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Chapter One
Kennedy
I stood frozen, staring down at it.
The mask.
Themask.
It stared back at me. Taunted me. Dared me to touch it.
It was nothing more than a piece of plastic covered with black and red fabric, a black feather attached to it.
At the same time, it was so much more than that. This was the mask I saw in my nightmares.
In those, dark eyes peered out, watching me. Knowing what I knew. Searching for me in the darkness. The mask sat over a mouth that was now so familiar to me.
A mouth that had kissed me, licked me, and claimed me.
Mannix's mouth.
Now, the mask lay in a drawer, discarded, maybe forgotten. Did he know I'd find it here, or was that an accident?
They didn't know I saw them that night. Mannix, Ice and Ares. They killed a man while I hid in the bushes, watching. They knew someone saw them but one of them—I now realised it was Ice—let me go without seeing me.
It was his words I replayed in my head over and over.
"I could turn on my phone and find you," he said easily. "But where's the fun in that? The thrill of the chase is much more entertaining. Then when I catch you, I'll know I've earned my trophy."
I put a hand over my mouth.
I wanted to scream. I had to force down the urge.
I gave myself to him. Gave him my virginity.
Had he known who I was? How could he? I'd heard their voices and I hadn't known it was them when I met them.
Only, in the back of my mind, in a way I had. I'd recognised them the moment I saw them get out of the car on the day they supposedly arrived in Dusk Bay. I convinced myself that was really the first time they stepped foot in town after coming home from Brutham Academy. I couldn't prove it wasn't.
Until now.
I sucked in a breath and let it out through pursed lips. I needed to think critically. Calmly. This might not mean what I thought it meant. There had to be thousands of identical masks in Australia alone. They probably sold them in that dollar shop in the mall in Dusk Bay.
If you were going to murder someone, you'd wear something generic, popular. Wouldn't you?
That was rational, but I knew it wasn't true. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind Mannix was the one who cut that man's throat. Ice stabbed him in the eye and joked about writing a book on killing people. Ares held the man in place while they did it.
And me, I was the one who saw it all.
I'd fucked two killers. What would they do to me if they knew I was the one there that night?
I'd be fucked, in a whole different way. A much less pleasant way.
I glanced towards the door. I was supposed to be getting Mannix's bowtie out of the drawer. He was best man at the wedding of his father and my mother. Helen Knight was supposed to marry Leo Cassani in under an hour.
Leo. Did he know what his son was up to?
The chill already curling through me grew.
