AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘So we’re fucking. So what? You can join us, and we’ll take turns fucking you. Why do you have to be like this? Why are you always so stupid?’ I jerked my arm away from him and tried to step around him, but he shoved his big body in front of me. ‘You’re not leaving, Jace! You don’t get to walk out on me!’
‘Dylan, stop! It’s over. Get out of my apartment and just let me go.’
‘The fuck I’ll let you go!’
“He put one hand around my throat and squeezed, making me stretch up to my toes to avoid being choked. ‘You don’t leave me, damn you. Nobody leaves me, he said.’
“I clawed at his hand, but I couldn’t budge it. He tightened his grip and leaned over me menacingly. ‘I’ll kill you first.’
“His face was a mask of fury. He was crushing my throat and I couldn’t stop him. I managed a wordless cry, and he drew back his fist. I fumbled for something to stop him, and my hand closed around the lamp next to me. I picked it up and swung it at him, smashing it into his head as hard as I could. Suddenly the other man—the dark one—came flying over to us. Like literally flying. He was on the bed and then just right there in front of us, roaring at me. He shoved himself between us, as Dylan stumbled and fell back on the bed, clutching his head. And this guy is shouting at me. ‘Leave him alone! He belongs to me. Dylan is mine.’
“Dylan tried to get back to his feet and come at me again, but the guy put his hands on Dylan’s chest and pushed him back away from me. I realized that this guy wasn’t at all Dylan’s normal type, like I’d thought at first. He was handsome, yes, but he was just big as Dylan and as muscular. He seemed to be calling all the shots. He turned toward me again and he roared in my face. This loud, horrible sound like a wild animal might make. And his breath—it was awful, like something…dead.”
He was silent when I finished though his eyes were hot on my face.
I shook my head, feeling embarrassed, knowing Logan must think I was crazy. “This sounds like I’m insane, doesn’t it?”
“No. Keep going. What happened next?”
I shrugged and gave him an embarrassed smile. “I tripped.”
His eyebrows rose on his forehead. “You what?”
“I fucking tripped over the rug by the door and when I did, my feet flew up over my head and hit him under the chin. It knocked him off his feet.” I glanced up and had to smile at the look on Logan’s face.
“I know it sounds crazy, but his feet flew out from under him, and he fell right back into the footboard and banged his head. Hard. I guess it stunned him or surprised him or something for a second, because Dylan was yelling and scrambling to get out of bed and come after me, but he threw himself down over this guy. I just got to my feet again and ran like hell.”
Logan looked at me like I was kidding him, but it was the truth. “I made it as far as the front door and my plan, I guess, was to run down the hall and get the hell out of there. But he got me at the door.”
Logan frowned. “What do you mean, he got you? Who did?”
“The guy. He must have hit me on the back of my head with something that cut me. Cut big gouges in my head, like I’d been clawed by some animal. God, the pain was terrible. I was screaming and Dylan was yelling, and that guy was making that awful growling sound…” I looked up at Logan. “It was a real scene.”
When he just kept staring at me incredulously, I continued my story.
“Anyway, the emergency doctors said I was lucky that whatever he hit me with didn’t take off most of my scalp. I stumbled out in the hall, and everybody was shouting, and my neighbors’ doors started opening all along the hall. My next-door neighbor, Mrs. Avery—I used to feed her cat for her when she went to visit her daughter out of town. Well, anyway, she came out with one of those metal baseball bats, yelling and swinging. And my neighbor at the end of the hall was shouting at us to stop and said that he’d called the police and they were coming. Dylan was pulling on the other guy’s arm trying to get him to go back in the apartment. Mrs. Avery hit Dylan with her bat—it was seriously crazy.
“Then the elevator doors opened, and the police came out. They drew their weapons and Mrs. Avery grabbed my arm and yanked me inside her apartment. We shoved some furniture against the door. I didn’t actually see what happened after that. I just heard about it later on.”
Logan stared at me for a moment and then took up the story himself. “I’ll tell you what happened. The man who’d been with Dylan came at the officers as if he wanted to fight them. They warned him to stop, but he kept coming. They shot him numerous times.”
Jace nodded, not meeting my eyes. “I heard Dylan started fighting them then too. He got hurt and then other officers came, and they loaded them both up and took them downstairs to an ambulance. Somehow, the guy wasn’t dead after all. He must have been just stunned because he-he somehow killed the paramedics and one of the police officers. He must have had a gun or something. The police weren’t very forthcoming about that. Anyway, they said he managed to get away, and I don’t know if they ever found him.”
“He was located,” Logan said. “He’s dead now.”
“Oh.”
“And what do you know about what happened to Malone?”
“The police came and got me to take me downtown. They said he was badly injured in the incident and that he was being treated at the hospital.”
“That’s right.”
“Where did you go after you were released?”
“A hotel. I couldn’t stay there at the apartment. Not after what happened.”
“And when did you next see Malone?”
