Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
BLAIRE
Something was dripping.
I didn’t think I had forgotten to turn anything off, so a tap must have been leaking. Every time I thought it stopped, there it was again.
Drip.
Give me any other day over the last two months, and I would’ve been grateful for the lack of nightmares. But this? This was torture, and I wasn’t even sure what crime I committed to deserve it.
Drip.
Isn’t this how they punished hostages? I was certain I had read something about that before, in a novel, maybe. Where they would let a single drop of water splash onto a person’s forehead until, eventually they confessed, or lost their minds.
Drip.
Unfortunately for me, I had lost my mind a long time ago.
All this leak was doing was keeping me awake.
I had already gotten out of bed, checked all the faucets, and nothing looked out of the ordinary to me.
Yet, the dripping hadn’t stopped for hours.
Last time I checked, the clock blinked just after midnight.
Drip.
I should be grateful. No sleep meant no nightmare. Instead, I was bitter. My brain needed to turn off. I needed to turn off. I didn’t even have the drugs I was planning on taking tonight after my meeting with Winder went sour.
Folding my pillow over my head, I did my best to remove any thoughts of the asshole who thought he knew so much more than me. Serves me right for thinking I felt a connection with a stranger. Some people were better off as dreams instead of reality.
Drip.
For fuck’s sake. I could still hear the dripping from under the fluff of my pillow.
I was going to lose it, right here, right now, and the thought made me want to choke out a laugh.
Months of a nightmare, sure, no problem.
Thinking I was covered in blood, cool, I could handle it.
But one night of a leaky faucet, and I was ready to smother myself with my pillow.
Fuck this leak. Fuck Winder and his stupid smug face as he told me he was the only protection I had. Like I needed protection, especially from him. What kind of name was Winder, anyway?
Click.
I froze, my heartbeat stuttering a pace quicker. That wasn’t a drip.
Sleep was no longer a thought in my mind. I uncovered my head, everything sounding a thousand times louder in the dark. Even the drip seemed to have silenced, waiting for what came next. My body froze in place, overcome by a strange numbness.
Maybe I was just paranoid. Correction, I was definitely paranoid.
But being paranoid didn’t also mean I hadn’t heard what sounded like the locks on my door.
Which was crazy, surely. I even had extra locks.
No one was getting in here. No one wanted to get in here.
Regardless of whatever Winder thought he knew, no one was out to get Blaire Barlowe.
My words fell flat as the obvious sound of my front door opening echoed down the hall.
I imagined this scenario a thousand times in my head at night as I fell asleep, what I would do in this situation. It was almost like an anxiety bedtime story. If someone broke in, I’d be ready.
Except someone had broken in, and I wasn’t ready. I had a plan, but actually following through was a different story.
Quiet footsteps trod around what sounded like my kitchen. My bedroom door was shut and locked, but that didn’t mean anything if whoever was in my apartment wasn’t just looking for leftovers.
Sensation was returning to the tips of my toes, tingling in my arms and stomach.
I needed to move, and I needed to move now.
My eyes darted from side to side, as I figured out my next steps.
I needed to grab the running shoes I kept under my bed, open my window, and climb out onto the fire escape.
That was the tricky part, because the fire escape was creaky and passed right in front of my living room window.
The footsteps still padded through the kitchen, but if I didn’t move soon, I was going to lose my window of opportunity.
Taking a deep breath, I rolled to the side of the bed. Feet on the floor, I slid them into the runners I kept under my bed and crept to the window. I pushed it up as quietly and slowly as I could.
The window was well greased, thanks to my overthinking, but I couldn’t do anything about that goddamn fire escape.
I stood in front of the cool night air for a moment, the city quiet in the dead of the night, the breeze blowing against my thin shirt and sweatpants.
I couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore. This was either bad or good.
Good, they could’ve left and this would all be for nothing.
Bad, they heard me and were waiting for me to pass in front of the living room window.
I shook my head to quiet the thoughts and climbed out, grimacing as my weight hit the rickety metal.
Immediately, I dropped to my hands and knees, crawling toward the stairs just past the living room window.
It was endless in the dark, farther than I ever thought it could be.
Five feet now. Four. I was almost there.
Everything narrowed down to this moment, to this second, to this next breath.
Years of preparation had come down to this.
A bang against my living room window had me stumbling onto my side. I couldn’t bring myself to look up into the window, but judging from the screaming coming from behind it, someone was there.
Someone looking for me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
I didn’t have a choice. Get up, Blaire. Get the fuck up.
My cover was blown. I stumbled to my feet, leaping the last bit to the stairs. I took them two at a time, focused only on getting to the street below. The fire escape rattled and shook when my pursuer stepped onto it, but I couldn’t spare the energy to be frightened.
Fear would get me killed. I had to keep moving.
“Get back here, you fucking bitch!” a man’s voice roared behind me.
I shook my head, jumping to the next step. I was almost to the ground now. My feet hit the pavement with a smack, and I took off down the dark, empty street.
Moments later, I heard the man land on the sidewalk.
My supposedly safe neighborhood meant there was no traffic out on the roads, likely because all my neighbors were in bed like normal people at this hour.
If a lone taxi did pass me, I didn’t have a hope in hell of it stopping.
If I saw a bedraggled girl racing through the streets, I probably wouldn’t stop either.
I was on my own. Think, Blaire, think.
There was no room for fear as I ran. No room for doubt.
I needed to find a way to double back on him. Which meant I needed to lose him first. He panted behind me, cursing between his ragged breaths. One of the small alleys would be my best bet. If I could squeeze through to the other side, I might be able to gain a couple seconds on him.
I darted into the alley next to me, sprinting until my legs burned. After several seconds that seemed to stretch on forever, I came out on the other side. It gave me a minute head start, and I raced into the next alley, my eyes widening as I realized it was a dead end, with only a dumpster to show.
“You’re dead, cunt.” The out of breath threat thundered from the next alley. I was out of time and choices.
I lifted the lid to the dumpster and flipped myself over the top, landing awkwardly on a split bag of garbage.
At this point, my chances were fifty-fifty.
Either my intruder had seen me jump into the dumpster and was storming toward me at this exact moment, and my final, dying breaths would be amongst old take out. Or I got extremely lucky.
My foot had landed in something wet and slimy, the cold spreading up my ankle.
My hand felt like it was in an old container of noodles, and if it wasn’t, I really didn’t want to know what it was.
The revolting smell of garbage was everywhere, days old food making me want to gag.
Forcing myself to breath through my mouth seemed like the only option, except then I could practically taste the nauseating smell. My stomach turned.
I counted my breaths, ignoring the rustling sound coming from beneath me. I hated the dark. In fact, I loathed it. But if I thought too hard about it, I would break.
After the first thirty count, I let myself breath again, sucking in the disgusting air surrounding me. If the man hadn’t come down here yet, it was unlikely he would. Of course, he could just be waiting on the other side of the dumpster, too.
Another thirty, and the rustling grew louder. An animal—at least I hoped it was an animal—lived in here. My foot sank deeper into the garbage bag, and my sweatpants grew damp.
“Thirty more, and then out,” I whispered to myself. “Thirty and out.”
Small claws skittered across my fingers, and I snatched my hand away.
Leave me alone. Fifteen more breaths. I couldn’t hear anything in the alley, and I was taking that as a good sign. All I could taste was rotting garbage, and I wanted to scream.
A tiny set of teeth nibbled on my hand, and finally I shrieked, shaking my burning hand.
“Fuck!” I flipped open the lid to the dumpster to a blissfully empty alley. The perpetrator of the bite scuttered back beneath the garbage, its pink, wiry tale disappearing last. A rat.
A fucking rat.
I laughed out loud, squeezing the small, bleeding bite.
Somehow a dripping faucet had turned into a break-in, a chase through the city, and me somehow leaping into a dumpster filled with God knew what.
I pulled myself out of the trash, trying to ignore all of the different textures covering my body.
This was quite possibly my worst nightmare, besides the one that kept me awake at night.
I couldn’t afford to think about all the germs right now, or whatever diseases a rat carried.
Right now, I needed to know where to go next.