Page 84 of Locke

“Get in the car,” Locke said next.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Let’s talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“I think you do.”

“I think you’re crazy.”

“I am,” he agreed, his gaze turning light as he flashed his dark eyes at me. “But so are you.”

His stare had a knack for digging right into me. Like he could see my every thought. It was unnerving to sense a stranger could be so attuned to you that way.

But he wasn’t a stranger anymore, was he?

In fact, he’d never actually felt like one.

Cut from the same cloth.

Looking away, I glanced around the streets, at the residents shamelessly watching from afar, and then I saw a flutter in an upper-level window across the street. Of someone peeping through the blinds like I was juicy drama.

“You’re wrecking my life,” I whispered.

“I’m only doing what you want,” he responded.

“I don’t want this.” I looked back at him in disbelief. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy—”

“Get in the car,” he said again.

“Or what?” I retorted, at my wit’s end. “You tell me to get inside like I have a choice. Do I really?”

His smile was twisted as that scary animal inside him flickered to the surface. “No.”

I hesitated, taken aback by his response. I was expecting a threat, and certainly not his patience as he continued to watch me, waiting for me to get inside his car. Just because he wasn’t technically giving me a choice, I could still run. But I wasn’t going to. What was the point? I couldn’t just walk away. I couldn’t hop on the bus and go home and expect this to be the end. He wasn’t going anywhere. No matter what, I knew Locke was going to continue to fuck with my life, unless I figured out a way to stop it.

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked quietly.

“Never,” he answered simply.

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“Not unless you want me to.”

“Abduct me?”

His lips twitched. “Little prey, I just want to drive you home.”

I felt like a child when I trembled out, “You promise?”

Now that monster in him hid as his stare intensified. “I promise.”

I believed him.

If he wanted to, he would have snuffed me out already, or hurt me, or abducted me again.

Then again, maybe he was a sadist and loved to torture another person before he got bored and ended them.

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