Page 84 of Lost Touch

Drew reached up and knocked.

Nothing.

He knocked again.

Clayton wouldn’t be home, I realized. This was all for nothing. I’d never find out about my past, I’d have a panic attack right here, my heartrate spiking and my knees wobbling—

“All right, fuck, I’m coming,” came a muffled voice from inside the apartment, and a second later, the lock rattled and the door swung open.

The guy from the photo stood framed in the doorway, blue eyes horrifically bloodshot and black hair sticking up in clumps. His T-shirt and gym shorts combo could’ve been right out of Drew’s closet, except that it didn’t look nearly as good on his gym-rat-who-drinks-too-much physique.

“The fuck do you—” And then he stopped abruptly as his eyes landed on my face and widened into circles, his face going fish-belly white. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Oh, fucking shit.”

He stepped back and slammed the door shut in our faces—or tried to.

Drew’s arm shot out, and the door reverberated, made a cracking noise, and slammed back in the opposite direction, Clayton stumbling away holding his nose with blood dripping through his fingers.

Drew followed him in, not in a hurry, like the villain in a slasher movie. I scurried after, glancing around guiltily to make sure no one had seen us, and shutting the door and locking it behind us.

Clayton was backing up, holding his hands up in fists like that would stop Drew and cursing a blue streak.

“Get out,” he quavered, not sounding nearly as tough as he clearly wanted to.

“You going to call the cops?” Drew asked, his tone dark and vicious.

“No! I mean, there’s no need for that, right?” Clayton let out a high, shaky laugh. “I never thought I’d see—I mean, he shouldn’t have—”

Drew’s low, reverberating growl echoed through the apartment, and by the way Clayton’s eyes went impossibly wider, his fangs and the alpha glow had come out to play. A second later Drew moved so quickly he almost blurred, and Clayton slammed up against the opposite wall, Drew’s hand locked around his throat and Clayton’s feet dangling a couple of inches off the ground.

“Tell me what you know about what happened to Ash,” Drew snarled. Clayton flailed, trying to shove Drew off, and Drew shook him like a wolf would shake a rabbit, banging his head into the wall. Clayton went limp. “Talk now, motherfucker, or I’m going to fucking gut you.”

Well, shit. So much for Drew’s bright idea about keeping the amnesia to ourselves.

“Drew!” I ran to him, tugging on his shoulder, but it was like trying to shift a brick wall. “What the hell! We were going to wait and see what he had to say!”

He turned his head and met my eyes, his own full golden and his expression feral. “He stinks like fear, and the second he saw you his heartrate went into overdrive. He fucking knows what happened. That wasn’t only surprise. Was it, asshole?” He turned back to Clayton, baring his fangs right in his face. “No cops, right? Because that wouldn’t go well for you. Talk.”

“I don’t think he can right now,” I said, because Clayton’s face had started to go from ashy-gray to purple.

“Fair enough.” Drew loosed his grip and stepped back, and Clayton tumbled to the floor, huddled against the wall and gasping for air. “Nowtalk.”

And maybe he would’ve, but a door opened down the hall and slammed back against the wall, another guy stumbling out through it. “The fuck is going on out…here,” he finished weakly, as he reached the end of the hall and ran straight into Drew. “Oh, shit. A fucking alpha? Clay? The fuck?” And then he saw me, and we stared at each other for a second, the new guy’s face doing the same drain-of-color routine Clayton’s had. “Ash,” he whispered.

He looked vaguely familiar, and for a second I hoped I’d recovered a memory.

But then it hit me why his blond hair and square face and bulky torso rang a bell.

I’d seen him—recently, during the time I could remember, in that photo I’d found in the local newspaper.

The guy who’d claimed no one else had been there when I attacked him, when he’d somehow succumbed to my scrawny fists. And he’d been here, with someone who knew me well, the whole fucking time.

“Drew,” I said, my own voice shaking. “That’s him. The victim of that crime. It’s him! I recognize him from a photo I found online.”

Drew looked from Clayton to the guy I’d supposedly beaten up that night, and then back again. “Well,” he said grimly. “I guess we’re all going to have a fucking talk, aren’t we?”

Chapter 24

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