AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When we were in high school, I had a mad crush on him. We all did. Tall and muscular, with pale gray eyes and the look of an athlete with a fine brain, he was the golden boy. The guy every girl wanted for her own.
I find him repulsive now. Being touched by him is like being caressed by an angry slug.
“Drew is coming for me.” The words are out before I know it. I have made a mistake. I know I have, yet I’m emboldened by saying it. Acknowledging the truth gives me power, even as the world turns to white and black dots before my eyes. He is. I know he is, my cells screaming for him, sending signals to the man who loved me enough to spend the last four years readying for this moment.
Which is unfolding without him.
“Drew?” John’s laughter is bitter and nasty, condescending and so self-assured that a zing of electric fear shoots from my teeth to my ass. “Drew is in police custody for stalking you.”
I sniff, then sniff again, my body’s desperate attempt to get oxygen in me. My tongue is flat in my mouth, pressed hard against my bottom teeth, and my throat goes dry as sandpaper.
“Shut up, John,” shouts another voice. I can barely hear him over the helicopter. They get me into a seat and quickly close the chopper’s door. No one bothers to buckle me in. I close my eyes.
“Playing possum? Cute.”
Why are they ruining the word cute?
As the helicopter lifts off, I crack one eyelid.
Stellan. Of course.
I say nothing. I can’t. If I have a speech center in my brain, it’s shut down so the rest of me can work on pure survival. I know from four years on the Island that the mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Thoughts loop through me, triggering a rush of fear so great I think it’ll tear my skin into ribbons in an attempt to flee my body.
Because my body is the target.
Drew’s in police custody? For stalking me? What does that all mean? He didn’t stalk me.
My mind scrambles to put the pieces together.
Set up. It’s a set up. Drew’s being turned into the scapegoat.
Oh, God.
If they’re telling the truth, how will he get out? How will he rescue me?
I can’t look at them. Screaming won’t make a difference. Out of the corner of my eye I see Silas outside, right by the double doors to the house. My heart squeezes in my chest. As we rise higher and higher, he gets smaller and smaller.
He failed.
He doesn’t know it yet, but he failed.
Drew
I wake up on a thin blanket on the floor in a holding cell, my cheek ice cold, the throbbing in my head a bass drum. The ground beneath my body is clean. It smells like mildew and bleach. The distinct ammonia odor of piss is mixed in there.
I know this scent.
It’s the smell of jail. I’ve spent plenty of time immersed in it in the past, but always as the jailer.
Not the jailee.
Gingerly, I start to sit up, inch by inch. My body is unclothed except for my boxer briefs. Shoes are gone, pants are gone, shirt is gone.
Dignity – long gone.
I hear the click and clack of a heavy-duty lock opening. The door to the cell moves and there stands Mark Paulson.
He’s white as a sheet and his jaw is tight.
