Page 105 of Bound to a Killer
The sound alone breaks me. Like a torn stitch, incisive and immediate, snagging something loose in my chest, tearing the words from my throat, and splintering them into a choked sob.
“Hey, hey,” he says, instantly more alert. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I glance at my empty gas tank, the handprint on my window, my body trembling as I draw a breath and try to steady my voice. “I-I’m sorry for c-calling?—”
“You’re fine,” he murmurs, his voice even but carrying a thread of tension. It slides beneath my skin, smooth and familiar, coaxing the tightness from my ribs.
My breaths are slow, fragile, and uneven. The stutter is still heavy, clinging to my tongue, rendering me unintelligible.
“What’s going on?”
I lick the salt from my lips as I exhale a ragged breath, steadying myself. “I’m outside, my c-car’s out of gas, I d-don’t know where I am, and there’s someone else out here.”
“Send me your location,” he says urgently. “I’ll find you.”
I hear the sharp clatter of his keys through the speaker, his footsteps heavy, quick, and purposeful, as if he’s hurrying down a flight of stairs. I nod instinctively, even though he can’t see me. Already, a sense of ease settles in. He’s coming. I won’t be stuck out here alone.
I have a safety net. I have him.
Tiny sparks course through my fingers as I hang up, relief slowly curling into nervous anticipation of seeing him again. I absently thread a hand through my hair and smooth the creases from my shirt with the other.
My attention snaps back when red and blue lights cut through the dark, one flashing, then another—staining the side of my rearview mirror with blistering bursts of color.
My breath catches. Acid stings the back of my throat as I watch the vehicle slow behind me, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it might crack my ribs.
It’s the police.
31
LEDGER
Ibarrel down a low-lit stretch of road, high beams slicing through the quiet dark as the view behind me blurs and thins to nothing. The terrain shifts as I veer past the edge of town, a flat sprawl of shadows and stagnant silence, void of lights and borders.
Just rust and empty air.
The wheel rumbles under my grip, tension vibrating along my limbs, the kind that I usually do well to ignore, but the thought of her being in this place alone, vulnerable and unprotected, snaps the last thread that holds me steady.
Strobes of carmine and cobalt break the endless depth, pulsing in tandem across the asphalt. My stomach drops before it coils.
Aria.
My foot sinks harder on the pedal, not too heavy, careful not to raise any issues up ahead, but enough to carry me there quicker, the unrest taking claim over me as I bridge the gap. The signal on my phone hasn’t moved. She’s still there; the cops parked like sentries behind her.
An officer in uniform steps out the side of his vehicle as hecatches me approaching, my headlights shifting in their direction, pinning me as a target.
Against my natural aversion, I approach him, my jaw stiff as my eyes flick away from him to her car. Her silhouette glows through the contained light inside, head bowed, then whips to the side as she hears my tires grind over stray gravel on the broken pavement. The whites and rims of her eyes gleam through the barrier, bloodshot and stark.
Fucking hell.
I thought she’d be safer with her car finally back. That she wouldn’t need me hovering behind her, shadowing her every minute of the day now that her mom’s back in the picture.
That’s why I didn’t text. Didn’t try to call her again.
So I could finally quiet the gnawing dread at the back of my head, that part that said this was manipulation on my part. Somehow, I’d managed to shove aside the guilt from that night I caught her outside alone, away from her classmates, where she should’ve been having the time of her life, but instead was being blackmailed. Threatened. Someone else’s target.
She needs me, and in this moment, that is all it takes to hush the corrosive noise in my head, the one telling me to stay away, to let her go. I convinced myself it was for the best. That if I stayed, I could feed into this fucked-up attachment that not only I have…but she does, too.
I’m not an idiot. I know the situation at hand, what has sparked between us and exactly when it bloomed. There isn’t a need to label it. The signs are obvious, textbook. The trauma I’ve put her through is what bonded us.
