Last Girl Ghosted(93)

The mention of them stings.

“I don’t know if she did hate him,” I answer. “I don’t think she ever stopped hoping that he’d be the man he was when she first loved him. Even in those final moments, I think she still saw him for what he was deep down.”

“But the world. It destroyed that man, left a monster in his place.”

A monster. A raging ghoul wailing my name.

“He wasn’t a monster,” I whisper, though I’ve called him that myself. “He was broken, not evil.”

“What the difference?”

“Is this a philosophical discussion?”

“Isn’t everything?”

I don’t answer you, because I know when you get like this the conversation can wind on for hours, diving deep into perception and reality, that house of mirrors.

“Wren?” you say into the silence. “You wanted to know what I planned to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“Will you leave the world behind and stay with me?”

I let the part of me who wants to, that dark, secret part of me, answer.

“Of course,” I say. “Of course I’ll stay.”

Your arms tighten around me. You believe me. I almost convince myself.

“You won’t be sorry, Wren. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Adam.”

The words have the ring of truth because, sadly, they are true. I know what it is to love darkness, to love the pain someone can cause you, to crave the person you see beneath the ugly. It’s a familiar feeling, a home I have chosen.

We lay there until you’re softly snoring, until your arms have fallen slack and you release your hold on me. You seem deeply asleep, but I know you wake easily.

Quietly, I rise. In the dark I gather my clothes, the gun, the one bullet I can find quickly. I slip my keys from your pocket, careful not to jingle. In the hallway, I wiggle into my clothes, and move softly down the hall. A floorboard creaks but I keep moving. Across the great room, shouldering into my jacket as I go. My feet are bare, no time to find my shoes. Doesn’t matter.

I reach the door and find it locked. Dead bolted with a lock that needs a key. And my heart, which has been a caged bird in my chest, sinks deep into my belly. I lean against the door and feel how solid it is, how heavy, how cold from the air outside.

I reach around the door frame; maybe there’s a key on top. No, of course not. You’re not that type. I have to go back to the room where you’re sleeping and find it in your pocket. If it’s there.

Back down the hall, I sidestep the squeaky board, edging along the wall, measuring my frightened breathing, which is expanding my chest, wheezing too loud in my nose. You’re still sleeping, still and peaceful. I crouch down and crawl to your clothes. The gun sticks out of one of my pockets, the bullet is in the other; I haven’t had the chance to load it. If I find the key, I won’t need to.

There, a single cold key in the pocket of your jeans. I clutch it in my palm.

I could kill you while you sleep. The thought comes unbidden. A single shot to the head or the chest.

If I leave here while you live, will you chase? Will you follow me through the dark alleys of the web—steal my money, reveal my secrets? Will you shadow me like the predator you are? Will I always live in fear? Or will you let me go?

Still crouched at the foot of the bed, I take the gun from my pocket, slip the bullet in the chamber, make sure it’s aligned with the firing pin. Can I do it? Can I kill you in cold blood while you lay, arms wide, trusting?

I already know the answer.

I rise, lift the gun, and find the bed empty.

Then I sense you behind me. How?

I don’t have time to fight; your hands close over my wrists, squeezing hard until I drop the gun where it falls with a dead thud. Then your arms are around me. I can’t even struggle. You’re so strong.

“Wren.” I hear all the notes of your sadness, disappointment, anger. It brings to mind my father’s face the night I shot him with my arrow. “I trusted you. You betrayed me. Just like they all do.”

“Let me go,” I whisper. Your face is right next to mine, eyes dark with anger.

But I don’t remember your answer. Because in a single motion, you release one of my wrists and there’s a painful prick, a heat rushing down my arm. The world falters, going dark around the edges.

Robin cowers in the corner, watching me with wide eyes. She’s crying.

I’m sorry, she whispers. I’m so sorry.

And then there’s nothing.



forty-five


Bailey Kirk waited in the plush lobby of the accounting firm, nursing a headache brought on from his own stupidity and lack of self-control. He felt the eyes of the receptionist fall on him occasionally; he’d been there awhile. When he turned his gaze back to her, she was answering the phone. Gleaming, flame-red hair, dark blue eyes, glossed lips, full-bodied; she was a pinup girl, a beauty of a bygone era. The electric blue frames of her glasses highlighted her eyes, her lips. She didn’t look up at him again.

His arm, healing slowly but throbbing from the physical therapy session yesterday, was still in a sling, six weeks after the gunshot wound.

The pain, though dull, was persistent, constant, a white noise in his awareness, reminding him of all his mistakes and failures.

Since that terrible day, he’d lost his job—well, technically it was a medical leave. He’d failed his client Henry Thorpe, who was no closer to finding his child. The ghost was gone. He’d taken Wren Greenwood—and Mia, and Bonnie, and Melissa—with him. Whatever hole the ghost had opened in the world and slipped through had swallowed them all.