Page 95 of Hide and Seek
Her shoulders slump. “It washim,” she says. “I was all over the place in the car. My head was pounding and I was in agony, but it was him. The stalker. He still had the mask on and everything, but there was something familiar about him. I was just . . . I was too out of it to try and put it all together or figure out how I knew him, but there was something about his voice and that car. I think I’ve been in that car before.”
“Fuck, doll. Are you sure?”
She nods. “Positive.”
“He brought you here to save your life,” I muse. “Then called me so you’d have someone here when you woke up. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that? It’s not consistent with anything we know about him. Are you sure? You saw his face . . . or that mask he wears?”
“I’m sure. He was calling me kitten, demanding to know who hurt me.”
I sit back against the mattress, my mind spinning a million miles an hour, and after a minute, Harper glances up at me, her brows creasing with concern. “What is it?”
“It’s just messing with my head,” I tell her. “None of it makes sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“This stalker,” I tell her. “The first body in the morgue going missing and none of the detectives knowing shit about the case is unheard of, but I was willing to put it down to this guy playing the game. But for that to happen three more times, it’s not possible.”
“What are you saying?” she questions, her back stiffening.
I shake my head, not really knowing. “There have been four bodies, two of them being a double homicide. There would have been 911 calls, cops arriving on scene, reports made. The case would have been assigned to a detective before the body was taken to the morgue, and yet no one knows a damn thing. I could have put it down to coincidence one time, maybe even called it suspicious, but four separate times within weeks of each other. That doesn’t happen, doll.”
She takes a breath and stares up at me as though I’m some kind of stranger, her brows furrowed. “Oh my God. You don’t believe me. You think I’m making it all up.”
“No, doll. That’s not what I’m saying at all,” I tell her, hating the pain that radiates from her broken stare. “I think your mind might be playing tricks on you. I think you believe it to be real, but there’s no evidence to suggest that any of these things are actually happening.”
Tears roll down her cheeks, and she just stares at me, the betrayal thick in her eyes, and I know without a doubt that I’ve just shattered her heart.
“You need to leave,” she whispers, her voice breaking.
“Doll, you have to believe that I’m not trying to hurt you,” I tell her, almost begging for her to hear me out. “You know me better than that. I just want to get to the bottom of this. I want to help you. I want to help this go away.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head and looking away as though she can’t even stand the sight of me. “Please, Knight. Just go.”
“Doll.”
“Please.”
I watch her for a moment, and as she refuses to look back at me, I climb off the bed, going as gentle as possible so as to not jostle her around. “I’ll go, but I don’t want you to be alone, not after everything you’ve been through today. Can I at least call Izzy and let her know?”
She shakes her head. “I’ll be fine, Knight. I can handle myself.”
Harper looks away again, and as I watch her, I realize there’s no changing her mind. Not now, and with nothing more that I can do, I walk out of her room, leaving my heart right there in the palm of her hand.
33
KNIGHT
Leaning against Harper’s Honda Civic, I stare at the rundown home before me as Diesel and Ace pull up across the street, parking behind my truck.
It’s a little after ten in the evening, and I don’t doubt that the boys were already asleep after the fucked-up shift we endured today, but they know I wouldn’t ask them to join me if it weren’t important.
“What the fuck did you get me out of bed for?” Diesel mutters as he climbs out of his truck and strides across the street, not recognizing the house of the car I’m up against.
I haven’t told them much about Harper or the ins and outs of our relationship, but they know she means something to me, especially after I drove her home from the bar the other night. Sure, before Harper, I was more than happy to spend the night sinking into random women, but that’s all it ever was. I never cared about them, never cared how they were getting home orwhat their days looked like, and I sure as fuck never called it quits on a boys’ night just to drive her home.
Up until right now, the boys have only been able to guess how deeply my feelings for Harper ran, and I suppose all of that is about to change.
“This is Harper’s car,” I tell them, tapping the car behind me and watching as they both stare at me with brows arched. “And this,” I add, pointing toward the rundown shithole on the other side of the broken chain-link fence, “is the home of the asshole who stole it.”
