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“I’m not mad. Goodbye.”
“Bye.” But I’d already heard the connection go dead before I said it.
As soon as I hung up, I did what he’d asked. No matter how paranoid I thought his caution was. Though maybe it wasn’t over the top. Hedidkill people for a living. One didn’t exactly want to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind them while doing that. I wasn’t sure there was any level of paranoia that was too much under those conditions.
I stared at the phone sitting on the bed with its guts spilled out. At least his mother couldn’t call back again. I didn’t want to have to start coming up with excuses for why Shannon wasn’t there to take her call. I didn’t know what he’d told her as his cover story for what he did now, and if she thought he traveled for business. Maybe she thought he worked in an office somewhere now.
As I stared at the phone, I finally realized what I had. A link to the outside world and plenty of time to utilize it. I could call for help. I could get away from Shannon if I really wanted to. The trouble was, I didn’t want to.
And while I still didn’t want to deal with the police and a million questions, the idea of such a thing didn’t seem as traumatic with my memories back in their proper storage lockers in my brain. I just... didn’t want to go. Shannon’s house was a clean, safe cocoon from which I wasn’t ready to emerge—even if Shannon’s emotional range left something to be desired.
I crossed to the balcony and, without thinking, opened the door and stepped outside. Winter in southern Georgia was pretty mild, unless this year was a fluke. I didn’t know. It was my first Georgia winter. I actually stood for a good five minutes breathing in the crisp morning air before it suddenly occurred to me that Shannon hadn’t armed the balcony door. The main door, the back door, and every single window was always armed, but almost never the balcony door. Shannon liked to go out there a lot and didn’t want to bother inputting the code to get in and out each time.
I wondered if he’d forgotten about it in his rush out the door. Surely he normally armed it when he’d left me in the house all those times. But today, for whatever reason, it was unarmed. The wheels in my head started turning. Was this a test? It had to be a test.Or he doesn’t want you. He’s dismissing you from his life, you little idiot. If you don’t leave while you have the chance, he might just kill you and dump your body off with his buddy at the crematorium when he gets back.
I know people can make mistakes, but Shannon... Shannon was the most precise person I’d ever met. He had a system for everything. He had a protocol for everything. He covered every single track he left no matter how minor or discreet. Shannon didn’tdomistakes like this. If he did, he’d be sitting in a prison cell right now.
All I could conclude from this was that he’d purposefully left me a phone and an exit. The insecure schoolgirl part of me thought he was tired of me, done with me, and instead of tying up the loose end, he’d decided to give me a chance and let me go while he wasn’t looking. But then... the way he’d looked at me, even this morning. It was impossible to think something that intense could fade so quickly to casual disinterest.
Or at least this was what I told myself. Maybe fucking me after knowing ugly parts of my history was somehow less satisfying to him. He’d left so quickly afterward. What did that even mean? What else could it mean but that he’d wanted to get away from me?
But despite my negative inner monologue, I knew he wouldn’t release somebody who could destroy his neat, minimalist life. And I didn’t think Shannon could even pretend to be the noble type who would let me go because it was theright thing to do. Shannon didn’t give a shit about theright thingbeyond the basic desire to keep his life as uncomplicated as possible. If someone or something got in his way, I was sure he would take care of it, and there were few if any laws or appeals to reason and morals that would sway him. He may not have killed an innocentyet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t or couldn’t. If I pushed beyond my fears and insecurity, I just didn’t believe he intended to let me go.
So that only left one option. It was a test. He wanted to see what I would do with the temptation of freedom. Would I try to escape? Fuck no, I wouldn’t. Even if I hadn’t grown stupidly attached to this man, no way in hell would I run. I had no doubts that Shannon could track me anywhere. He’d built that dossier on me, after all. And it hadn’t seemed too difficult for him to map out my whole existence. The news stories were months ago. I had no idea how he’d managed to piece it all together so quickly and easily, but clearly he had.
Before my memories had started coming back, I could have said that he’d simply invented much of the dossier, but that was no longer true. And either way, he couldn’t invent my fluency in French. I’d planned to move to Paris before the accident had landed me in the hospital under Trevor’s care. I’d decided there was no future for me left here, and not enough people I cared about to warrant my staying. I’d known Trevor was dangerous. And I’d had the money to get far enough away from him that he would no longer be a threat. Ididhave friends in France.
I’d wanted a new start. I just made the mistake of telling Trevor that. It had slipped out because I couldn’t resist the urge to let him know just how little control he had over me or my life. He’d manufactured this story in his head about how our life would go, how we’d get married and live happily ever after—us against the world. It hadn’t initially occurred to him that I actually could escape him, that I had the means and ability to be free. I didn’t need him.
He’d flown into a rage and actually got into a car chase with me like right out of some cheesy movie. How smug he must have been when I woke in the hospital for that brief moment without a single memory in my head, with no way to know I’d wanted to leave him and the country. Now I could again. Technically.
But all those plans were from my life before. While the idea of Paris still sounded nice in theory, I didn’t want to leave Shannon. And if I ran away, I’d no doubt make some amateur move, and he’d see it in plenty of time. And even if he didn’t, he would find me. He probably already suspected I’d go to Paris based on what he’d learned about me. And unlike Trevor, Shannon had the means and ability to follow me and drag me back. Realizing all this should have disturbed me. But for whatever fucked-up reason, it didn’t. The only thing that bothered me was the continued nagging fear that he might not want me anymore.
There was a fine sheen of frost on the ground. It glittered like starlight under the weak rays of the sun. I leaned over the balcony railing. There was a trellis I could climb down. A fucking trellis. Like he’d set it all up for me. I went back inside before I froze to death. Winters in Georgia might be mild, but I was only wearing a towel, and my hair was still wet. I didn’t want to tempt fate.
I went back down the hall to my room and quickly got dressed in some jeans, sneakers, and a light sweater. Back in Shannon’s room, I noticed the nightstand drawer beside his bed was open. I pulled it out the rest of the way and gasped. Holy shit, there was a lot of cash. Small bills, mostly twenties. There must be a few thousand dollars in there. It’s not that I considered this an inordinately large sum of money. My bio-dad had given me a staggering amount after all. This was small potatoes by comparison. But my interaction with money had always been through the medium of plastic cards and distant vague numbers on bank computer screens, which my brain refused to fully process as money—even though it could buy me things. So this was a large amount ofcash.
This was definitely a trap. It was all too convenient. Him abruptly leaving me, creating an emotional reason for me to leave... money in the dresser. Cell phone left behind—though that had been hidden in his pants and could have been an accident, but it also could have been intentional. Shannon never left his clothes lying around. Then there was the unarmed balcony door and the trellis with an easy way to the ground level and freedom outside.
There was still a part of me that feared he wanted me gone from his home. Like he was tired of me, and maybe he did feel some spark of something that made him not want to kill me, but nothing else beyond that to make him want me to continue invading his personal space like this. But if he didn’t want me gone, it was definitely a test. Either way it was orchestrated, everything laid out so simply and enticingly.
I grabbed a few hundred out of the dresser and put half in one pocket and half in the other. It wasn’t like I was stealing it. He had full easy access to my accounts if he hadn’t already drained them. I could pay him back. Though I doubted he cared if I did.
I searched for a spare set of keys and was happily surprised to find one in the drawer with the money. I stepped outside and locked the balcony door behind me, then climbed down the trellis to the ground. Child’s play.
I wasn’t going to run, but I sure as shit was getting out of the house for a while. If he wanted me gone, he could have a conversation with me and tell me himself. Or he could put a bullet in my head. Whatever. But fuck this. Even if I wanted to go, I wouldn’t leave this way. He had to be smart enough to know that by now. Maybe in the first day or two in his care I would have, but over weeks my feelings had changed.
I’d known in a vague way that Shannon lived in a nice neighborhood, but now I was walking through it, experiencing it live. I wasn’t even sure what month it was, which, now that I had my memories back, seemed extra disorienting. I was sure it was after Christmas, though.
I’d had opportunities to learn the date, but each time I’d only realized after the fact. Like when I’d been shopping online for clothes that first night... all I’d had to do was glance into the bottom right corner of the screen, but I’d been too flustered by everything. And the time I’d checked Shannon’s phone for his number. There wasn’t much time, and it just didn’t occur to me until Shannon’s phone was back in his pocket that I could have easily read the date on the phone. And even this morning with the red phone. I could have checked that, but I’d already taken the battery out when it occurred to me yet again. And by now I was too paranoid to put it back in. I was determined to remember to find out the date while I was out.
I hadn’t realized how close Shannon lived to town. He lived in a small town near Savannah, called Stoney Oak. From what little I’d seen in the car with him, there might be fifteen thousand people here, if I was being generous in my estimation. His parents lived inside Savannah proper, but it was still an easy drive to get from one place to the other. I wondered how he felt about his parents living so close. They could just drop in on him at any time, but so far since I’d been here, they’d maintained a polite and respectful distance.
It was maybe a mile walk into the main part of town—twenty minutes or so. Or it was that far into what had been the original downtown area at least. I wasn’t sure how much urban sprawl had overtaken the edges.
There was a small old-fashioned grocery store on the corner of a strip of buildings that looked like they’d been built maybe around the mid-eighteen hundreds. Next to that were several boutique stores that ranged in offerings from tourist-y gift shops to clothing stores.
I wondered what would ever possess Shannon to live in such a small town. Small towns were nosy. Everybody wanted to know everybody’s business. And if you weren’t involved enough in town stuff, people always wanted to know why. I would think Shannon would prefer to get lost inside a big city.
