Page 90 of The Villains We Make

Ethan. Ethan has her.

My heart pounds against my chest wall, blood deafening me. I push a hand into my hair, thinking what to do when three dots appear, indicating he’s typing.

We’ll finish this where it started.

35

OPHELIA

“Ethan.” My voice catches in my throat.

Ethan is standing in the bedroom. He’s in the dark slacks and shirt he’d worn to the funeral, but his suit jacket is gone. His tie is loose around his neck and his hair is wet with melted snow. He stops when he sees me, almost like he’s surprised at least for a moment.

“There you are,” he says casually, blinking, stepping into the bedroom like he’s just come home.

“Ethan. What are you doing here?” I clutch the towel to myself.

“I needed to show you something.” His gaze drifts to my chest, to the towel I’m holding on to, like he just noticed I’m not dressed.

“How did you get up here? How did you know where?—”

“You need to see this.” He comes into the room.

“Let me get dressed. I’ll be right there, wait outside.”

“No.” He looks around, tosses the first thing he sees at me. It’s a sweater and a pair of jeans I’d left draped over the back of a chair. “Put these on. We need to go.”

“Wait outside.”

“I fucking said no!”

I jump when he takes out what he had tucked into the waistband of his slacks, which have grown looser around his waist. It’s a gun.

“Get dressed.”

My throat goes dry, and I remember that strange pop I’d heard. “Okay,” I say, picking up the sweater with one hand and trying to pull it on.

“Fuck’s sake, you’d think I’d never seen you naked!” he snaps, crossing the room in three quick strides and tugging the towel from me.

I scream, then drop onto the bed because I’m out of space. When he pushes the sweater down over my head, I feel the cool steel of the gun against my cheek. I look up at him and slide my arms through, then pick up the jeans. He steps backward.

I pull the jeans on with trembling hands.

“Hamish. Where’s Hamish?” I ask.

“Where’s your phone?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Get it.”

I nod, walk toward the bathroom to get the phone, thinking maybe I can get inside and lock him out, but he follows me too closely, that gun in his hand, steel against my side when he touches me. He sees the phone when we’re in the bathroom and reaches around me to grab it.

“Where’s Hamish?” I ask again when we go back to the bedroom.

He gestures toward the door, and I walk slowly, keeping distance between us even though he’s not pointing the gun at me. He’s keeping it at his side.

“Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. Go. Down the stairs.”

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