Authors: Megan Hand
Shit!
My gut instinct tells me to run.
Run
like you ran last night. No, better than you ran last night
. Adrenaline pumps down into my toes to prove my point, but then I see his face. The wide-eyed interest from body slamming into a pretty girl, but he also has the absence of recognition.
He doesn’t know me—not yet anyway.
His eyes aren’t bloodshot like I remember. He grins in a sexy, boyish way. “Hello,” he coos all slow.
This is a superficial but charming side I was not privy to last night when I was offered up as his sacrifice.
Feed the devil. Keep him at bay.
I rifle my scrambled mind for a reply. A word, a syllable,
anything.
But seeing him in the flesh, I swear is like seeing my future flash forward. Though my bones have turned to mush, I can still run. However, my brain reworks the situation.
What happened last night wasn’t his first time. This is a business, or something he’s done before. If I run, he will run after me. Whether he knows me or not, he’ll think he’s done something worthy of a sudden takeoff.
Since all working synapses are currently fried or on vacation, my only available response is to repeat his word back to him. “Hello.” My throat is dry, and it croaks out. I feel like one of those dolls with a string coming out of her backside.
If he says, “You have a nice ass,” will I echo that, too?
Where is my pepper spray when I need it?
“You okay? Looking for someone?”
His confidence twists my gut. I want to gouge out his pretty green eyes.
He leans in, winding his fingers around my wrist, probably to check my pulse since I’ve been standing here for at least two minutes, saying nothing.
Finally, a coherent thought clears out the fog, and I’m quick on my toes again. I laugh to cover my sudden rudeness and clear disgust that he’s touching me. “Oh my gosh! You look so familiar. No!” I pluck my cell out of my pocket and use my jitters to my advantage. I flap my arms excitedly. “You look
just
like my friend Cooper. I mean, not
just
like him but
just
like him.”
His eyes narrow. He knows something’s up.
I’ve played the dumb girl card once or twice before—I love my friends, but they’ve had their moments, and having spent almost a lifetime with them has given me a lot of practice—so I keep playing along.
I press the camera button on my cell and manage to touch his arm without flinching. “Could I take your pic? I mean, not for me, for Cooper. You guys look so alike, and he’d really get a kick out of it.”
He keeps his smile intact, but a bit of the evil I had a front row seat to last night leaks into his expression. “Nice try.” He laughs. “I’m not fallin’ for that one.”
I do my Bambi eyes. “Whad’ya mean?” My cell is positioned at my eye level. All I have to do is click, but he confiscates it and holds it in the air like I’m a kindergartner reaching for a sucker.
He stiff-arms me into the wall. Hastily, I decide to go the pissed-off route instead of showing my fear. “Hey! Lay off.” My hands lock around his forearm at my collarbone. I try to pry him off, but he holds me hostage. His breath smells like cigarettes.
He smugly watches me squirm for a few seconds. “You tell whoever the fuck you work for to lay the fuck off, or he’ll see me in court.”
He tosses my cell a few feet away. It lands on the carpet with a muffled thud and pings with another message. I have a feeling I’m in big trouble with Jay. Alpha snickers his way down the hall at a leisurely pace.
I’m torn between being incredibly relieved and wanting to go after him. I faced him. That was huge for me. Now I feel a rush of energy, of control.
Maybe I could go after him. People everywhere, right?
The idea is so tempting.
I should, but I won’t.
I
should
ram him and beat the crap out of him. Tear his burly arms from their sockets. Pluck his perfectly styled hair out one follicle at a time. Kick him in the family jewels, hopefully sterilizing him for life so he can’t impregnate anyone with his hideous spawn. Or maybe I’ll just neuter him and be the salvation for all females. Problem solved.
But I don’t.
I’m way out of my league here, and it won’t fix all of my problems.
Once he vanishes around the corner, I press my hands to my face and suck in breaths to calm myself. I’m flustered, hot, nervous, and about ten other things, and this day has barely started. If I keep this up, my body will crap out on me from adrenaline shortage.
My phone buzzes several times from the floor. Another phone call, not a text. Time’s definitely up.
Trigger’s—
oh hell, screw the name
—T-shirt is still wedged under my arm. I recover my phone from the floor, pressing
end
to ignore the call for now, and stuff it in my pocket. Jay might hunt me down, but it’ll take him a little while to find me. I stand in front of four-ten, dig my heels into the floor, and knock.
“What now?” a male voice bellows, ripping the door open.
Oh. Man.
It’s him alright, only not so done up. He doesn’t really look like Bill Nye. Don’t know what that was all about. His hair is a frizzy mess, not mussed, and he’s wearing pleated
khakis—
yuck
. Completing his rise to the dork throne, he’s also in a red button-up shirt that appears to be the same material as his pants.
I swallow.
Get a grip, Lil. You just confronted the enemy. This should be nothing.
He frowns, then his features shift into something I sort of remember from last night. It’s that mysterious face when he caught me daydreaming. I expect him to ask me who I am, what I’m doing here, et cetera, but he takes me completely by surprise.
“I don’t know you. Go away,” he grumbles.
Just like that. Like a sullen teenager, he thinks he can get rid of me.
Really?
No wonder this guy has never had a girlfriend.
He begins to swing the door shut when I jam my foot in the opening. “No, you have to hear me out. You don’t know me, but I know you.”
“No, you don’t.” He tries to kick my foot out of the way.
Mature.
“Yes, I do.”
I don’t trust my foot not to budge, so I squeeze my right shoulder into the space, too. Our close proximity finally gets him to back away, and the door falls open. He has that deer-in-headlights look, which convinces me that there’s no way he could’ve gone through with what he was planning to do last night. Or tonight. Or ever.
“I know what you’re planning to do tonight. I know who you’re planning it with. I can’t explain, but.” I hold the T-shirt up in display, “I know you’re going to wear this tonight.”
He backs up until he’s flush with the bed, and shock forces him to sit. “You don’t know.” He’s ghost white. Whether he recognizes the T-shirt or not, I can tell the guilt is already eating at him because he can’t look me in the eye.
I take another step forward and thump the door shut with my foot. For a second, I think his roommate might be in the room, but it’s all clear. “I do know, and you can’t do it. I came here to ask you for your help. We need to stop these guys.”
He begins to stammer. “W-what are y-you t-t-t-talking about?”
I sigh and toss the shirt on the bed. I really don’t even know why I brought it, other than it’s my only proof that last night happened.
My response forms around an inner battle with an outcome somewhere along the lines of,
To hell whether he thinks I’m crazy or not. I will get him to believe me if it’s the last breathing thing I do.
My tone is calmer than my thoughts. “Okay. This is going to sound really crazy, but I already lived this day. Or I had a dream about it. Doesn’t matter. I know that you’re going to The Clove tonight with a guy named H and Brandon. I know those aren’t their real names…”
As I recap last night in a large-sized nutshell, Trigger’s hands grip his mattress tighter and tighter. I sum it up, and I don’t leave out much. I include how he saved me and how my friends nearly died. “Look, I also know that you don’t want to be a part of this. Not based only on last night, but looking at you now, too, you don’t want this. I know they threatened you.”
His head shoots up. “This is a trick. It’s a trick! They told you to watch me, didn’t they?”
“It’s not a trick! How would I know this stuff otherwise?”
“I dunno. Maybe Alpha told you all this to keep an eye on me. Test my loyalty. Are you their little bitch, too? Why are they doing this to me?
Why are they doing this to me?
”
My jaw hangs open in stunned silence as he paces in the small open space, babbling to himself.
“I knew it. I
knew
it. People in corners. That’s what he said, ‘people in corners.’ I should’ve believed him. I should’ve…why? Why? I didn’t want to do this.” He holds out his hands, begging me to believe him. “I
didn’t
want to do this.” He sinks to his knees and starts rocking. The guy is a wreck.
More babbling. “I just wanted to talk to a girl. They said they’d help me talk to girls, but they said I deserved better. All girls are bitches. Don’t trust them. They said that too.”
He rambles on and on, and I can only make out half of it. He’s in full-blown meltdown mode. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be able to convince him of anything. I’m desperate though. I need
him on my side, or I’ve got absolutely nothing to go on.
“Look!” I yell to get his attention.
He stops gibbering, though his eyes are still glazed.
“You don’t have to believe me, but I need your help or someone
will
get hurt tonight. Now I know they threatened you, but if we get these guys locked up, then that threat is null and void. You get me?”
He snaps out of it like he’s losing, or winning, his own inner battle. “NO! Get out! Get out and tell them I’ll be there tonight as planned.”
“I—”
“GO!”
He’s in my face now, and I realize I’m trembling. I muster up the little courage I have left. It seems I’ve lost the testicles I had when I screamed at H and Alpha, demanding my escape. I’m betting it happened somewhere between nearly losing my life and waking up this morning, thinking I’d killed my friends.
“No. If you don’t come with me now, I’m going to the police by myself.”
He’s crowding over me, making me lean backward. My spinal cord protests, but I jut my chin and don’t move.
To my surprise and annoyance, he slides back into Cuckooville, pacing again and crooning in a small voice. “It’s over. It’s all over. My career. Everything. My…” His voice strangles to a stop. He clears his throat. “You’ll report me to them or the police. I’m done.”
Ugh! Where is this guy’s fighting spirit?
Exasperated, I grab him by his shirt collar. My height really does come in handy sometimes.
“Get a grip!”
Afraid he’ll collapse on me, I back him up to the bed, but he stays standing and glances down at me as if he’s just now tuning in to our conversation. I’m out of breath, out of a lot of things.
“I don’t want to report you to them or the police. I want
you
to help
me
report them to the police.”
I suddenly realize I’m gripping his collar so hard that I’m pulling his face toward mine. It’s awkward, but at least his attention is on me. I release him and stumble back. That’s when I notice my cell buzzing in my pocket. When I pull it out, the screen shows eight missed calls in the last three minutes.
Yikes.
Since Trigger is pondering, I answer it. “Hey, baby—” The endearment is a nice touch, but Jay doesn’t give me a chance to finish.
“Where are you?” His voice is abnormally loud. I can almost hear his nostrils flaring through the speaker.
My shoulders shrink in, and I have to pull the phone away from my ear.
“I’ve been up and down these halls, and you’re
nowhere
! Either you’ve decided to take up residence here, or you’re in
big fucking trouble!
”
Yeah, I kind of figured that.
He sounds like a prick, but I have it coming. I keep my voice low and soothing. “Babe, I know. I should’ve answered, but I found the guy, and I had to talk to him. I know you’re just mad and worried. Calm down. I’m okay.”
The line goes quiet. All I hear is his angry breaths.
“Where are you?” he asks, not loud but still angry. Calculating.
Maybe Jay will murder me, and I can be done with this whole ordeal.
I know. Not funny.
“Four-ten, but I’ll be out in a few minutes, I swear. Just go out to the car before it gets towed.” I end the call.
Trigger is now in a state somewhere between meltdown and rational.
I appeal to him once more, my voice near tears. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I need your help. If you don’t, someone will get hurt tonight, and I can’t live with that on my head.”