Chapter 24
Annabelle
By the time three o’clock rolls around, I’m feeling less full of dread than I was when I arrived. Lunch with Ethan has settled me somehow. Or maybe just eating enough to fill me is the cause. Or maybe it’s the fact that I felt insane jealousy towards the waitress when she looked at Ethan.
Maybe all three.
I grab my bag from the back office and say bye to Margaret as my phone buzzes.
Thinking it’s probably Aidan, I ignore it and step out into the hot afternoon sun.
For the first time in a long time, I turn my face up to the sun, eyes closed, just soaking it up instead of hating it and wishing it were dark and gloomy like my soul.
“You look happier,” Aidan says, slipping his arms around me from behind.
Smiling, I open my eyes and turn in his arms. “Don’t think it’s you.”
“It is me. And Ethan and Callan in his own weird way. If we hadn’t come into your life, you’d be trudging to the bus stop now to go home and collapse into bed, underfed and exhausted.”
“You still lied to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, his face clouding over. “I wish I hadn’t. I wish we hadn’t.”
“Too late,” I mutter, but the apology lifts a bit of the burden.
“One day you will forgive us.”
My phone buzzes again, and I frown. Not Aidan then. “You wish,” I mutter and pull it out of my bag.
Aidan gives me a narrow-eyed stare as I unlock the screen and check my messages.
Your mother was just the beginning.
My heart nearly stops as I read the words.
I’m coming for you, Annabelle.
The phone drops from my hand, cracking on the pavement as Aidan grips my hand. “What is it?”
“I… I…” I don’t know what to say, how to react, what to do.
Aidan bends down and picks my phone up. I stare at it in his hands. His low growl sends skitters of ice over my skin. “That fucker,” he grits out.
“What… what is going on?” I stammer, my brain trying to process, but it’s shutting down. My lungs squeeze. Who is messaging me about my mother?
“Come,” Aidan says, pocketing my phone. He grabs my wrist and practically hauls me forward. “We need to get you off the street.”
“Aidan…” My feet stumble to keep up with him. Panic tears through me so fast I feel sick with it.
He gets me to the car and opens the passenger door with a sharp movement. “Get in.”
I do, because the edge in his voice tells me this is not the moment to argue. He slams the door, rounds the bonnet, and gets behind the wheel.
“Give me back my phone,” I say, wanting to read the messages again.
“Not a chance.”
“You can’t keep it from me.”
“I can, and I am.” He fires up the engine, and it practically roars to life. I glance around and see we’re in a different car than Ethan’s Porsche.
He launches away from the kerb like the devil is after us, and I clip my seatbelt into place, my hands shaking.
He doesn’t speak the entire way back to the apartment.
Neither do I.
I’m incapable of words, only thoughts rampaging through my tired mind, but none of them makes any sense.
By the time we reach the underground car park, my nails have bitten crescents into my palms.
Aidan kills the engine and gets out fast. My door is open a second later.
“Out.” His face keeps me quiet. It is not anger aimed at me. It is something colder. More dangerous. The kind that makes my stomach drop straight through me.
I get out. He takes my hand, hard enough to hurry me, not hard enough to hurt. We move to the lift. The mirrored walls throw my face back at me. Pale. Wide-eyed. Sick. Aidan looks worse. His jaw is tight. His eyes are vicious.
The doors open onto the apartment. Ethan is sitting in the same chair he was in when I arrived here yesterday.
He looks up from his files and then frowns. “What happened?”
Aidan takes my phone from his pocket and hands it over. “Message.”
Ethan reads it once. His whole body stills.
That scares me more than if he had shouted.
Ethan sets the phone down with awful care.
“What is this?” I ask, not expecting them to have an answer, but needing to say something out loud before I implode.
Callan strides into the room, about to say something, but goes quiet when Ethan shoves my phone at him. He blinks once, and then looks at me. “Have you had anything else? Calls? Emails?”
“No.” I drag a hand through my hair. “No, nothing.”
“Anything weird in the last few weeks? Anyone hanging around?”
I force myself to breathe. My chest hurts with it. “Not that I remember! What is this? Is this my mother’s… killer?”
The word leaves my mouth on a gasp of pure agony.
“It appears that way,” Aidan says carefully. “He has to have been watching you, Annabelle. Think. Anything seem off?”
I gulp. “You three,” I hiss. “You are off. Everything about this is off.”
“Apart from us,” Ethan grits out.
I close my eyes and shake my head. “I can’t think.
I don’t know. I don’t know what is going on.
” My knees give way suddenly, and Aidan catches me on the way down.
He lifts me before I can hit the floor properly, one arm under my knees, the other at my back.
My head drops against his chest. The second I’m off my feet, and pressed against him, the panic eases just enough for me to breathe.
Aidan carries me to the sofa and sets me down. Ethan crouches, his hand on my knee. Callan stays a few feet away, tense and watchful, his entire body has gone rigid.
“Look at me,” Ethan says.
I do. Barely.
“Breathe slowly.”
My lungs drag in air that feels too thin. I press my palms to my thighs and try again. The room is too bright. The apartment is too quiet.
“Tell us exactly what happened,” Callan says. His voice is clipped. Controlled.
“My phone buzzed inside the library as I was coming out. I thought it was Aidan. I didn’t look. The second message came as Aidan and I were standing outside.”
“You were with Aidan when the second one came through, but not the first?” Ethan asks.
“Yes.”
“So you were alone in the library for the first one.”
“Well, Margaret was there, but yes. On my way out.”
He looks up at Aidan. “He’s watching her.”
“Who?” I whisper. “Is it my mother’s killer?” I have to keep asking this because it doesn’t make sense. But the messages are there, forcing me to make sense of it.
I don’t want to.
Ethan looks back at me, and the calm on his face is worse than panic. “I think it is.” His tone is careful. Too careful.
The room tilts.
Your mother was just the beginning.
I’m coming for you, Annabelle.
“He’s coming for me,” I whisper. “My mother’s murderer is coming to murder me.”