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“Did you know her?” I hate how my voice trembles.
Xander swallows hard, his throat clicking in the silence of the car. “Only from high school. I... I had a massive crush on her back then. Almost everyone in my class did.”
Xander shakes his head, a cold shiver visibly running down his spine. “First, it was Mr. Knight... my old history teacher, killed at the carnival for all to see... and now Blaire? Man... maybe Halloween in Blackwood really is a cursed night.”
He takes a slow breath, turning his head slightly to look at me as the realization finally clicks in his head.
“If Blaire was your best friend…” he mutters softly, “...that means you’re Harmony Grove.”
I simply nod, unable to muster the strength to speak.
Xander’s tone softens into profound sympathy. “Ah, man. I’m so, so sorry for your loss, Harmony. That’s... that’s fucking terrible.”
We ride in suffocating silence for the next two miles, the weight of Blaire’s death hanging over the interior of the car like a dark, crushing anvil.
Every second that passes, my anger at Ryder grows into a burning, white-hot fire in my chest.
He took her from me. He took my best friend, and I let him walk away.
Up ahead, the rusted metal guardrail of the highway comes into view through the pea-soup fog.
Xander slowly applies the brakes, bringing the car to a complete stop on the muddy gravel shoulder right beside the dark, overgrown ditch where Noah’s body was found fifteen years ago.
He shifts the car into park, looking over at me softly.
I look out the window into the blackness of the trees, my stomach churning with a terrifying mixture of grief, anger, and absolute determination.
“Do you... do you mind accompanying me out there?” I turn to Xander, facing him with an almost desperate look. “With a potential serial killer on the loose... I really don’t want to be out here alone. I promise I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Xander looks at the dark woods, then back at my ashen, grief-stricken face. He nods firmly.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course. I won’t leave you alone out here.”
He unbuckles his seatbelt and clicks the button to kill the car’s headlights, plunging the shoulder into near-total darkness, illuminated only by the dull amber glow of the hazard lights.
We both step out of the vehicle, the cold, freezing drizzle instantly sticking to my skin.
The door shuts with a dull thud, the sound swallowed up by the unnatural silence of the foggy highway.
Xander walks around the hood of the car to stand beside me, but I barely notice him.
The moment my boots hit the wet gravel, every single hair on the back of my neck stands straight up.
A suffocating, electric tension fills the freezing air around us. The fog rolls thick over the gravel, masking the trees in tall, ghostly shapes, but deep in the pit of my stomach, a dark, terrifying thought takes root.
He’s here.
I can sense it in my blood, vibrating straight through my bones like a dark, heavy pulse.
Out there in the pitch-black abyss of the treeline, hidden behind the wall of mist and shadow...
Ryder is somewhere in the dark, watching my every move.
Twenty-Four
Scars and Bruises
RYDER
