to my cheek and a stiff shoulder, confused because I’m curled up in my puffy egg chair in the living room. I hardly ever sit in this chair, let alone fall asleep in it. The last thing I remember is going outside last night to cry without Avery hearing me.

Her dad contacted me last night for the first time since we left him, and he got out of rehab. It wasn’t a pleasant call.

Then I woke up at 2 a.m. with a screen full of text messages from him. None of them had a kind word.

Turner was different four and a half years ago. He charmed the pants off of me. Literally.