Chapter 26 Rowan
ROWAN
Ishove the body back into the refrigeration unit and scoop Abi up in my arms and carry her upstairs.
Best of all, she lets me, her head pressed against my chest, her breath soft and steady.
I lay her down in her bed and arrange the sheets around her naked body, and she blinks up at me, her expression dazed.
“Stay,” she whispers. “Please.”
“I always stay until morning,” I answer, sitting down beside her. She rolls onto her side, the silky sheets slipping down to reveal a flash of her breasts. She doesn’t cover it up. “That’s how I make sure you’re safe.”
She frowns, and I sense fear rippling off her, just for a second. “I’m glad,” she finally says, settling her head down on the pillow. “If you hadn’t been here that night I was attacked—”
I brush my hand over her mouth, and she looks up at me, eyes wide above my glove.
“Don’t talk about that,” I say, even though I feel a tight knot in my chest. Yes, I killed the man who killed Olivia Pearce, who tried to kill Abi.
But I still can’t shake the feeling that the danger hasn’t totally passed.
It’s that presence. Not human. Not animal.
I don’t say any of this to her, though, just lift my hand away and run it over her hair. “Sleep,” I say. “I’ll be here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Her eyes glimmer a little as she looks up at me. Studying me. Studying my killing face.
“You aren’t going to sleep?”
“I don’t need sleep.”
“Everyone needs sleep.”
I smile, even though I know she can’t see it. “I’m not like everyone, little detective.”
Abi’s still studying me. Frowning a little. “Are you going—going to take your mask off?”
My whole body goes still, and for a moment, I’m very aware of the blood pumping through my veins.
“No,” I finally say.
Something darkens in Abi’s expression. A flicker of disappointment.
“Oh,” she says, and the disappointment is even clearer in her voice.
“You want to see my face,” I say carefully, trying to keep my voice measured. “But this is my face.” I gesture at the mask. “This is who I am.”
She lifts her hand to run it over the mask’s twisted mouth. “You don’t look like that,” she murmurs. “You don’t look like a monster.”
That word lodges in my thoughts as I run my hand down her hair until I reach her shoulder, pale and soft as moonlight. Monster. That’s what my mother called me when I was eight years old, when she sent me to live with Uncle Nash. I gave birth to a monster.
I didn’t think I was a monster, not then. But she wasn’t wrong. After all, when I look in the mirror as Rowan Hanover, I don’t see a monster there either. But that’s why I wear my killing face. To show my victims—to show Abi—what I really am.
“I am a monster, though,” I say. “Although not one who will ever hurt you.”
Abi’s breath hitches into a soft little sigh.
There’s a small, stupid part of me that does want to take my killing face off, but only because I can’t kiss her properly with it on.
Rowan could, though. Rowan could press his nose into her hair and breathe in her scent and feel her hands trace the skin of his face. But Rowan isn’t real.
I am.
Still, I do reach up and push the mask up so I can lean over and brush my lips against her forehead. She tilts her face and catches them in a real kiss, her mouth on mine. It surprises me. I think it surprises her, too, given how quickly her heart starts beating.
I can’t stop myself from deepening the kiss, though. Tasting her mouth with my tongue. And she gives in to that, too, moaning softly.
“Good night, little detective,” I whisper, pulling away. “Go to sleep.”
Abi’s eyes flutter. And I watch her in bed, the way I’ve watched her dozens of times before. Except tonight, I’m not hiding in the closet like a secret.
I’m staying with her out in the open.
I leave right at dawn, when the sun is just a thin pink line along the top of the Gulf. Abi’s sound asleep. All night, I watched her, just like I promised.
Nothing happened. No one came sniffing around.
It hurts to leave her, but I know I can’t stay with her as myself during the day. I’m afraid the sunlight will reveal too much, even in my killing face.
I go out through her window rather than one of the doors downstairs. I don’t want to leave them unlocked, and I like the idea of her waking up to the warm sea breeze filtering through her curtains.
I jump down, landing hard on the dirt. Bones of steel, Uncle Nash used to say whenever I’d make these kinds of two-story jumps. I guess he’s right.
It’s still dark enough that I leave my killing face on until I’m in the cemetery.
I stop near the row of pecan trees and peel it away, shuddering a little when the air touches my sweat-damp skin.
I’m not usually bothered by taking it off—my real face is my disguise, my means of protection—but this morning, it feels strange, almost painful. Like I’m skinning myself.
I look down at it, crumpled up in my hands. My face. The thing that shows what I am.
What would Abi say if she knew I was pretending to be Rowan Hanover? She was worried about him earlier—and about me. Worried that I would kill him, I suppose out of jealousy.
I’m not sure what to make of that. It honestly makes my chest feel weird, tight and constricted like I have a cold.
I trudge forward through the dew-damp grass, heading down to the beach.
This should be the greatest morning of my life.
Abi let me inside her. She let me inside her while she was draped over my kill, and she came so hard that as soon as her contractions started, I came, too, spurned on by her orgasm.
And that wasn’t even the best part. That was watching her fall asleep without having to hide myself.
But I feel so out of fucking sorts. And when I stare down at my empty killing face, it just makes the feeling worse.
I reach the edge of the cemetery and heave myself over the gate.
And that’s when I feel it. The inhuman presence.
It sweeps across me, thick and undeniable. I leap off the fence and whip around to the left, catching hold of it again. Its origin is nearby. I can feel it pounding in my bloodstream.
Enough of this. I’m not leaving Abi vulnerable to a second killer. Once this presence is dead, then I know for certain she’ll be safe.
I yank my killing face on even though the rubber blocks my sense of smell; fortunately, I can still feel the presence pulsating in the direction of the beach. I run, my arms pumping, until I come to the sand dunes. The light is grey and thin, the sun just starting to slide over the water.
And he’s still close. He’s on the beach. I’m sure of it.
I don’t take the boardwalk; instead, I clamor over the dunes, keeping my body low against the thick, crawling dune vines. I peer over the crest of sand, scanning the beach proper.
I don’t see anyone, but that presence burns hotly. Hotter than it ever has before—
Bright red movement flashes in the periphery of my vision, even with my killing face. I jump out onto the sand just as a figure cuts across the beach.
Not a man, like I assumed. A woman with long, fire-engine red hair.
I have a second of doubt—but then the wind gusts and it’s undeniable that this was the strange, inhuman presence I’ve been feeling.
She disappears into the public bathroom.
“Got you,” I whisper, and I take off running.
I’m laser-focused on that presence. It makes the public bathroom seem to glow like a beacon.
I slam up to the door of the women’s restroom and find that the padlock there is shattered, the chain that the city strings through the door handle at night coiled on the ground.
I swing the door open and step inside. The light flickers, sallow and fluorescent.
I can feel her. Not just sense her, but feel her, the way I feel Abi. I can hear her heart beating and count her quickened breaths.
I stomp into the corridor of stalls, moving slow and cautious. There’s no way out. No windows save for a skylight, sealed shut and too small for anyone to shimmy through, regardless.
My boots stomp over the concrete floor, echoing against the walls. I shove open the first stall, the door banging against the frame. Empty.
The second. Empty.
I know she’s in here. I can feel her as acutely as I can feel my own heartbeat. But what I don’t feel, remotely, is fear.
I’m just about to shove open the third bathroom stall when my quarry leaps out, a blur of dark clothes and red hair. She manages to skirt around me, moving much faster than I expect. But I whip around and grab her before she can make it to the exit.
I slam her up against the cinderblock, and she looks up at me, and—
Grins. She grins, like this is all a fucking game.
“Hey, Rowan,” she says.
My blood freezes in my veins, and her grin gets even bigger. Then she shoots her arm out, slamming her fist into my side. Pain blooms through my midsection, and I stumble back, clutching at my belly. She laughs and saunters backward, not even trying to run.
I peer up at her through my killing face, my thoughts a whirl of confusion.
“Who are you?” I rasp. “Why have you been stalking Abilene Snow?”
She shakes her head. “I haven’t. I don’t have any interest in your little girlfriend.”
That word, girlfriend, blooms strangely in my chest. But then the woman says,
“I’ve been stalking you.”
For the first time in a long time, I feel something like fear. This is it, I think. I’ve been caught. She’s a police officer. An FBI agent. All the boogeymen Uncle Nash raised me to fear.
I take a step backward, suddenly aware that our positions are flipped, that she’s blocking the entrance, and I have no way out.
The woman puts her hands on her hips and looks at me appraisingly.
“Who are you?” I ask again. “What do you want?”
A smile dances across her lips. “Don’t be so nervous,” she says coyly as she saunters up to me. “My name’s Charlotte Careta, and I’m someone like you.”
I stare at her. And I know, immediately, what she means.
She’s a killer. But more than that, she’s not… normal. The way I’m not normal. That’s why the presence felt different.
“And you and I,” she continues, “have an awful lot to talk about.”