Page 17 of Little Blue

He doesn’t sever his gaze from me. “Plane, then car. From the car to the bed, in my arms.”

In his arms.

Wait…what?

I shake my head slowly. “I don’t under—” I pause, my brain playing catch-up. “Did you say plane?”

He nods, that cool gaze still fixed on me.

Lucy gives up getting my attention and curls into my lap.

Ice begins to freeze the blood that pumps inside my veins. Gooseflesh prickles my skin. The hairs raise on my arms, the back of my neck. A wash of something cool, like dread, slithers down the length of my spine. It pools heavy and clammy in my belly.

I wheeze. “Plane.”

Again, he nods.

My vision blurs. I swallow hard and cringe at the way my throat feels too dry. I croak, “Like—you don’t mean—like—an airplane?”

His head cocks, just a little. “What other kind of plane is there?”

Oh, my God.

Oh. My. God.

Horror strikes me like a lash to the chest, knocking the breath from my lungs.

I’m surrounded by air. A heavy, weighted kind of air. I’m gasping, but I can’t pull any into my lungs.

I can’t breathe.

“You’re joking.” I finally realize, laughing a little at the hilarity of it all. Then I wince, because I’ve got a doozy of a headache. Now that I’m low on air, I’m feeling a little lightheaded, too.

“I don’t joke,” he says simply, matter of fact. As though this conversation is entirely normal. Something the crazy man of my dreams—nightmares—obsession—does every day.

Another unnerved giggle spills from between my lips. My eyes dart past him to the wall with the windows. Right now, they’re covered by heavy, dark blue velvet drapes. The urge to see what lies beyond them is so strong, before I can think it through, I’m pushing Lucy my from my lap. Ignoring his meow of protest and the pain that jars every inch of my body, I find myself running across the room for the windows.

Pulling back the drapes, confusion turns to dread, that morphs to icy horror. There hadn’t even been a dusting of snow outside my apartment in New York.

Outside, snow blankets the land in a way that tells me there’s a lot of it. It tops trees for what looks like miles and miles surrounding this place where I’m being—what? Kept?

I swallow a swell of panic.

Snow weighs needled branches heavily, making even the trees appear sad. I can tell it’s cold outside. Really cold. A chill clings to the air, ribbons of fog weaving down from the blanket of it that tops the forest trees to lick at the snowy floor.

Starbursts of frost stretch in the corners of the black window grills like a spider’s web, telling of a cold I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced.

Slowly, I turn to find the man from the roulette table—the man who has haunted me every moment since. He’s watching me. Studying me. Hunting me even now.

There’s a coiled calm about him. It should be impossible, but he feels even more dangerous now than he had at that table.

I feel chilled to the bone.

“Where am I?”

His hands are still in his pockets. He looks entirely put together, calm, and unaffected. I’m breaking apart at the seams.

“You’re in my home.”

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