Page 2 of Just Now

She sat up, choking, her throat in agony, her heart accelerating. What was going on?

And then, a voice from behind her, coming through a gap in the wall where she saw some holes had been drilled.

“You’re going to become who I was. You’ll become the old me, the person I need to erase.”

The voice was a man’s. Hoarse, unsteady, but full of triumph. The man in the smart suit? This was him. Memories surged and she gasped.

“Help!” she cried out. Then, knowing that this situation was deadly, that the man was a psycho, she screamed as loudly as she could.

“Help! Somebody! If you can hear me, help me! Please!”

She screamed until her throat was sore. But there was only a resounding silence. She couldn’t hear another human being. She didn’t think there was anyone else around.

Except for him.

He was laughing softly now. Chuckling to himself, an evil sound.

“You’d better make yourself as comfortable as you can, because we’ve got some important work to do soon. I hope you like your setting. Do you feel ready?”

She drew in a shuddery breath through her hoarse throat, because of course he’d been inside her house, inside her room, seeing it. Watching her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Because I need to,” he replied simply, his voice husky with excitement. “I need to take what I was and throw it away. Like I said, erase it. You’re going to help me do it, that’s all.”

He laughed again, the most unpleasant, threatening sound.

“And then what?” she asked. “Then what?”

He was silent for a while. She felt sick with worry at what he might say.

But he said nothing.

There was only quiet from beyond that wall, where he could see in and she could not see out and nobody at all could hear.

Looking around her prison frantically, for any sign of a way out, she guessed that was all the answer she needed.

CHAPTER ONE

Cami Lark was strategizing, sitting cross-legged on her bed in her student digs, thinking frantically as she analyzed her options.

She didn’t like to feel she was at a dead end, but that was the way she was feeling now.

She felt blocked at every turn in her search to find the truth about what had happened to her sister Jenna, who’d disappeared six years ago. Looking into her disappearance had triggered a recent slew of disastrous events. Maybe blocked was the wrong word, she decided. It was more like being walled in by danger.

Lifting a hand, she twined her fingers anxiously through her dark-dyed hair, on the side where it was long enough to do that. The other side was shaven. She liked the black hair better than the natural blond, and thought it suited her green eyes and the intricate dark lines of the tattoos on her skin.

She tugged at the hair as the timeline flashed back in her mind, the sequence of events setting itself logically in her mind. She liked logic. You didn’t get to be a star student at MIT, about to take final exams in computer science, and probably graduate top of the class, without liking logic.

And at that moment, while she was piecing together things in her mind, her phone rang.

She jumped, distracted from her thoughts by the noise, even though she’d been expecting the call. It was Kieran, Ethan’s younger brother.

“Hi, Kieran,” she said.

“Hey, Cami.” The voice was painfully familiar. It made her remember Ethan all over again. Then Kieran said something that surprised her. “I’m here. I’m walking into MIT now. You want a coffee?”

“I’ll come down,” she said, uncurling herself from the bed, closing her laptop, pocketing her phone, and rushing downstairs. She felt happy that Kieran was here, on campus—a place she’d only be living for a couple of weeks longer. It was comforting that he’d come here to see her personally to touch base.

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