Page 60 of Haunted Prey

I stared at him, unsure if he was serious or just messing around. “Yes,” I decided.

His eyes narrowed. “You really got it bad for the Martel girl, don’t you?” When I didn’t answer, he shook his head and laughed. “Shit,” he said under his breath. “Who could have predicted that? I can see the obsession written all over you.”

I reclined again, closing my eyes. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“Is that the answer to a joke? Cause that’s what this is.” When I opened my eyes, he went to walk away but then turned back. “She’s still a Martel. Remember that when she betrays us.”

I let him go, knowing that the chances of him trusting her were as likely now as her trusting us.

And of her ever trusting me again.

“Eve? Eve!”

My eyes flew open, and I shot out of my chair. I must have dozed off for a second, rare for me to do, but then the meds had been changing my sleep pattern. I whirled around, shoving the door open without missing a beat and found Lena sitting up on the bed alone.

“Where is she?” she shouted.

I turned from the room and went to the bathroom. The lights were off.

I stalked to the community room and found it empty, as was the kitchen. Only, I noticed a few of the drawers were out as if someone had been rummaging around.

I tensed, hyperaware now. I went deathly calm even if internally I was far from calm. I broke from the kitchen and started searching every room, kicking and wrenching doors open.

Andrea’s exam room was dark. She must have gone to her apartment for the night. Dom was asleep in his room until I slammed his door against the inner wall and he shot up with a gun pointed at me. No Eve beside him. I went to Leslie’s next. He was gone.

Fury washed over me. I rushed down the hall, ready to beat the fucking door down to his little armory when I paused and noticed a light on in Cassidy’s room. I pushed the door aside.

Cassidy wasn’t back yet from her shift. My eyes drifted past the bed to the other side of the room where a full-length mirror stood against one wall.

Eve stood in front of the mirror, wearing nothing but her red dress, her real hair flowing across her shoulders. She stared at her reflection. In her good hand was a knife.

She brought the point of the blade up to her face and started to slowly cut across her cheek, beads of blood forming across the sliced open skin.

I shot into the room and grabbed her wrist, pulling the knife away from her. Eve yelped, dropping the knife at her feet. She turned and looked at me, confused, as if she hadn’t even noticed me until I grabbed her. Her wide eyes reminded me of a doll’s, scared and glassed over until she blinked and the dazed look was gone. Her gaze changed.

“Emery,” she whispered.

I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t keep my hands off her. I brushed her hair away, cupping her face, my thumb smearing away blood. “Baby, what have you done?”

Her brows knitted in confusion. “What you wanted me to do.”

“What I wanted?”

She nodded, her eyes searching mine as if she were still coming out of a daze. “So that we could be together.”

I thought my heart would burst out of my chest and do a happy dance. “We are together, baby, I’m right here.”

She blinked again. “We are…”

“That’s right.”

“But not for long. You’ll leave me.”

I shook my head. “I’m never going to leave you.”

“You said I have to be like you…you said it was the only way. And then…I could meet you in the water.”

This was wrong. “I never said that, Eve,” I said in a low but cautious voice.

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