Chapter 37
NOAH
My head hurt. A lot. Pain radiated through the back of my skull, making my eyeballs throb, and my stomach churned like I was on a boat. What the fuck happened?
Had something fallen on my head in the garage? I remember leaning down to pick up Ace’s phone and… that was it. Did I smack my head on the car or something?
Fuck, I could taste blood and my tongue ached like I’d bitten it when—had someone hit me?
“Ahh, there she is. Wakey wakey now,” an unfamiliar voice crooned, and I cracked my eyelids open with monumental effort. Light stabbed through my eyes, making me wince, and I squinted up at Ace.
Wait. Not Ace. Ace’s eyes weren’t that close together, and his jaw was stronger, and this version wore colored contacts that screamed Temu.
“Who the fuck…?” I mumbled, my tongue heavy with how badly my head pounded. Was I seeing things? “What—?”
“Ah, good, I thought for a minute maybe I hit you too hard and then all the fun would be ruined,” the creepy Ace lookalike said, making me wince as I frowned. Why did he seem vaguely familiar?
Wait. Where was Ace? The real one, not this budget knockoff version.
I tried to look around, trying to get my bearings and work out what’d happened to Ace, but it quickly became apparent that I was tied to a chair.
As was Ace, who also had blood dripping down his face and a gag between his teeth.
The power was back on, apparently, with the pool lights glowing blue and music playing through the outdoor speakers in a mockery of the situation we’d woken up in.
“Ace!” I exclaimed, gasping at the sight of him. Stupid fucking us, we’d walked straight into a trap while attempting to fix the power outage. “You son of a bitch! Let him go!”
“Ah-ah-ah, none of that language, Noah,” our attacker scolded, clicking his tongue and moving away a couple of steps. “ClikByte is a family platform, after all.”
That was when I noticed the tripod and ring light with a phone in the holder. The stranger moved behind the setup to presumably check the angles, and I met Ace’s gaze with panic. Why were we still alive? Why was Ace gagged and I wasn’t? Who the fuck even was this psychopath?
“Now then, Noah, you refused to heed my warning and reveal your secret yourself, so I feel the need to force the issue. It’s unfortunate that Ace had to get hurt, but you were meant to be here alone tonight. Why aren’t you alone?”
“You’re the troll,” I murmured, my brain sluggish with how much pain I was in. “You were at the fan signing, too.” That’s where I knew him from. I’d been so distracted by Xavier I nearly didn’t remember, but it was those awful contacts that jogged my memory.
“Ding ding ding, give the girl a prize!” the crazy guy crowed exuberantly. It was only then that I clicked. Girl. Yeah, shit, he really did know my secret.
“Okay, you got me,” I said slowly, my heart pounding a million miles an hour in my chest. “Now what?”
He scowled, shaking his head. “No, no, no—you’re going to admit to all your lies, Noah. You’re going to come clean to him,” he gestured wildly to Ace, whose eyes were a flood of confusion and worry, “and to all the fans out there. No more secrets.”
I scoffed, frantically trying to think of a way out of this mess. Where was our security?
“To all twelve of your followers, you mean?” I taunted, unable to help myself. “I’m sure that will have a huge impact. Have you never heard of coercive confessions? People lie under pressure.”
The stranger just grinned, way too confident.
“My followers? No, don’t be silly. This will be live streamed to your followers, Noah.
All one hundred and twenty-three million of them.
You definitely have the reach to make this confession hit hard, coerced or not.
” He moved back to the phone on the tripod, and I groaned when I recognized it was my phone.
He must have used my fingerprint to unlock it while I was unconscious. “And action!”
I tightened my lips, refusing to play along. If he wanted to expose my secret, he could do it himself and then PR would discredit it all later.
If we survived, that was.
“Noah, tell your fans your secret,” he ordered, glaring at me in absolute hatred. “Tell them what you’ve been hiding for the last seven weeks of Clik Games. Since your sensationalized face reveal. Tell them!”
From the corner of my eye, Ace shook his head like he was urging me to keep quiet.
I couldn’t look at him, though, or I’d panic so hard I was likely to black out.
The only way I was keeping a clear head was by blocking him out.
By not focusing on the dark blood dripping down his handsome face, staining his pale hair.
“Eat a dick,” I snapped instead. “And let Ace go. He has nothing to do with this, and you’re hurting him. You don’t want to hurt him, do you? Your username and your appearance suggests you’re a big fan. AceHartsHeart, right?”
The Temu-Ace frowned, uncertainty passing across his face for a moment as his gaze flicked to my team leader.
“No, I’m not hurting him,” he argued, swinging his glare back to me.
“This is your fault. You hurt him, Noah. You’re hurting all of them with your lies and deceit.
That ends now. Tell Ace your secret. Tell everyone your secret. Or you’ll kill him.”
He pulled out a shockingly long hunting knife from the back of his threadbare pants, bringing the blade to Ace’s throat.
Fuck.
My only plan had been to keep him talking long enough that help would arrive. He was live streaming, which meant that surely police had already been notified. If I could just stall him for five freaking minutes, that would be enough. Wouldn’t it?
But with a knife at Ace’s throat… Well, that changed things.
“Okay,” I gasped, shaking my head and frantically tugging at my bound hands.
My wrists screamed in pain, and I suspected we were zip-tied.
There was a technique for breaking zip-ties, wasn’t there?
I’d seen a series of viral Bytes about it a couple years ago, teaching girls how to free themselves, but now that I needed it, the information was like smoke.
“Okay?” the knife-wielding man repeated. “Okay, what, Noah?”
“Okay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll say whatever you want.
I’ll quit the team, okay? That’s what you wanted, right?
You want me to quit Olympus so you can keep the team safe, right?
Done. I quit.” I wet my lips, my gaze locked on the knife across Ace’s throat.
It was pressed hard enough that his skin was dented but not broken.
At my words, my promise to quit Team Olympus, the man eased up his blade pressure and moved away from Ace slightly. “No, that’s not good enough. You need to tell him—”
Right as he started to speak, the music on our outdoor speakers changed to a track with increased volume, Seventeen Daggers’s hottest new hit pumping through the pool area in a mockery of our dire situation.
“Tell him your secret!” the crazy guy bellowed, his voice booming over the music. “Tell Ace and your fans who you actually are. Noah Fearly. Norah Sparkle. Peaches.”
He spat the names at me like bullets, and I flinched with each direct hit.
I couldn’t look at Ace. I simply wasn’t strong enough to see how that bomb was hitting for the team leader, finally discovering the depth of my deception.
“You think that stripping away the cosmetics and girly outfits is enough to hide? To make a mockery of this team and all the loyal fans?” our attacker spat. “It’s not. And now everyone knows who you truly are. A liar. A temptress. A Trojan horse sent to destroy this team from the inside out.”
It was foolish of Olympus Corp, of the management teams, and of me to think this would never come out. It was utterly stupid of us all to think the reaction wouldn’t become steadily worse with every passing day and that the feeling of betrayal for both the team and the fans wouldn’t end my career.
And here it was. Judgment day.
I had so many regrets.
As if pulled by a magnet, my eyes rose from the tiles to lock on Ace’s gaze.
The shock and betrayal I found staring back at me was even more of a sucker-punch than I’d ever anticipated.
When this whole idea was formed, I’d never imagined forming such close bonds with this team.
I never in a million years thought I would care if I hurt them or that I’d feel such soul-deep shame for betraying Ace’s trust.
It made me want to vomit.
“I’m so sorry, Ace,” I whispered, my guts twisted up so hard it physically hurt to speak. “Olympus Corp blackmailed me, and—”
When the music changed to a quieter track, the distant scream of sirens reached us, and I sucked in a breath of anticipation and relief. Help was coming. Could they get here before this asshole killed us, though? Or at least fast enough to save Ace?
“Shit!” the guy exclaimed, stiffening in fear.
“That was so fast. Why was that so fast? I should have had longer! This is—argh! Doesn’t matter.
It’s done now, everyone knows who you really are, Noah.
Norah. Peaches. Whatever the fuck your name really is.
And no amount of crisis management can change that fact. ”
“Was it worth it?” I sneered. “Was exposing me as a girl really worth spending the rest of your life in jail for attempted murder? Because that’s what will happen to you now, you fucking dumbass.
There’s no scenario in which you actually get away with this crime.
You’ve live streamed your face to my audience and the cops will be here in no time. ”
Except…would he try to kill us both to make it worth the prison time? Fuck. Maybe poking at him was a bad idea, but I challenge anyone else to make better decisions under this amount of pressure and fear.
“Minutes? That’s plenty of time to get away,” the Ace-obsessed stalker muttered, glancing around him frantically like he hadn’t actually thought out his exit strategy. That one fact made me suspect this wasn’t the same guy that killed Cat Kay. This asshole wasn’t a killer; he was just crazy.
Hope surged in my chest, and I drew a sharp breath. “There’s a path down the back of the garden,” I told him. “It takes you down to the beach. You could still run if you’re fast…”
Crazy guy glanced from me to Ace to the camera—still streaming, I assumed—and back again.
Then he nodded quickly as the sirens grew louder.
He turned around in several circles like he’d totally lost his bearings on which way to go, and the hope of our survival bloomed stronger within me.
He wanted to run, which meant we could be rescued rather than end up in a hostage situation. Or worse.
“That way!” I snapped, jerking my head in the direction of the cliffs. “Fast!”
Our attacker took a confused step, then as if playing out a scene from the worst kind of horror movie, he stumbled and tripped over the corner of a sun lounger.
He crashed down hard on his hip, crying out in pain and dropping his knife.
But then as I watched, helpless and horrified, he lurched to the side as he tried to regain his footing and knocked straight into Ace, still gagged and bound to a chair.
“Ace!” I screamed as his chair fell and his head smacked against the edge of the pool with a sickening crunch.
“Oh fuck!” the clumsy villain exclaimed, scrambling to his feet as Ace’s chair toppled over the edge and disappeared into the pool with a gagged, bound, and unconscious Ace bleeding from two head wounds.
I screamed again, wordless in my terror as he sank beneath the surface.
The sirens were louder but not loud enough. Our attacker was gone, and I didn’t even care if he was caught or fell off the cliff and died. All that mattered was that Ace would be dead in minutes—or less. And no one was here to save him…except me.
His expression from just moments ago flashed through my head. That hurt he’d displayed to find I’d played him, and the utter disappointment. I couldn’t just sit by and let him die. I couldn’t live with myself if he didn’t make it out alive…
Sobbing and screaming for help—on the off chance someone might hear—I yanked against my wrist bonds with all my strength. To my shock, they loosened. I did it again, and they loosened further, enough to let me squeeze my hands out.
Gasping relief but still choking on terror, I threw my weight forward to knock my chair over and reached out to snag the hunting knife that the crazy guy had dropped.
I sliced through my ankle bonds with zero regard for my own skin, cutting deeply through my left ankle and barely registering the pain as I kicked free of the chair and pushed my knees under myself.
Ace was still underwater.
How long had it been? Seconds? Minutes? Was he already dead?
I had to try. Ace Hart deserved to live. He had too much love, support, and encouragement to give to the world.
Pushing all my fear aside, I tried to focus on the only emotion—or hormone—that’d ever served me well. Pure adrenaline flooded through me, and I cast aside my own sense of survival, drawing a huge breath, and diving headfirst into the pool to rescue Ace.
The moment water engulfed me, I realized I may have made a mistake.
Some emotions, some traumas, were simply too strong for even adrenaline to drown out.