Page 33 of Lock Me Out

Deborah spins around at the sound of his strangled gurgling. “Oh, my god!” she screams while I pull Dennis away from Leni, still holding onto him while he thrashes weakly.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get your turn,” I promise her before forcing Dennis to remove the knife from his flesh. Blood pours from the hole we created, splashing across Deborah’s dark hoodie, spraying her face.

From the corner of my eye, I see Colt rushing to Leni, untying her, helping her out of the chair. Right now, I’m more interested in the blood-soaked girl staring in horror as Dennis drops to the floor. She’s too shocked to move and too stupid to realize she’s looking at her own immediate future.

The blade is still coated with hot, sticky blood when I take the knife from Dennis’s hand. He presses that hand to his neck, but it’s no use. Every beat of his heart makes his life force pour from between his fingers, looking more like oil in the lantern’s light.

“You said you want answers?” With my other hand, I pull back my hood. Colt’s soft grunt is nothing compared to Deborah’s gasp of horror as she realizes who she’s looking at.

Her eyes go round, her mouth falling open. “How?” she whispers, backing up, stumbling over the empty chair and landing on her ass.

“You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” I whisper, savoring her horror as I advance one step at a time. “This didn’t have to happen.”

“But… you’re dead!” Her terrified gaze bounces from my scarred face to the knife and back again. “Please!”

“Oh, no,” I reply, reaching down and taking a hold of her platinum hair when she tries to scramble away. Her pained gasp is music to my ears. I yank her head back until her tear-filled eyes meet mine. “It’s too late for that.”

The satisfaction of sinking the knife into her chest is indescribable. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed penetration this much. The parting of her lips in a gasp, the look of surprise, the way she claws weakly at me—I don’t even feel it. I only drive the blade into the hilt, then turn it before pulling it free.

“Say hi to Bradley,” I whisper, watching the life drain from her eyes while blood drains from her wound, pouring out to soak her sweatshirt, bubbling from her lips with every wet breath she tries to take.

To her, it probably lasts forever, but to me, it’s over in an instant. I’m almost disappointed by how short her suffering lasts. Dennis, too—he’s dead now, his eyes wide and unseeing, blood pooled under his head.

Now what?

Colt is already thinking along those lines. “We have to get her out of here,” he decides, his arms around Leni. She sags in them, still dazed from whatever they drugged her with.

“What do we do with them?” I ask, wiping my fingerprints off the handle before dropping the knife on the floor.

“We have to leave them here, at least for now,” he replies. “We can come back for them once we figure out what we want to do. Nobody’s going to find them here tonight.”

He’s right. The most important thing is getting Leni out of here and home, safe. “And you’re coming with us,” he adds, lifting her in his arms, cradling her close to his chest. “Now, come on. I need you to open the door for me so I can get her into the car.”

Home with them? I’m against the idea, coming up with reasons why it won’t work as I follow him out of the warehouse andacross the lot. “That wasn’t the idea,” I argue as we reach the car, opening the passenger side door for him to place Leni inside. She falls back against the seat, her eyes half closed, a pathetic little groan stirring in her throat. What would they have done if I wasn’t watching her today? The thought is enough to make me wish I could kill her kidnappers again.

“I don’t care what the idea was.” Once he has her safely belted into her seat, he closes the door and faces me. “You’re coming home with us so we can figure out what to do next,” he insists. “Got it?”

“All right,” I agree, because at the end of the day, it feels damn good to be back with him. With both of them. Like the part of me that’s been missing these past seven months is finally back.

And we do need to discuss what happens now. What to do with the bodies, and how to keep Leni out of this.

“No, ride with us,” he insists when I start off for my car. “We can come back and pick your car up. No offense, but I don’t trust you to follow me.”

He has a point. I don’t bother arguing before climbing into the back seat, feeling more alive than I have in a long time. Whatever happens next, I won’t be alone. For the first time in months, I don’t have to be alone.

16

COLT

This is bizarre.The one thing I wanted more than almost anything in my life, and I have it here, now. My brother is in the shower—he went first, being bloody and everything—and I’ve stayed with Leni while we wait.

“They’re really both dead?” She’s barely aware of what was happening back there—whatever that bastard used to knock her out, he used a lot of it.

She wraps both hands around a mug of tea, which probably tastes like shit because I brewed it for her. I know tea isn’t exactly a challenge, but I’m not used to taking care of her like this. “Yeah, they’re definitely dead. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“How can you say that?” There’s something small and sad in her voice. Defeated. “How am I not supposed to worry about what happens next? I mean, they’re dead, and people are going to want to know how it happened.”

Down the hall, the bathroom door opens, and Nix strolls out in a pair of my sweatpants that I left out for him. I still can’t believeit. He’s actually here. I never believed he was dead, but there were times I wondered if we would ever breathe the same air again, since he was so determined to stay away.

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