Page 120 of Crossing the Line
“Everyone always underestimates me,” he said airily. “And they’ll all pay in the end. Just like you.”
“Why me?” she asked again.
“You know why. I was alone after I had disposed of Tiffani. Such a disappointment, that girl. She’d pretended to be special when she danced. Pretended that she saw that I was special, too,” he tut-tutted. “I had a sick mother to care for and no one to care for me. And one night, I went to the movies, and there you were on the screen smiling at me with those green eyes. You saw me. You remember.”
“We connected?” she guessed.
“Exactly!” Ganim slapped the wheel and Waverly flinched. “I came out here to bring you home. But what did you do?”
She prayed it was a rhetorical question.
“You disrespected me. Over and over again. I gave you chances to prove yourself to me, and you let me down every single time. First you couldn’t bother to respond to me, then you openly taunt me, and then you let an imposter deal with me,” he ticked off her faults one by one. “I knew it wasn’t you. Because I know you, everything about you. But I played along until you came home. I was just toying with them. I gave you so many chances to prove yourself, to be worthy. And you failed.”
He slowed the car and used the turn signal to pull over. “Are you ready for our destiny, Waverly?”
The excitement in his voice had her choking back a cry. Panic was closing in, and she was losing the fight.
“It’s time.” He put the car in park. “I’d tell you it will all be over in a minute, but that’s only your part of the story. Mine will go on from here.” He got out of the car and shut the door.
Waverly fought back against the short gasps of breath. She needed to keep it together. A panic attack would end it all here and now, and she wasn’t ready to go yet. “Xavier, please hurry,” she whispered to the night.
Ganim opened the door by her feet. She felt his hands on her bare legs, and her stomach lurched. “No!” she shrieked. She tried kicking him, but the drugs swimming through her system left her weak.
He hauled her out and leaned her against the car. Waverly’s knees buckled, and he let her crumple in the gutter.
“Do you know where we are? Look around.”
They were on Hollywood Boulevard. The Walk of Fame. And her star was here.
“How poetic.” he asked. “You’ll die on your own star, and I’ll become the famous one. Let’s just hope we have an audience. Scream if you want. It’ll only make it better.”
Her hands were still tied, and her legs were shaky, but there was one thing she had reasonable control over. When Ganim hauled her up, Waverly staggered forward and connected with him forehead to nose.
She’d learned it from a stuntman years ago on set. “No one ever suspects a head butt,” he’d explained. Well, if she lived through this, she was buying the man a steak dinner… and a mansion.
The night exploded in stars when she made contact, and she heard the satisfying crunch of Ganim’s nose. He shrieked and backhanded her to the sidewalk. The blow had her tasting her own blood.
“Hey!” she heard it. Another voice in the dark, and there was the sound of running feet. “Hey, man! Stop!”
Ganim grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her knees. She flinched as he raised his fist again. This blow caught her in the jaw and would have toppled her if he hadn’t held her by the hair.
“Come closer,” Ganim said, with a theatrical wave of his arm to the bystanders. He was a ringmaster, basking in the attention. “You’re about to witness history. Do you know who this is?”
He twisted Waverly’s head so she could look at them. “Tell them who they’re about to see murdered.”
When she refused, he slapped her again. Then she saw it. Streetlights reflecting on sharp metal. He waved the knife in front of her.
“Tell them who you are,” he growled.
“Waverly Sinner,” she whispered. Blood leaked onto her lips, but her eyes stayed dry. There were four of them, two men and two women, all young, all rapidly sobering up. One of the girls started to cry. “It’s okay,” Waverly told her. “It’s okay.”
“Don’t hurt her,” the tallest one, a guy wearing a shiny gray shirt unbuttoned almost to his waist, held up his hands.
“Oh, I don’t want to hurt her,” Ganim said. “I want to kill her.” He held the knife up so they could all see it in its deadly glory.
Both girls were crying now. When the guy in the gray shirt and his friend both took a step forward, Ganim brought the knife down in a fast, shallow slice on Waverly’s neck. She felt the blood well and spill, hot against her stinging skin. “Just run,” she tried to yell, but her voice was so weak. “Run.”
“Uh-uh-uh,” he tutted. “Not another step, but I’ll tell you what you can do.”
