Page 103 of Wicked Knight

I find my usual spot in the shadows and blend in.

She's awake. I'm glad she's awake, but it's late. She should be asleep.

The selfish part of me, however, is glad to see her practicing her dance moves. Watching her do ballet has always soothed something inside me.

It does so now, filling me with new hope that I'll get the girl one day.

Something shuffles in the bushes across from her apartment. I look over and I

see a shadowy figure by the trees, right within the line of sight of her room.

I realize, the quick start that person is watching her too.

Fuck, who the hell is it?

I pull out my binoculars and zoom in getting a clear view of Ryan Konstantin.

Fuck.That bastard.

This is exactly the sort of psycho behavior I was worried about.

He leans against the tree smoking and watching Mackenzie. And I stay right where I am making sure that's all he's doing.

I want to walk up to him and knock his teeth down his throat but I've learned in life that when you come across predators like him you have to watch them, or you'll become their prey.

He doesn't stop watching her until the lights go out. Then he walks away.

I stay.

I stay to make sure he doesn't come back.

And I stay to make sure she's safe.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mackenzie

The land of nowhere and everywhere swallows me again.

I’m too tired to fight my sleep, so I’m dragged under like the current in the sea and soon I’m bathed in shards of light splitting across the darkness.

“I see you.”That haunting voice taunts my mind.“Come here to me.”

My heart hammers in my chest and I run.

I want to scream but the sound dies in my throat, swallowed whole by the oppressive fear draining the life from me.

Another flash comes , brighter this time. Shadows and light ripple around me.

“I see you.”That haunting voice returns.

Suddenly pain lances through my body, raw and unrelenting, but I can’t remember why or how I got hurt.

I try to move, but I’m paralyzed, trapped in this fractured moment. The flashes come faster now, like a strobe light, disorienting and cruel.

Then I’m falling into nothing. My body shakes, my insides quiver, my soul screams.

“I see you.”

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