Page 111 of Collateral Damage

“That doesn’t sound like you never had romantic feelings for her, Miss Blackthorne.” His condescending slyness slips from his tongue and my eyes are burning trying to contain my fury.They are trying to corner me andI can’t fucking breathe.“You told us to hear her out. Well I'm listening.”

No one knows her story or the suffering she endured. Only me. I’m the only one who can fight for her. The only one who can let her voice be heard, her betrayal be known. But at what cost? I cannot beat the system. I have no power here, everything I say can be twisted, I realise that now and I will not be painted as a villain.

A loud buzzing fills the room as the door clicks open, and my tongue almost chokes me as I suck it down my throat, glaring at a man with a badge, the same man who ripped me from her, the same man who threw me in the back of the cop car place my journal on the table in front of me and the corners of my eyes fuzz.

Fuck.

“Does this belong to you?” He asks a question I already know he knows the answer to but I deny it anyway, staring down at it wishing I’d burn it like I should have.

“No.”

“Miss. Blackthorne, do you realise with this you may end up behind bars?” He illiterates and my heart rattles thinking about all the awful things Hayden went through, gulping down my fear. I wouldn’t last five seconds.

“You documented everything dating back from Christmas of 2009 and information even before that date. We need you to be honest with us or the court will see to it that you aided in criminal activity.”

I scowl at him, trying to understand how the hell me being a hostage equates to me aiding in murders that had absolutely nothing to do with me. I was almost raped, possibly killed.She saved my life?But I guess that doesn’t mean anything to them.God forbid that ruin their reputation.All they care about is her downfall. Being theheroes, ending the cycle of a deranged serialkiller. Even if it means making me look bad. All the blood on her hands behind closed doors was not my doing, nor is it my fault but that is exactly how they will see it.

“Alora. This does not look good for you, am I making myself clear?”Perfectly fucking clear.

“I never aided in any murders. I was a victim.” He scoffs at me, completely disregarding my trauma and it only makes me sob harder.

“Is that what you think? Miss Blackthorne. This woman murdered your parents? How do you think that will look for you? The night they died you just so happened to go missing. Found eight months later untouched with a clear indication you shared a romantic interest in your kidnapper? You infiltrated her arrest.” His words are like poison, I'm finally out of my little clouds and I was a victim. But now? Now I'm lovesick for a convicted criminal who can’t even keep me safe anymore.Because she's dead.

He opens a file filled with images and stacks of paper, morbid graphic pictures of mutated faces and gutted bodies, widening my eyes when it dawns on me.

These are all her victims.

Men, sliced up like vegetables, smiles of blood gracing their faces, just like hers. Just like the smile she carved into that asshole's face, dotted all over a fifty-mile radius. But for some reason, I’m not horrified anymore. This is no longer the Hayden I know. The Hayden I coaxed out. The Hayden that was ready to do better.

Now I know the real dangers out there, the man she dismembered for putting his hands on me, people who deserved it. People like her father. Pigs.Fucking animals.I glare at them, sifting through the pictures, clearly a tactic to try and weaken me.

And I realise my parents are not in this pile,only making it more suspicious.When I found them they only had one singular bullet wound through their skulls and nausea creeps up my throat.She was clever. This way they stayed off her scent, due to her relations with my father, they would have worked it out. She was a calculated woman.She was only found when she wanted to be found.She was found because of me.For me. This was for me and for some reason I hate every inch of her right now, because freeing me has only sentenced me to a life in a different box when I’d rather be in a box six feet underground with her.

She told me she’d taken fourteen lives, not including that prick's life or the remnants of another on her sleeves the day she brought me back my favourite chocolate. All her murders were to keep them off her scent after I came into the picture. She didn’t leave them as a trophy or a message. She was in hiding, like she was frightened they would find us and my heart throbs heavier.So how did they know these murders were her?

“How do you know these were her doing?” I ask curiously. Trying to keep my composure.

“The mutations were a metaphor. The things you wrote in your journal only confirmed our suspicions. Her little acts. Her second identity you mentioned. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.” I try to hold back a sarcastic laugh laced with amusement.

“Then you would also know that all those cases were all men inyourrecords whose cases had been forgotten. Have you ever considered the possibility that they were deserved. Cases you left cold. Did you ever stop to think about why she finished what you couldn’t?” I snap, squeezing my jagged nails into my palms, shocked at my own voice. He peers back at me, his eyes telling me everything I need to know.He knows I’m right.And he's struggling to find the words.

“She still murdered in cold blood.” His tone now full of uncertainty as he backs away from me, leaning back in his chair trying to defend his own stupid laws.

“What, like your officers did?” Does he really think I don’t know that in the last forty-eight hours, they haven't put all the pieces together. I now have no one to speak for me, the same way Hayden had no one speak for her. I’m silenceable If I say too much, so I refrain from talking further.

“Did your father deserve it? Your mother?” He stoops lower, trying to slither his cold scales underneath my skin but I’m already in a room full of snakes.

“I refuse to answer any more questions until I have a lawyer present.” A fire burns inside me. A hunger for justice. Not just for me but for her. I will get her story out there. I will not be fucking silenced.This system will fall. I will make sure of it.

??

Play - ‘Soul tied - Ashley Singh’

The first person I asked for once released on bail was Kacey. She is the only person that came to mind. The only person I really have left and her and her parents took the day to drive up and collect me. I would say she was thrilled to see me in one piece but by the sounds of it, it's like no one even cared I was gone. I could hear the ignorance in her voice and it hurt. I dread to think what she's put on social media in the last eight months. She's an attention whore and as much as I hate to see it, she's all I have left.

My time away made me realise she really isn't a friend at all, but her family welcomed me with open arms and lent me the spare room until my court case, they also promised me they would find Shep and bring him home safely which eased mypanic slightly. He is all I want right now. The only part of her I have left.

I spent the majority of the car journey back to Indiana in silence staring out the window wanting the ground to swallow me whole as this concrete jungle merged into acres of nothingness, realising how petrified of the outside world I truly am. I feel like an alien on earth, in someone else's skin. I died in that house alongside her and I don’t think I’ll ever get me back.

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