Chapter 6 #2
Alex didn’t even look confused as he watched the spot where the strange man had stood. He looked like he was arriving late to something he’d already known would happen.
Memories emerged—bright and inconvenient. Alex’s questions in prison, not about guilt, but about how things happened, what she felt, what she remembered, what didn’t make sense.
At the time, she’d thought he was building a defense.
Now, puzzled, Audrey looked for the killer. The man with disturbing eyes disappeared. She wondered if she’d hallucinated. But she could still feel his mind in the crowd.
Where was he?
Hands grabbed her arms and jerked her upright. Her back hit the wall, sparking white across her vision. She expected Erik with his greedy, grubby hands, pissed about broken rules. She was already preparing to rage at him.
Instead, soft fingers grasped her face, thumbs pressing her cheeks together and forcing her lips into a pout. Blonde hair fell over a too-familiar forehead. Blue eyes burned into hers, furious and scared and something else she’d never seen on his face.
This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. Audrey closed her eyes.
He was angrier than he’d been in the courtroom. Angrier than she’d ever seen him. In her off-balance state, a sliver of fear penetrated the haze.
She’d imagined this reunion so many times. Alex at the prison gates. Alex in daylight. Alex with answers. But never here. Not with her half-dressed and high and stretched out on a stranger’s couch.
I never wanted Alex to see this life.
That had been the plan—get clean before she found him again.
Frustration twisted his features into a snarl. He dragged her through the hallway as the music waned behind them. Questions spun through her head, tumbling over each other.
How did he track me?
How long had he been looking?
Why now?
Alex’s voice overwhelmed everything, but it was too fast. She couldn’t catch the words, only the sound of his clipped, furious tone.
Her skull throbbed. The wall between reality and the real world in her head buckled.
She held onto the sight of him, like an anchor, and simultaneously wanted to shove him away.
Right now, she was both the girl in the burning house and the woman in the club, and neither version made sense.
He hauled her out a side door into the alley. The cold air made her shiver.
Maybe Erik assumed she was leaving with a customer, and that’s why he wasn’t out here, growling. She usually charged double if she left the club. It was just too dangerous not to when violence against women was rampant in this city’s underground.
A car rolled up, with a rideshare sign glowing in the windshield.
“My bag,” she slurred. “I need my bag.”
“No.” He clutched her harder. “We’re not going back in there. Ever.”
“You don’t understand—”
“You’re too fucked up to argue. Get in the car.”
She blinked hard, fighting the spin. The alley swam, then cleared enough for her to see him properly. His hair was a mess, dark blond waves shoved back by restless hands. His eyes kept flicking over her shoulder, scanning the shadows.
A tear slid hot down her cheek. “I got released,” she choked out. “You weren’t there. I-I-I… looked for you.”
“Audrey, stop talking.”
She shook her head, which only made her surroundings tilt. “You weren’t there,” she said again, teeth clenched. “I went to your apartment. I waited. You were gone.”
His eyes snapped back to her. “You went to my apartment?”
She nodded, swallowing against the lump in her throat. “Of course I did. I searched for you for over a month. And Skyler—”
“Skyler,” he repeated, disgust curling his lip.
He’d constantly asked her if she’d made any friends, so Audrey knew he would recall her mentioning any that she had in prison, including Skyler.
The answer was usually no, but sometimes—like with Skyler—it was a yes.
Alex had never been a fan of her encouragement of Audrey’s drug-addicted lifestyle.
“Of course. Of fucking course. Look, I’m sorry—”
“Sorry?” The word came out of her as a snarl. “Where the fuck have you been?”
All the fear and anguish of the last months crashed into her at once. The couch in Skyler’s filthy apartment. The empty doorway of his building. Her first night free had been spent in a stranger’s bed instead of in safety.
He’d promised she wouldn’t walk out alone.
Alex exhaled hard, some of the stress around his eyes softening. “It’s a long story.”
“I didn’t want to be found, especially not by you,” she bit out, even as part of her clung to him as a tether. The drugs dulled her senses, but underneath, she was mortified he’d seen her at work.
He ignored that statement, tugging her in the direction of the car. She wavered, barely catching herself against the wall of the warehouse.
“I don’t need your help,” she muttered, fists pressing into her eyes as a tremble ripped through her. “Not anymore.”
“Right,” he said dryly. “That’s why you were getting railed by a stranger, high out of your mind, in a club where half the city could walk in and watch. You look like shit.”
Shame flushed hot across her face. She’d never been smaller. Not standing in front of a jury. Not hearing guilty. Not even in orange and shackles. He raked a hand through his hair, straightened his immaculate coat, and gave her a look like he was trying not to step in something.
“What I do is my business,” she shot back, with her voice cracking. “You disappeared. I had nothing. No one. Not a lot of choices.”
“You’re losing control of this situation,” he said flatly. “There are people who will use that. They’ll let you run until you lead exactly who they want right to you. They’re waiting for you to bring her to them.”
Before she could question that statement, he grabbed her face again, gentler this time, thumbs warm on her cheeks. “I’m sorry I left,” he said, and it sounded like it hurt. “I was delayed. Out of my hands. I couldn’t come back until I had what I needed. It was too important.”
Her trust in him was cracked but not shattered. Not yet. If Alex believed she was in real danger, he’d burn the world down to stop it.
“What could be that important?” she whispered. “More important than being there when I walked out of hell?”
His hands stayed on her face, his thumbs moving in slow, soothing circles that made her want to both melt and bite him.
“We’ve known each other our whole lives. Trust me,” he said. “I wouldn’t have disappeared if it didn’t have everything to do with keeping you safe.”
“I don’t need you to keep me safe. I’ve been underground. Hiding. Selling myself to stay off the grid. I had it handled.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yet I found you anyway.”
“But why did you have to leave me in the dark for this long?”
“I stayed away because I was looking for answers. And I found one I wish I hadn’t.” He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. The smell of smoke crept into her mind without warning. She smelled burned wood and carpet. It was the same phantom scent that woke her at night.
“Spit it out,” Audrey said.
“Your mother is alive.” Alex hesitated. “She’s coming for you.”
The world didn’t tilt—it split. Her breath wouldn’t come.
Alex shoved her inside the car, and Audrey let him. All her limbs were numb.
The man in the club and the voice in her head.
Alex, standing in front of her as if he’d walked into a moment he already understood.
And now, her mother was out there, alive.
She was being hunted by forces no one else believed existed, and each piece was aligned, but she couldn’t see the bigger picture.
One fact was certain, though—she’d been moving through someone else’s carefully designed plan and not randomly falling apart.
As they pulled away from the curb, she put her forehead against the cool glass of the window, then narrowed her eyes.
Across the street in the dark, Audrey felt the presence of a mind fixed on hers.