Page 109 of Hide and Seek
I shake my head, hating this. His proof is overwhelming, but I have proof of my own, and it’s fucking with my head more than ever. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to trust.
“Laith?” I ask with shaky hands, remembering him standing at my door so clearly, but I was certain it wasn’t him, and if the two men from the club are still alive, and the Korean burn victim isn’t who I thought he was, then perhaps there’s a chance that Laith really is alive.
Knight nods. “Laith is fine. He’s alive, albeit a bit confused, but fine.”
I let out a relieved breath. I’d rather admit to being crazy than to have to lose Laith all over again. “So who was I—Wait. He was confused? How do you know he’s confused? Did you speak to him?”
Knight cringes. “I might have run a background check on Laith and gotten his cell number from there. But yeah, after you were sedated, I gave him a call. I figured something must have triggered your panic over needing to find his body, and he confirmed that he’d swung by to check on you this morning.”
My face scrunches. “So, he knows then?”
Knight shakes his head. “No, I figured it wasn’t my place to talk to him about what’s going on with you. He had a lot of questions though, so at some point, you’re going to have to sit down with him and have a real conversation.”
I nod, appreciating that more than he will ever know, but I’m also taking note of the fact he’s not insecure about me spending time with Laith, despite our significant history. “Okay, so if it wasn’t Laith on the table, then who the hell was it?”
“A gunshot victim,” he says. “I have the footage of that as well, but it’s hard to watch. It’s clear that you believed it was Laith. I don’t know if you really want to relive that one.”
“Yeah. I’ll pass.”
We sit in silence, and as the tears slowly roll down my cheeks, Knight holds my hand. “It all felt so real,” I tell him, unable to wrap my head around it while terrified of what this might mean for me. I trust Knight, and I know he wouldn’t lie to me, especially not about something like this, but I’m struggling to believe it. How can my brain just stop working like that?
“I know, doll,” he says, his hand cupping the side of my face before falling to my waist, his fingers brushing across my ribs and making me stiffen. “I’m sorry you had to learn about it like this, but—”
“Wait,” I say, my brows pulling down as I start to shake my head, more than ready to pull every single part of his story to pieces. “If none of this is real, then how do you explain the scars on my ribs? I didn’t imagine that. Those scars are there for the world to see and will continue to be there for years to come. Somebody did that to me.”
Knight nods as a distraught hollowness appears behind his eyes. “Baby, I . . . I have a theory about that, but you’re not going to like it.”
I watch him for a moment before understanding dawns, and I realize exactly what he’s going to say. “You think I did this to myself.”
Pity appears in those dark eyes, and my chest instantly starts to ache. “I do,” he says, his tone shifting as though those two little words gutted him to speak out loud. “I’ve gone over this amillion times. I’ve scoured every inch of my property for any sign that somebody was there. I’ve searched my surveillance cameras and checked the alerts. There’s nothing. I come up blank every damn time.”
“So, you think that I just walked into the kitchen, grabbed a knife off the counter, and started hacking away at my ribs, cutting deep gouges into my body without a single care as I chatted away to my imaginary friend?”
“Don’t put it like that.”
“Then how the fuck else am I supposed to put it?”
He shakes his head, not knowing how to respond, and honestly, I don’t even know what I’m hoping he will say. Anything will set me off right now. “I think you hallucinated the whole thing, just as you did with the bodies in the morgue. I think you went through the motions. I think you had the knife, and as you pictured your stalker touching and claiming your body, you pictured the way he would cut you. Only it was your hand making the cuts.”
I shake my head, tears filling my eyes all over again, refusing to believe that I could ever have the ability to cut myself in that way. “No. You’re wrong.”
“Doll, I think you used the knife to cut the bedsheets into ribbons, and I think they were the ropes that you imagined.”
“I couldn’t have cut myself,” I tell him. “Not when my wrists and ankles were bound so tight.”
“Harper,” he says with a heavy breath, the heartbreak clear in his tone, probably fearing that I will try and send him away again. “I’ve worked in SWAT for over a decade. I have rescued countless victims in hostage situations who have had their wrists and ankles bound with rope, tape, wire. You name it, I have seen it all, and no matter what was used to keep them bound, there are always marks left on the skin. Sometimes so deep it cuts rightthrough to the bone, but doll, there wasn’t a single mark on your wrists. Not even a hint of redness.”
My mind takes me back to that moment, to the fear I felt as he tightened the rope around my wrists. I felt it bite into my skin. “That’s not possible,” I whisper, hating every moment of this. “It was real.”
“No,” he tells me. “It wasn’t.”
His words are like a blade straight through my spine, and I sag against the hospital bed, turning away from him as the tears roll down my cheeks. I silently replay every moment I’ve had with my stalker. The night he broke into my bedroom and caught me in a towel. The private booth in the club. The messages left on the bodies.
It has to be real. I feel it in my chest. But Knight is adamant, looking at me with that sad stare that makes me feel as though I’ve somehow done something wrong, like I’m a misbehaved child who’s about to be shipped off to spend the summer with her strict grandparents. Only instead of strict grandparents I’ll be shipped off to, it’ll be some kind of asylum.
“Please, Harper,” he whispers, still clutching my hand. “Let me help you.”
I don’t dare look back at him, terrified of what agreeing to help will actually mean, but more than that, how can he help me if I don’t know what to believe? I want to trust him. I want to pick up the shattered remains of my heart and ask him to help me put it back together, but on the other hand, I’m too scared to hand it over again, not knowing what lurks in the darkness ahead.
