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“Hello?” she whispers, looking around.
I step down, shuffling leaves around.
She tenses, then bends over, looking underneath a thick tree branch.
“Who’s there?” she asks, voice wobbling.
I chuckle under my breath, making another noise, and her body snaps straight, taking a step back.
Shit, don’t go that way.
I’m silent, and she grows bold, taking a step toward me.
And another, and another, and another.
“Heather, what’s in there?” one of her friends asks.
She lets out a sigh. “I don’t see any—”
I lunge forward, my hand going around her mouth as I pull her behind the tree. She weeps in my arms, and I grip her tightly as I bring my knife down, plunging it deep into her gut.
“Heather, is everything okay?” one of the guys asks.
She whimpers in my grip, though her fight leaves quickly as I pull the knife out, plunging it back into her gut.
In, out. In, out.
My hand moves quickly, stabbing her repeatedly until blood pours from her abdomen and the drips sound onto the ground below. She goes limp in my arms, but I keep sinking the blade into her stomach, until the crunching of grass tells me it’s time to stop.
I drop her body, and she falls in a heap.
Footsteps near, and that’s all I can do. I dip into the woods, just as a scream filters through the air.
But it doesn’t matter, because I’m already gone. Far into the woods where I won’t be found. I’m gone, though not for long.
I’ll be back.
For her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LAKYN
Iglance around the tree, hesitating if I should even go back to the party. The stares are too much, and I’m tired of being watched like I’m a killer, when there isn’t just one of me, but seven of us.
Six, if something happens to Eloise.
My brow furrows, and I feel such guilt over knowing my friend is lying in a hospital bed, and I’m here, getting fucked up against a tree by a man who breaks hearts for a living.
Eloise’s blood is on my hands, at the end of the day, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.
And what’s worse, is the man who might have killed her is a secret that my tongue refuses to speak of, hidden so deeply inside of me it houses itself in the shadows of my soul. I can’t pull it free, and it refuses to escape. It wants to fester, growing, burrowing, until this masked man takes over everything that I am.
I’m no longer just Lakyn Ashford.
I’m Lakyn Ashford, keeper of secrets, and simply weak when it comes to the man who wears a mask.
He sends me to my knees—no, he bends me to my knees—and takes what he wants, and I want nothing more than to succumb.
