Start a War (Saint View Psychos #1)(5)

The sound of labored breathing came down the line. “Bliss?”

“It’s me. What’s wrong? Why are you calling?” I swallowed hard. “Is it money? If you need help, I can’t ask Dad but I—”

“Do you want some Goldfish crackers?”

I stopped breathing.

Memories I’d fought hard to forget flooded back, swirling around my head in a tumbling dark mass, sinister and terrifying.

“Why would you ask me that?” The words came out as barely more than a croak, the tremble in my voice matching the one that had taken control of my fingers.

There was nothing but his breathing.

“Axel! Talk to me! Why would you say that after all these years—”

The crack of a gunshot, even down the phone line, ripped a scream from my chest. On instinct, I threw my phone across the hallway and covered my ears, shrinking down and cowering like I was five years old again, in my mother’s vermin-ridden trailer, my big brother the only protection I knew.

I stared at the phone with terror clawing at my throat. “No,” I whispered, the word coming out as a sob. “No. No.” I crawled across the floor, my dress tugging and twisting and dragging along until I had the phone to my ear again. “Axel? Axel!”

There was nothing but a deathly silence on the other end.

My heart pounded against my rib cage, and my whispers turned to screams. “Axel!”

There was no reply.

But I heard his voice in my head anyway.

Do you want some Goldfish crackers?

It had always meant one thing.

You’re in danger. Hide.





2





BLISS





“I need your keys.”

Caleb glanced up, irritation etched into his handsome features. “I was in the middle of a conversation.”

Any other time I probably would have dipped my head and meekly apologized. Who was I kidding? I wouldn’t have interrupted him in the first place.

But after pulling myself together in the hallway, there was only one thought pounding through my head.

Get to Axel. Because something was horribly, horribly wrong.

“Your keys, Caleb! Hurry!”

He chuckled uncomfortably and apologized to the man he’d been speaking to, who frowned like I was an annoying child, interrupting the adults’ conversation.

It was all I could do not to scream in his face.

But Caleb was on his feet and tugging me away by the elbow before I could completely lose it.

“What’s gotten into you?” he hissed, short fingernails digging into the soft skin of my arm. “Is this something to do with that guy calling you? Who was he?”

I couldn’t tell him the truth. He’d never look at me the same, and my father and I hadn’t spent all these years covering up my past just for me to ruin it now. “There’s an emergency,” I explained. “Please. I don’t have time to tell you everything. Right now, I just need your car keys.”

He shook his head, his annoyance written all over his face. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t ride the clutch, you’ll burn it out…”

His warnings fell on deaf ears. As soon as his keys were out of his pocket, I snatched them from his hand and raced for the door, yanking off my high heels as I went. The plush carpet beneath my feet quickly turned into the rough asphalt of the parking lot, but it didn’t slow me down. I ran through the night, searching in the dark for Caleb’s black BMW.

I hit the button on the key fob, and the lights on the car flashed twice, giving away its location. Doubling down on speed, I yanked open the door and slid behind the steering wheel to hit the start button. The engine roared to life, mixing with the roaring of my blood circling my body too fast.

It was only then, sitting behind the wheel of Caleb’s expensive car, that I realized I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t know where Axel lived anymore. Did he have a wife? A family? It had been years since we’d shared anything personal about our lives.

That hadn’t been my choice. He was the one part of my past I’d never wanted to deny. But it had been him who’d pushed me away.

“His bar,” I muttered. “Shit, what was it called?” I got my phone out, racking my brain. “Hey, Siri? Give me the names of dive bars in Saint View.”

“Finding bars in Saint View.”

I guessed Siri was insulted by the use of the term dive bar. But it didn’t really matter, because every bar in Saint View was a dive bar. Saint View was the ghetto. The wrong side of the tracks. The cautionary tale parents of Providence told children when they let their grades slip from an A+ to a regular old A. “Do you want to end up living in Saint View? That’s what will happen if you don’t apply yourself.”

My father had said the same things to me once. It was only after he’d said the words and we’d both stared at each other, that he’d realized how close to home that threat was for me. Neither of us had said a word and had avoided each other for days until it had blown over.

I scrolled the list of bars in Saint View, pausing toward the bottom of the list.

Saint View Psychos.

Something clicked in the back of my mind, and I gunned the engine, putting my foot down on the accelerator. My chest ached, and I tried to calm my breathing while I replayed Axel’s phone call in my head.