Page 8 of Overcast

“What do you know...about Reagan Lockwood?” The dip in his tone alludes that this isn’t a game. That his repeated question is a serious one, and I better get the answer right.

Except, I don’t know it.

“I...I never—” The very tip of his blade meets my flesh, clearly not happy or satisfied with my response.

At first, I think it’s just to scare me. He just wants information, but he quickly erases that thought when I feel the ridged edges cut into my cheek.

My immediate reaction of jerking away is halted by his vice-like grip still locked onto my chin. It’s steel, as he continues drawing a line down my face.

“Stop,” I scream through closed eyes, slamming a fist into his body and not thinking about the consequences before the words tear from my throat.

And just like that...I feel nothing.

His weight disappears, the blade that I swear just severed my cheek is gone. Tears seep through my eyelids, and I don’t stop them.

There’s no use.

What are a few tears going to do, show him I’m scared? I’m sure I’m already doing a fabulous job of that. I haven’t stopped trembling like a leaf on a tree since I heard him come up from behind me. My voice sounds like a mouse being toyed with by a cat who’s just playing with its dinner before it snaps its neck.

A broken sob shakes my fragile frame, right to my core. One of my hands reaches to the place where he just cut me, finding exactly what I thought I’d find—blood.

Pulling it from my face, I examine the bright color on the pads of my index and middle finger.

This man—he’s going to hurt me.

There’s no denying that now.

He doesn’t know me, and that makes this more desperate now. There is no emotion attached, and that creating me into the easily discarded victim.

“I’m ready to play a little game.” His voice cuts into my chaos, and I really don’t like the amusement I heard laced in his words.

He sounds distant, which gives me the courage or stupidity to glance over at him.

Hesitantly, my gaze crawls up the length of his body. Each inch creates a new form of dread into me.

Blue jeans, a gray T-shirt hiding what looks to be a sleeve of tattoos, doesn’t conceal his arms or chest size.

He’s huge.

And not like Hollis huge where breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a six-pack of beer and fast food. But big like he lifts cars and lives off protein shakes and bars.

The black ink along his forearms and upward hint that pain doesn’t matter as long as it looks good. The veins that pop from his biceps and neck lead me to where I meet his eyes that are blazing at me with such rage and disgust that I somehow put there.

I’ve never been looked at like this before.

Again, I’m imperceptible most of the time, so his misplaced animosity makes me believe I really did something terrible.

I shake my head at his comment. “Sir, I don’t know what...I didn’t do anything. You have—”

“That’s what they all say at first.” He takes a menacing step in my direction. “Until you give them a reason to talk.”

“I–please, believe me. I—”

“Shut up.” My lips snap closed off his command before he’s yanking me away from my safe spot and forward to walk in place with him.

The moonlight brightens the space as we pivot around, nothing left behind, just like the courage I so desperately abandoned somewhere in my lifetime.

A black garbage bag that has been cut out to lay like a blanket on the ground catches my eye as well as a bag full of metal tools, a couple of buckets, and...a saw?

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