Chapter 42
LOCHLAN
I have never run as fast as I do out of the woods and to Hawthorne Hollow.
Into town is easy, because it’s downhill from campus. I move like the devil himself is after me as I bolt through town, across streets, dodging cars and pedestrians, until I go pelting down the pier and crashing through the door of the old harbormaster’s office.
I don’t even take a second to savor the memories of us in here. I don’t have the luxury of time right now.
Galina is alone with him.
Gun or no gun, he’s clearly not going to kill her, being that he’s psychotically infatuated with her. But my mind shreds itself apart imagining the worst possible nightmare scenarios of what else he might do to her, now that he finally has her alone in the woods and under his control.
Those fears are what propel me forward like a fucking bullet from a gun as I grab my Ghost mask and explode back out the door in a full sprint.
Not for me.
For her.
If he’s touched a single fucking hair on her head when I get back, not even that Magnum is going to stop me from wrapping my hands around his neck and snapping it.
My lungs are on fire as I run back. Every muscle in my body screams for mercy. My stomach roils before I twist my head and puke all over the side of the road.
But I don’t stop.
I don’t slow.
I can’t.
I just keep running as fast as I can.
I ignore the acid scorching through my veins. The fire burning in my lungs. The pain in my body screaming at me to just fucking stop.
Not happening.
I’m choking raggedly as I finally bolt back through the front gates of the college and sprint across the dark, moonlit campus toward the woods.
Branches rip and slash at my face and hands as I smash my way through the underbrush, avoiding the winding trail in favor of a more direct route to The Garrison.
What if he’s hurt her?
What if he touched her?
Oh God…
…What if he killed her?
The blood is roaring in my ears as I go crashing through the stone archway into The Garrison. My heart claws up into my throat as I whirl, panting raggedly as my lungs scream. My eyes dart all over before reality punches me in the face.
They’re not here.
I whirl around in a frenzy, panic and fury jangling within me before suddenly, I go still.
My heart drops.
My lungs stop working as my gaze lands on the table I set, now knocked to the side with the dishes and glasses smashed across the ground.
But then I see it: a hand-sized rock from the walls of the fire pit, lying wet and glistening on the ground.
…Blood.
My chest tightens like it has an iron band around it as I stare at the rock.
There are more spatters nearby. Another splash across the stone fire ring. More on the toppled chairs, with a bloody hand-print smeared on the knocked over table .
My pulse pounds as my gaze spots more glistening wet red a few feet away.
…And more, past it.
It’s a trail of blood.
The mask falls from my shaking hand as I hurtle across the clearing and out through the other stone arch, my eyes darting ahead to find the next splatter. The next drip. The next red smear against a clawed branch or on a cluster of leaves.
This forest trail empties out onto the main path that winds along the cliffs at the edge of campus, looming over the jagged rocks and crashing surf of the Connecticut Sound below. A light fog is rolling in, turning everything vaguely opaque and hazy white in the moonlight.
I glance left and right, panic whining like an air raid siren in my ears before I spot another streak of red to the left, across the top of the wooden railing that runs along the cliff’s edge.
My chest clenches tight. My heart drops.
And I run.
Ragged, choked breaths burst from my throat as I bolt down the path, through the fog—
I stumble to a skidding stop when I see her. She’s on her knees by the fence, shaking as she hugs herself, slowly rocking back and forth.
She’s alone.
“Galina...”
She jolts when I put my hand on her shoulder and whisper her name. She whirls, her eyes wide, her face ashen as her haggard gaze stabs up into my face.
“I—! I didn’t—!”
I drop to my knees in front of her.
“Baby—”
A wracking sob wrenches her body as she throws herself into my arms.
“I hit him, Lochlan! He had the gun, and he wanted…he wanted me to…and there was a rock, and I just hit him with it…”
Another sob hitches violently in her chest as I hold her tighter and she clings to me like I’m the last floating debris in the aftermath of a flood.
“He chased me….he…Lochlan, he…”
“Shhh, baby,” I whisper hoarsely into her ear, holding her in my arms and rocking us quietly. “It’s okay. Whatever happened, it’s going to be—”
“He fell, Lochlan.” She pulls back from me, a haunted look etched into her beautiful face. “He fell over the cliff.”
I hold her tight as I slowly twist and crane my head forward, looking past the streak of blood on the wooden railing and down the edge of the cliff.
A body with its back bent at a sickening angle lies sixty feet below, sprawled on a chunk of rock as the waves gently splash pink and crimson over it.
…A body that looks a whole lot like the late Nacho Castellano.