Authors: Karpov Kinrade
I TORE DOWN
my posters that night and cried myself to sleep, the ache in my heart growing bigger by the minute. Donna from The Pleasure Palace left multiple messages, frantic that one of my 'regulars' kept calling, upset and wanting to talk to me. She asked about what to tell him. I skipped classes the next day, preferring to wallow in private, and finally called her back late afternoon. "Tell him Cat doesn't work there anymore. I'll be back to work next week for everyone else, but he's not to know I'm still there and should never be transferred to me."
She pressed for details, but I evaded her questions and hung up, ready to renew my moping for a few more pathetic hours.
Cat had broken up with Ash. I'd explained it in the note, told him to move on, that I couldn't cross this line of meeting a client in person, that he should reconnect with the other girl in his life.
Self-serving? Perhaps, but it was my last hope.
But while he tried to call Cat every night, he never reached out to Catelyn. When I saw Jon on campus, he made polite conversation but would sulk and walk away if I brought up Ash.
A week came and went, and I was due to start back at The Pleasure Palace, but I begged off for a few more days, unwilling to give other men what I wanted to give Ash alone. I knew I risked my job and future, but the whole thing made me sick to my stomach. School suffered, I didn't sleep or eat and Bridgette started giving me those lingering worried looks that annoyed the hell out of me.
"Why don't you just reach out to him? Invite him to coffee? Anything is better than this moping miserable Catelyn."
"I can't. I don't even know how to reach him."
She closed her textbook and scooted her desk chair to face my bed, which I refused to move from. "I can help with that. I'll get you his number."
"If I call him, he'll recognize my voice," I said. And I realized the fatal error in my plan even as Brig said it.
"If you want him, you'll eventually have to talk to him on the phone. You can't keep it a secret forever. You should have met him that night and gotten it over with."
And she was right. I couldn't live my whole life not talking on the phone to him if we ever did end up together. Maybe enough time would pass and he'd forget about Cat's voice and just think about mine.
So I waited. And hoped. And tried to study.
And one day all of my patience paid off.
Bridgette and I had gone back to her parents' house for a long weekend at the end of January when a package arrived for me.
"Who's it from?" Brig asked.
I opened the card first, and smiled my first real smile in a month. "It's from him! He's invited me to dinner tomorrow night."
I handed her the card and opened the box. My heart thumped hard in my chest as I battled with my own feelings. He'd sent a dress that looked exactly like the one I'd pretended to wear as Cat in Greece. Deep blue that turned to a swirl of white and blue at the hem, like surf. Did this mean he knew the truth? Or that he really wanted Cat and he was settling for
Catelyn?
I held up the dress and Bridgette whistled. "It doesn't matter why he picked that dress. You're wearing it
, and you're going, and I don't want to hear another word about it. He invited you, Catelyn. Not Cat."
She was right. This was my chance to set things right with Ash, and I couldn't let my own insecurities interfere.
For the first time since my alter ego broke up with Ash, I didn't cry myself to sleep. And it had been over a month since my stalker had texted or called. Life was looking up, even if the police still had no leads on the killer.
***
The next twenty-four hours limped along painfully. I couldn't focus in class, and I nearly broke my ass slipping on ice several times while walking through campus, distracted by inner turmoil over my date that night.
I
wasn't going to back out, though. And if he knew about Cat, which seemed unlikely, then I would deal with it. If he didn't know, then Cat could stay gone forever and we could build something new, something untarnished by that part of me.
He'd given me an unfamiliar address for our date, and I'd assumed it was a restaurant, but when I arrived, I only saw abandoned buildings and an alley that had seen better days. The sun was setting, bringing the temperature down as it did. I parked Bridgette's car and checked the note against the street addresses again. Using caution in heels
too high for me, I walked up and down the street, thinking maybe there was a hole-in-the-wall restaurant or cafe hidden somewhere here. Those places existed and sometimes were the best food ever. I could see Ash enjoying that kind of dining experience, but I found nothing like that.
Something clattered in the alley to my left
, and I turned to investigate, but saw nothing. Probably just a cat.
My phone buzzed and for a moment I thought it was Ash, clarifying directions, but I remembered he didn't have my cell number. It had been too risky to give it to him. When I checked the text, I
froze.
Gullib
le girls deserve what they get.
Someone wrapped their arm around me, covering my mouth with a rag. I inhaled something chemical and my body collapsed.
The world sunk in on itself until everything went black.
I WOKE IN
pain and unable to move. At first I thought I was blindfolded, but then realized it was too dark to tell if my eyes were opened or closed. It took a moment for panic to set in, as if my brain and body had disconnected from each other. I observed my circumstances as if watching a movie or reading a book. My wrists stung from a thin wire binding them behind my back. My feet had the same wire wrapped around them, digging into my skin and securing them to a chair. Someone had shoved a ball gag into my mouth, the leather strap tugging at my hair, gagging me in a way that made my jaw ache.
My head felt groggy and I knew I'd been drugged with something to get me here.
When the panic finally hit, I wasn't prepared, and it ran through me like acid in my blood. I tried to scream but choked on my own tongue. When I struggled, the wire cut into me and blood trickled down my ankles and hands. I could hear nothing but the beating of my own heart. Feel nothing but the pain in my body and the terror in my bones.
Because it finally clicked, and I understood. Ash hadn't invited me to dinner. My parents' killer had. Somehow he knew about the blue dress. Knew about our most intimate conversations. Knew that I was Cat.
He knew everything, and now he had me.
I
stretched my neck from side to side, but saw nothing in the pitch black. I would die tonight. I would die because I'd been stupid and gullible and had believed that Ash wanted me and not Cat.
How could I have been so stupid?
I heard a noise and jumped in my chair, sending sharp spears of pain into my arms and legs. A candle flared to life and the silhouette of someone in a mask approached me. "I'm going to take the gag out, if you promise not to scream." The man spoke through a synthesizer, giving his voice that sinister quality I knew all too well.
Fear spiked in me and I nodded, knowing I would need to cooperate to secure some semblance of freedom.
He took the ball out of my mouth. I retched, coughing and trying to breathe more deeply. I wanted to scream, to beg and cry, but I tried to keep my voice calm. "What are you going to do to me?"
He ran a
gloved finger down my cheek. "That's not clear yet. First, I need to know where the book is."
"What book?" This wasn't
the question I was expecting.
"The book your mother wrote. Where is it?"
"I don't understand. You can get that book anywhere."
He backhanded me across the face and my head snapped to the side, the crack of
my neck loud in the small room. "Not that book, the one after that."
Now I cried, unable to hold in the tears or terror. "She never wrote it. It doesn't exist."
Another hand across my face. "Liar. Where is it? Tell me, and you might live through the night."
"I would if I knew, but it doesn't exist. The police looked everywhere, and there was nothing. She hadn't written any of it yet."
"I was hoping you'd do this the easy way. I learned to like you after all this time." He moved to a table I hadn't noticed and unrolled something. The light of the candle glinted off metal and I bit my tongue to keep from screaming.
Instead, I focused on every detail I could. Something tickled at the back of my mind, the way he walked, the way his shoulders slumped forward in a defensive posture. As he looked at his tools he brought his right hand to his upper lip, smoothing down the mustache hidden under the mask.
And then I remembered the one name that hadn't been on the party list. Someone I'd seen and talked with, someone who was supposed to be staff but hadn't been listed.
And I knew
.
"Lucky? How? Why?" I choked on my tears and thought back over the years. Lucky had been a staple in my coffee-addicted life since freshman year at Harv
ard. I'd learned his subtle tics and mannerisms from the many visits in between classes. He'd always been so nice, so kind to me.
So attentive.
His head snapped up. "Quiet! Don't you talk unless I ask you a question."
He'd been at the party. He'd known my schedule, or could get it. But how did he mail the letters around the world? How did he text me when he was with me? Was it true? Could he have been working with Bradley all along? M
aybe Bradley was sent to seduce Bridgette to get closer to us.
"You won't hurt me, Lucky. I know you won't. I just want to know
, why? Please, let me go, and I won't tell anyone, I swear. This can all end tonight."
He shoved the ball back into my mouth as I fought him, shaking my head, trying to kick despite the restraints cutting me.
He picked up a razor sharp knife from the table, one of the more innocuous looking tools he had, and held it to my face. "Tell me where it is, Catelyn. Believe it or not, I won't enjoy this as much as I normally do. You were always real nice to me." He removed the ball gag again so I could answer him.
"
There is no book, Lucky."
"Then
I'm sorry." He traced the knife down my neck, cutting just enough to bring a trickle of blood to the surface.
My brain buzzed with only one thought—I
was going to die tonight, but first I was going to be tortured.
I braced myself for the pain, hoping I would die fast, before I went insane. Eyes squeezed close
d, muscles tensed and ready, I waited.
And someone burst into the room calling my name.
Lucky turned on him, knife in hand, but my rescuer kicked it away and knocked him to the ground, then kicked him until he didn't move.
"Catelyn, oh my God, Catelyn."
He came into the light, and I sobbed. "Ash."
He
used a pocketknife to cut me out of the wires and held me close. "How badly hurt are you, Catelyn?"
I tried to speak, but fear had numbed my tongue.
Pulling away from me, he searched my body, seeing the blood and cuts. "We have to get you out of here. Have to get you somewhere safe."
"
W
h-
where are we? How did you find me?" Nothing about this made any sense.
"I got a text from a blocked number telling me if I ever wanted to see you alive again I should come to this address. We're in an old mine that's been closed down for years. We have to go through the tunnels to get out."
Ash let go of me to tear off a piece of his shirt and bind my wounds. As he bent over to pick up the light, Lucky rose, lunging toward him with the knife he'd used to cut me. I screamed, grabbing a hammer from the table, and swung as hard as I could.
Lucky fell to the ground
with a loud thud, and when I looked down I saw part of his brains spilling from his skull. I turned and emptied the contents of my stomach in the corner. Ash kicked Lucky's knife away and checked his pulse. "He's dead. He can't hurt you."
I fell to the ground shaking. "I killed him."
Ash dropped to his knees, hugging me. "
I
killed him. He would have died from the beating I gave him. It was me, love, not you. Don't take this on yourself."
I crawled over to the man, his mask still clingin
g to what was left of his face. I slipped it off.
"Who is that?" asked Ash.
"Lucky. But why would he try to hurt me? Why would he have gone after my parents?" How could I have seen him so many times, spoken to him almost every day, and never realized?
"We'll get some help and let the police sort out the details," Ash said, pulling me from the room.
Pulling me away from the man I'd killed.