Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
HER
It was all over the news, every radio station and media outlet blasting a minute-by-minute update. Cops were arriving in droves. Streets were closed off and sirens were wailing in the distance. I kept my head down and hoped that Cain was doing the same.
He wouldn’t go outside, would he? It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go or I was sure he would have gone there already. Still, I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I didn’t have my phone to warn him…
Not that it mattered if I did, since he didn’t have one either.
At least I didn’t think he had one. Exchanging numbers didn’t exactly come up in conversation when you were sharing your space with a serial murderer.
Assuming he was one. I didn’t know how many people he’d killed. Or if the total made a difference…
I sighed and slammed the trunk closed. I also didn’t know what I was walking into, but the car I saw parked outside my house told me it wasn’t going to be anything good. I should have known someone would show up as soon as word got out. I guess I just assumed I had a little more time.
Maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. I was pretty good at ignoring a problem and hoping it would go away on its own.
“Shoot, shoot, shoot…” I cursed under my breath. It was my own fault. I should have left the hospital and came straight here, instead of making a pit stop at the closest department store. It was the girl at the register who’d asked me if I heard about what had happened at Briarwood.
Of course, I hadn’t. Until I got back to the car and flipped through the radio stations. And now it was too late. All I could do was face the problem head-on.
“No more hiding, Jules,” I told myself, smiling at the nickname. I liked it. I liked when he said it. I liked him. Even though I knew I shouldn’t. I also liked doing things for him.
I glanced at the four bags of clothes currently weighing me down as I climbed the stairs to my front door. I was trying to do something nice so Cain didn’t have to keep washing the same two pairs of underwear and socks every other day.
Instead, I was walking myself into a war zone. I knew it the moment I pushed the door open—like the pharmacy, it wasn’t locked—and dropped the bags next to the little console table where I stored my keys. Then I took three hesitant steps forward, gasping as soon as I crossed into the living room.
“Welcome home, sweetheart,” Cain crooned, gesturing the knife in his hand towards the slumped figure he had taped to the chair beside him.
“I assume you know our guest? He certainly knows you.” Cain pushed to his feet and then he was stalking towards me, blood dripping down his hand with each step he took in my direction. “Or should I say knew you…”
My eyes flicked from him to the chair, then back again. “What did you do?” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure why I was asking when the answer was staring me in the face.
“You told me your brother was dead.” Cain jerked a single shoulder. “Now he is.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. He’d never looked at me like this. So detached, so out of his head. Like all the humanity I’d seen before had seeped out of his pores, joining the puddle of blood on the floor. Robbie’s blood.
I didn’t remember moving, stepping back, but I must have because suddenly my spine was pressed up against the wall. My head turned to one side and my hands out in front of me. They wouldn’t stop the knife but they would slow it down a bit.
“It’s better than the alternative. Me accepting the fact that you lied to me, Jules.” Cain inched closer, stopping when we were sharing the same air as he leaned forward and sniffed my hair. “You wouldn’t do something like that, would you? You wouldn’t be so dumb as to lie to me, right?”
I shook my head from side to side, finally turning to look at him again. “I didn’t lie… I swear.”
He grinned. But he wasn’t smiling. “The body in that chair says otherwise, sweetheart.” He flicked the knife behind him before aiming it back at me.
“I didn’t lie,” I repeated because I didn’t know what else to say.
Cain lifted the knife, stabbing it into the spot right next to my head. Catching a lock of my hair and embedding it into the wall. Then he lowered that same hand to my face, tapping his index finger against the tip of my nose. “You said he hung himself.”
“And he did!” I nodded, forcing down the part of my heart that was thumping in my throat. “He just didn’t die. Because I found him and—”
“And what, Jules?” Cain interrupted at the same time he was asking me to finish speaking.
“And I cut him down.”
“You hear this shit?” Cain laughed. But he didn’t appear to be talking to me anymore.
He was looking past me. Into the kitchen.
The empty kitchen. No one else was here, except me, him, and…
no one else. Dead people didn’t talk back.
“Guess I was right,” Cain said, returning his attention to me.
“You got a savior complex, don’t you? You get as much of a high from saving a life as I get from ending one. ”
“No, I don’t.” I shook my head. “I’ll prove it to you.”
“Yeah, and how you gonna do that, Jules?”
I’d already lowered my hand, wrapping my fingers around the syringe in the front pocket of my scrubs. Then I quickly tugged it out and jabbed the tip into the meatiest piece of flesh I could reach at this angle. Hoping like heck my plan would work.
And if it didn’t? Well, I was okay with that too.