Page 151 of Catch the Sun

A monster.

I cry out when he grabs my cheeks between his hands and slams a hard kiss to my hairline.

When he pulls back, his voice is a terrifying kind of even as he says, “I swore I’d protect you, Piglet. And I’ll be damned if I don’t keep my word.”

Then he whirls around and storms out of my bedroom, closing the door behind him. Shock renders me paralyzed for a beat before deadly realization sinks in, almost stopping my heart. “Jonah!” I screech, moving as fast as I can. I hear the front door bang shut. Fear grips me like a vise.

I twist the doorknob and yank.

My pulse stutters. It doesn’t budge.

I pull and tug with all my strength, but I know it won’t open.

It’s locked.

My eyes quickly pan to the screwdriver, then back to the door as awareness sets in. He switched the doorknob around after he heard me talking to McKay. The lock is on the opposite side.

He trapped me in my bedroom so he could exact revenge.

“No!” I shriek, pounding my fists to the door, knowing it’s fruitless. “Jonah!”

Hot tears stream down my face as I pivot back around toward the window and start banging on the pane when I see him marching across the street, his gait lethal. I try to pull the window open, but it’s stuck. It won’t budge, and my arms are too weak.

No.

I glance at the truck in the driveway, and I almost buckle.

Max.

They’re twins. Jonah doesn’t know they’re twins.

He’s going to attack the wrong man.

A sickly, beastly feeling washes over me. A feeling like…

Maybe Jonah is a killer, after all.

It’s poison in my veins. Black tar oozing through my bloodstream. It’s a thousand times more agonizing than the feeling that slithered through me when I plummeted thirty feet to the earth and landed hard, my bones breaking, heart shriveling, everything blurring to black.

I scream at the top of my lungs, slamming both palms to the window as I watch Jonah approach their doorstep.

Thinking fast, I scamper to the other side of the room, reach under my bed for the baseball bat, then race back to the window and smash it against the pane with all my might. Glass shatters. I move on instinct, uncaring of my injuries, indifferent to the way my still-weak legs resist the climb.

I haul myself out, shards of broken glass scraping my skin as I tumble out the window and collapse in the wet grass. Lightning flashes across a graphite sky. Thunder rolls but no louder than the soul-deep scream I release into the storm.

I glance up.

Jonah is already inside.

“Jonah! Jonah!” I shout, pulling myself up on shaky legs and racing forward. “No, no! They’re twins! They’retwins!”

I make it across the street. Rocks and rubble try to trip me. I see red, I see neon, I see stars across my eyes as my heart pounds in time with thunder.

I’m slipping across their front lawn, trying to keep from falling, when a shot rings out.

A gunshot.

I freeze in place, jerked back by an invisible force. My eyes widen into tearful, panicked saucers. I scream again as buckshot turns my insides to ashes.

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