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Though in my defense, I didn’t come here just to mope or speculate. I’d needed to get out of the house for a little while, and walking the trails of the park is an easy way to do that, along with being relatively safe.
Unless I’m next on the to-be-murdered list.
My eyes flick upward, following the trail up the hill to the little covered meeting house that sits near the top of it. When I was younger, my school had taken day trips here, always renting out the meeting house on the hill where all the teachers could sit and make sure none of us were throwing one another off of trees or burying someone in the dirt.
Elementary school kids are feral creatures, after all.
Today it’s empty, like it is most of the time when it’s too cold for kids to be here from one of the surrounding daycares or schools.
Except…it’s not so empty. Not when I look again, head tilting to the side at the movement I swear I’d seen near the back of the small, open-sided building.
“You really don’t need to go up there,” I inform myself, speaking aloud in the cold, autumn air. “You reallyshouldn’tgo up there.” It would be stupid if I did. If I go up there and die, I’d deserve people saying how stupid I was at my funeral.
It’s probably that creep from the fairgrounds,my brain supplies unhelpfully. That makes it even clearer that I should stay away.
Yet I find myself walking up the hill, once again forsaking the trails as my thigh muscles burn with exertion. I don’t know why I’m doing this, except to prove my eyes wrong and to make sure there’s nothing actually here. It’s the most reasonable option, and the most probable one.
I even start to believe my reasoning, when I make a circuit around most of the open sided, concrete-floored building with picnic tables jammed together end-to-end inside.
I’m being jumpy, for one. I can’t do shit like this while there really is a killer around, or I’m going to drive myself crazy.
And I need to go home, before I start seeing Godzilla instead of just—
The moment I round the back of the building, my eyes catch the flurry of movement from between the two doors leading to the bathrooms. It’s a recessed alcove, the doors blocked off by large fences to give people going in and out of the bathrooms some privacy, so the person standing there could have gone completely unseen, if he hadn’t moved.
But I’m not fast enough to do anything other than jerk away from them, even as hands close around my wrists and yank me around, shoving me back against the concrete wall of the building.
A small yelp leaves my throat as the person leans closer, face obscured by a black face mask that pools at his neck and is thrust up over his nose. His hood is pulled down as well, leaving only his unfamiliar, pale gray eyes staring me down from inches away.
“Who the hell are you?” I murmur, hyper aware of his hands on my arms. “What do you want?”
He doesn’t answer. He leans forward instead, his eyes impossibly close to mine, and one hand comes up to gently,oh so gently, press against the base of my throat.
“What are you doing here?” the man murmurs, in a voice I don’t think I’ve heard before. “Shouldn’t you be at home, darling? There’s a murderer on the loose.”
My fingers itch, trembling to reach up and rip his mask down so I can see who he is.
“Are…are you the murderer?” I find myself asking, and kick myself when I realize what I’ve said.Shit.
“Don’t you hope I’m not?” I hear the hint of a laugh in his voice, and when he releases my other hand so he can swipe my hair back from my face, I flinch back into the wall. “You can’t run away from me,” he points out, the hand against the base of my throat unfurling so his long fingers can wrap gently around my throat. When my hands come up around us, fluttering, looking for a purpose, his gaze flicks to the one, then back to my eyes. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, gorgeous.”
“Who are you?” I mean it as a demand, but it comes out a softer, less sure request.
“No one who you want to be around.”
“It’s really awkward that you’re going to give vague answers like that,” I sneer nervously. “Or is this you trying to be cool?”
His head cocks to the side, like he’s bemused by my words, and I feel the heaviness of his attention fully on my face. “Are you trying to make me feel bad? Or are you trying to make me think you aren’t absolutely terrified right now?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I’m quick to snap, though it’s a lie.
“If you’re not, then walk away from me. Pull my mask down and see who I am.” His gaze is goading, and his voice holds a challenge I’m not looking to accept. So I just stare at him, hating how easy it is for him to call my bluffs. “Oh, no? You’re not going to do that.” His fingers tighten just slightly, and my breath catches in my throat. “What a shame.” With the words, he relaxes against me, though I’m still as tense as a board as he presses a knee between my thighs, the scent of his sharp cologne tickling my nose when I suck in a breath.
"Stay away from shit like this. Do you hear me?” He’s so careful when he says it, making sure to enunciate every word. “Stop looking for shadows or suspects. Because eventually, you’re going to pay for it. Curiosity killed the cat, you know.” The words whisper through my brain, reminding me of the party and the two masked boys I’d met there that night.
But there’s no way this is one of them. He can’t be.
“Fine,” I reply in a whisper, my heart pounding against my chest. “Let me go.” He doesn’t have to. In fact, he has the upper hand here, and when he moves, I see the hilt of a knife under his jacket that makes me choke on the air I’m breathing.
