30. Alex
ALEX
I wake with my chin against my chest and both hands numb.
For a few seconds, I can’t make sense of why lifting my head hurts so much. Then I try to move my arms and the restraints pull tight around my wrists. The chair shifts beneath me, metal legs scraping concrete, and the sound brings everything back at once.
The truck. The dart. The ground coming up beneath me.
I force my eyes open.
The room is small and ugly, more storage space than anything meant for people.
Concrete floor, painted block walls, shelves crowded with old maintenance supplies.
A bare bulb hangs overhead, bright enough to make the pressure behind my eyes pulse as the concussion and the migraine blend into one.
My wrists are strapped to the chair arms, my ankles secured separately to the legs, and every movement reminds me that I left a hospital less than a day ago when I shouldn’t have.
I test my left hand carefully instead of wasting strength pulling. There’s almost no room beneath the restraint.
“Mrs. Vance?”
My voice barely carries.
I clear my throat and call for her again, louder this time.
A door opens somewhere behind me.
Preston walks into the room with a bottle of water in one hand and a folder tucked beneath his arm. He looks rested. Clean. Like he didn’t spend the half the morning hiding in the woods waiting to shoot me with a tranquilizer.
He puts the water on a table and starts sorting through the folder.
I watch his hands. “Where is she?”
Preston doesn’t look at me right away. He takes out several photographs and lays them across the table, making sure the edges line up before he finally glances over.
“You came too late.”
My fingers stop moving beneath the restraint.
He leaves it there long enough for me to understand.
“No.”
“She became a problem the moment she tried to help you.”
The ache in my chest is worse than the one in my head. I see Mrs. Vance swinging that cane at Preston. Her ridiculous bag of weapons. Her hand reaching for mine through smoke when I refused to leave without her.
I came here so she could go home.
Preston reaches for the water, but I turn my face when he brings it near me.
“She was alive in the video.”
“She was.”
He sets the bottle down again, almost casually, and that calmness frightens me more than his rage would.
I pull against the restraint before I can stop myself. Pain bites into my wrist.
Preston’s attention drops to my hand. “You always thought doing what I asked meant you got to decide what happened next.”
There it is.
The familiar shift that used to leave me trying to figure out which part of an argument I had misunderstood. There was never a possibility of him letting her go. I played right into his hands.
I stop pulling.
His eyes linger on me another second before he turns back to the photographs.
Only then do I start working my wrist again.
Slowly.
Preston picks up the first picture and holds it where I can see Ryder’s truck parked outside my apartment.
Another shows Ryder outside Lucy’s.
Then one of the cameras mounted at his house.
“He watches you.”
My stomach tightens, but I keep my face still.
He moves the photographs closer together as if he’s building an argument on the table. Ryder’s truck. Ryder’s house. A picture of him across the street from my building.
“He knew your schedule before you were together. He drove past your apartment. He remembers cars that don’t belong there. He keeps things about you close to his chest.”
The box of my articles flashes through my head before I can stop it.
Preston looks at me and waits for me to admit that he’s right.
“He’s not you.”
I don’t give him anything else.
He comes around the table, dragging one finger over the back of the empty chair across from mine before turning it around and sitting on it backward.
“Isn’t he?”
I keep working at the restraint beneath my sleeve.
Preston talks while I do it, listing every place Ryder’s behavior can be made to resemble his if you strip away everything that matters. The watching. The cameras. Showing up. Knowing where I am before I tell him. Wanting to decide what is dangerous before it reaches me.
Some of it bothers me because some of it would be true if I didn’t give Ryder permission with his obsession.
That’s why Preston chose it.
He waits until I look at him.
I flex my fingers, checking how much feeling has returned to them. “When I tell Ryder no, he listens.”
The leg of Preston’s chair drags lightly across the concrete.
I keep my attention on his face now.
“When I need space, he gives it to me. When he crosses a line, I can tell him he crossed it without wondering what he’s going to do to me afterward.” I spit at Preston’s feet. “He doesn’t hit me for disagreeing, or starve me for wearing the wrong dress. He. Isn’t. You.”
Preston stands.
I stop moving my wrist.
“He watches you exactly the way I did.”
“No.” I shake my head carefully because the room still wants to shift when I move too quickly. “You watched me so you could control me.”
His expression tightens.
“Ryder watches because he’s scared something will happen to me. Sometimes he gets it wrong, but he admits it. The difference is he cares when I tell him he got it wrong, and he fixes it.”
Preston steps closer until his knees nearly touch mine.
“You really believe that makes him different?”
I look up at him.
“I know it does.”
For the first time since he walked into the room, the calm slips.
It isn’t dramatic, like fangs or wings sprouting from his body. His mouth tightens, and the hand hanging beside his leg closes before he seems to realize he’s doing it.
I remember that hand.
I remember what usually came after that look.
Fear slides cold through my stomach, but I don’t take the words back. I’ll never make myself smaller for this man again.
Preston reaches for the water again instead.
“You’ll understand.”
He unscrews the cap and brings the bottle to my mouth like he’s taking care of me.
I let him, because I need to stay hydrated if I’m going to fight long enough to survive.
Two small swallows, enough to help the dryness in my throat without trusting him enough to take more. While he’s watching the bottle, I turn my left wrist another fraction beneath the restraint.
There’s movement. Not enough to get free, but just enough to keep trying.
And while Preston puts the water away and starts talking again, I listen past his voice for any sound outside this room that might tell me Mrs. Vance isn’t as dead as he wants me to believe.