Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
STORM
The phone rings just as I find myself drifting off to sleep.
I squeeze my eyes tighter shut and hope it’s part of a dream, but the bleating sound blares louder and my irritation skyrockets.
It’s been a while since I slept more than a few hours a night.
Sloane left me this morning—or is it yesterday morning now—and I’ve been spending too much time in the woods of my house staring at my phone screen, watching the camera that gives me a perfect view of her front, and only, entrance.
The call dies off, but I force my eyes open anyway, because what if I missed something?
I have an alarm set to go off when it catches movement from Sloane’s place—which is a lot, since she apparently has so much to fucking do—but I need sleep and I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t wake up at the notification.
I hold the phone over my face and see it’s almost three in the morning.
It’s not the camera I have set up at Sloane’s apartment.
It was Grey, my chemist. And if he’s calling me at three a.m., something isn’t right.
I start to sit up, then wince, and settle back down on the couch. The place where Lydia Flynn fucking stabbed me is on fire. So is the single memory of her in my mind. The talk that came after her uncle watched us leave a room together, and it was clear we had fucked around.
The dreams that infected every night, including the one before the morning Sloane saved me in the hall at West River. Lydia is there, and while the dreams had tapered off, now they’re back.
She’s connected to me in a way I can’t explain. One night with a girl shouldn’t have done that to me. But it did.
It does.
Lynx’s niece is a big problem of mine but until I meet with Dad, I don’t know exactly what I can do about her without drawing retribution onto myself and my family. And I don’t know why he never told me she was nearby.
As the pain throbs in my side, part of me wonders if it’ll get infected, but part of me can’t care because I have to figure out why the fuck Lydia is following me and what she wants. Does she live here now? Did she come all this way to find me?
Answers I’ll get soon, but not soon enough.
The phone starts to ring again and I swipe to answer Grey’s second call, then hold the phone to my ear and close my eyes again.
I don’t say anything and I don’t need to.
“Storm!” He sounds hysterical and I clench my teeth but drag the covers up higher around my shoulders. It’s fucking cold down here. “Something happened.”
No shit.
But I do feel some empathy. It was Grey I brought with me to the warehouse Friday night to check the product we’re accumulating.
We had our meeting that way after we got coffee; I showed him the number, he said he had no idea who was texting me.
It was also Grey I let drive my car so I could sideline the bitch who stabbed me.
The one I noticed following us when I turned onto the abandoned road I’ve got the warehouse at.
I don’t trust Grey, but I like him well enough.
And I don’t know if Lydia is a bitch at all.
Her body pressed between mine and the tree, for one second, I was right back there in the funeral home, and for one moment, I was in control, and not my parents, not my past life, not the things they did in the dark and the paranoia that ate at me when one of them wasn’t home in the night.
Who are you now, Lydia?
“I don’t know if it’s the woman who followed us, or…
Or…” He sounds like he’s hyperventilating.
Like he can’t quite get everything out he needs to.
He doesn’t know I know Lydia. He doesn’t even know her name.
I lied and said I chased the person following us off but didn’t get a good look at her.
I couldn’t tell him the truth; that she left me on a ledge.
Right now, I would coach him through his panic but I’m so tired, I can’t pry my eyes open again.
Not yet.
“It’s Indie. At the lab.”
I sigh quietly. The lab is his basement. I told him one day it might blow up the whole house but Grey is Grey. Stubborn to a fault.
I try to remember who Indie is.
Then it clicks. His girlfriend. Skinny, pale, piercings. The only details I recall of her.
“She’s…” A sound like a sob and a panicked squeak leaves his lips.
This makes me open my eyes.
He’s not usually so emotional.
“There’s a lot of blood,” he whisper-shouts. “I need… Can you come here or…”
Fuck.
Before I can offer any words of comfort or advice or bullshit, my phone vibrates in my hand.
I pull it away from my ear and check the screen.
The same unknown number I don’t take seriously anymore. Dad said even if the IP is in the Hollows, it’s spoofed. He said he knows who lives there, and they wouldn’t text me.
He doesn’t know I drove down there. Doesn’t know I saw Lynx. But when I asked directly if it was him, he denied it.
Unknown
Next time, it’s Sloane, bitch boy.
Bitch boy.
Okay.
That’s new.
“Storm, please, I need your help. I don’t know what to do and obviously I can’t call the cops and I can’t just leave her and someone was in my fucking house!” He is losing his shit now.
I speak into the phone but don’t hold it to my ear. “Don’t call anyone else. I’ll be there in ten.”
The metallic tang of blood reaches my nose as soon as I step into Grey’s ranch-style brick house.
All of the lights are on inside and it’s disorienting after driving through the night.
I squint, holding up a hand to shield my eyes and using my other to close the door at my back.
I flip the lock without looking at it, survey the living room.
It’s neat and tidy save for half a dozen newspapers splayed on the low wooden coffee table between the TV and the small blue couch.
Grey Rush—yeah, really—is a tier one tech support specialist by day and the man who keeps me partially stocked up by night.
Coke I get from suppliers, pills too, but other stuff, it comes from Grey.
Teddy is the only thing he’s fucked me up on.
Usually his shit is good and the side effects I’ve had prior are stomach related, a little nausea here and there.
Typically he’s got to make his creations stronger because he starts out low, but Teddy was the exception.
The paranoia hasn’t left me but this time, I’m not sure it’s the drug’s fault at all.
This time, I think I have reason to be paranoid.
The stench of iron confirms that, and so does the fact I’m standing inside this man’s house on the outskirts of Ellicottville at three fifteen in the fucking morning, unsteady on my feet and definitely not prepared to hide a body. When was the last time I got a good night’s sleep?
Sloane’s.
No. Do not think of her.
“Storm.” His voice is broken, coming from down the hall. It sounded faint, and I think he’s in his bedroom, toward the back of the house.
I close my eyes for a second. If I’m about to find what I think I’m going to find, I need a plan. And the only conclusion I could come to was one I don’t want but probably won’t have a choice in: Call Dad.
I’m in no state to bury a body and get away with it.
If we call the cops like we should, the whole house is getting searched.
While we have protocols for those type of emergencies, moving product in the middle of the night and the police finding a dead body in here isn’t going to play well for us.
And I can’t just leave Grey to handle this on his own.
He’d potentially rat me out, or he’d go to prison for something that’s partly my fault. That isn’t right by me.
Exhaling, I widen my eyes, brush my fingers over the gun tucked into my waistband, and move through the house.
I pass the kitchen and see a box of pizza on the counter, the lid open.
There’s one slice missing from it. Based on the cheese oozing along the edge of the counter and the pizza sauce splattered on the floor, I imagine Grey went to pick it up for him and Indie, came back, and he found her dead.
And I’m sure the pizza slice itself is behind the counter there by the sink, where I can’t see.
I turn left from the kitchen, duck down the narrow hallway, past the guest bathroom, and into Grey’s bedroom.
The tang of pennies is sharper here and I do my best not to gag.
The first thing I see is Grey.
He’s on his knees at the entrance to the master bathroom, his back to me and his head hung low. His shoulders are shaking and I see smeared bloody fingerprints along the white linoleum to his spot on the floor.
Fuck, Grey. Why’d you have to touch her?
Logically, I know, but he clearly wasn’t thinking with any fucking logic when he did it. Now we’ve got more of a mess we have to clean up.
I glance at his bed.
It’s low to the ground, white sheets messy, two side tables, one with a blue plastic pill container, and I snort at the morbid irony of it all. No way he heard me, since there’s a box fan in the corner of the room on full blast, facing away from the bed so I assume it’s for white noise.
I take another breath.
I don’t let myself think of the hotel room.
Don’t be a fucking child, Storm.
Then I lift my head and take a step so I can see into the small bathroom easier.
Oh, fuck.
Indie is in the bathtub, the water is full, and it’s cloudy red.
The shower curtain is translucent and it’s pulled back all the way, so I can see her pale fingers curled over the ledge.
It looks like when she first got in there, she’d put in bubbles or something, but they’ve nearly died off and what hasn’t is dyed pink and it’s a little weird to look at.
What’s worse is her head tilted back, her short dark hair wet and hanging around her face, but not long enough to hide the gash along her throat.
There’s red on her fingers too, dripping from the edge of her nails to the floor, and that means they didn’t kill her cleanly. She had time to try and survive.
But her utter stillness, the rot in the air, and the red in the tub, there’s no doubt she’s dead.
The fan is so loud, it’s fucking with my critical thinking skills, so I turn from Grey and his corpse girlfriend and walk across the room. I reach down and rip the plug out.
When I do, I notice the balcony door beside the fan is cracked open. Half an inch, if that, but I can feel the cool air filtering in.
I straighten, slide back the floor-length blinds with a clatter, and peer into the backyard.
Just a small patch of grass, a dilapidated wooden fence keeping most of it contained.
The lawn needs cutting, the porch outside the balcony is tiny, and there’s nothing out there but scattered cigarette butts that seem to have blown from an ashtray perched precariously on one of the porch’s ledges.
I reach beside me and flick off the light to the bedroom, knowing if someone is out there, they can see me just fine and I wouldn’t be able to see them.
I blink my eyes to adjust to the new darkness as Grey calls my name.
There’s nothing.
I use the back of my hand to nudge the screen door open just a little more. The fall air greets me and I breathe it deep into my lungs.
It must be in my head, but I swear I catch the familiar scent of something on the breeze.
Dark like deep red flowers and freshly brewed espresso.
The same scent I inhaled Friday night when I tackled Lydia Flynn to the ground.
“Storm, what are we going to do?” Grey’s voice is hoarse at my back.
“What exactly happened?” I don’t face him.
“She went out.” He answers me quick, like if he says it all at once, it’ll bring her back to life. “Some club or something? I don’t know, I was working. I wasn’t paying attention. I should’ve fucking paid attention—”
“Keep going.” I can’t let him fall apart now.
“Said she got an Uber back, so when she text, I left to get pizza for us—”
“You didn’t see who dropped her off?”
A pause. Then a quiet, “No.”
I don’t say anything, my mind spinning all the facts over but nothing is concrete, not without proof.
“What do we do?” Grey asks again, his tone desperate.
Mine is dead when I answer him. “Get Hawthorn on the phone.”