Chapter 36
Annabelle
Ishove the final book into its slot. The spine is cracked, and the title is faded.
It’s a history of the local area, something dry and safe.
It feels like a fucking joke. I’m standing in a room full of stories while my own is being written by a murderer.
I turn the trolley and push it back towards the staff room.
My movements are sharp. My pulse is a drum in my ears.
Ethan stands as I pass. He doesn’t say anything. He just follows. I can feel his eyes on me, heavy and constant. He wants me to stay quiet. He wants me to let them handle the violence. He’s wrong. I lost everything. I’m the one who lived in the silence of that house for four years.
Grabbing my bag, I return to him and say bye to Margaret. She waves me off, glaring at Ethan. It makes me smile. I don’t wait for him to open the door for me. My mind is a straight line. I want to talk to Jack Deveaux.
I just know Ethan is going to make it difficult. So will Aidan and Callan once they know.
Ethan steers me towards the Porsche, his hand firm on my elbow, body angled toward mine.
The air splits. A crack, sharp, wrong, and something cuts past my ear close enough that I feel it before I hear it hit—a hard thwack against the library door, splintering the wood at eye level.
Ethan’s arm hooks around me, and we’re down before I can process it, the cold pavement biting into my knees, a small ornamental tree the only thing between us and the open street.
“What the hell?”
“Someone just took a shot at you.” His voice is low and controlled in a way that makes it worse.
The words land in my mind like a second impact. My hands are flat on the ground. “Jack?” I ask, my voice trembling.
Ethan doesn’t answer. He keeps his body over mine. His eyes move over the rooftops of the shops across the street. He is a hunter searching for the source of the noise. I can’t breathe. The air feels too thick.
“Stay low, and run for the car,” he says. “I’m right next to you.” He doesn’t look at me. He keeps his focus on the buildings.
I nod and move because he told me to.
He half-drags me toward the passenger door of the Porsche. I scramble over the road. My skin stings from the scrape of the stone. He opens the door and shoves me inside. I tumble onto the leather seat.
Ethan slams my door and rounds the front. He is in the driver’s seat before I can sit up. He doesn’t check if I’m okay. He puts the car in gear and floors it. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He looks ready to kill the world.
We shoot off into traffic, leaving the chaos behind.
“What is going on?” I ask, my hands and feet too cold in the summer heat. “Did Jack just try to kill me outside the library?”
“No, he’s playing with you. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
“Playing,” I gulp. “Where did he even get a gun from in this country?”
Ethan gives me a look that screams I’m asking dumb questions. Right. Serial killers don’t abide by gun laws. Or any laws for that matter.
My phone feels like a live grenade in my bag. Every second that passes, I expect it to vibrate with another taunt, another reminder that he can reach out and touch me whenever he pleases. Ethan swerves around a delivery van, his face cold, lethal.
“He’s pushing us,” Ethan says, his voice like grinding stones as he suddenly swerves down a side road. “He’s herding us.”
“How did he know which way we’d go?”
“Probably based on the direction the car was pointing.”
He takes a hard left, and I cling to the dashboard, only now remembering I don’t have my seatbelt on. My fingers fumble uselessly until he reaches across at the next corner and yanks it over me himself, clipping it in with one violent movement before throwing the wheel right again.
My heart is trying to claw out of my chest. “Where are we going?”
“Not home.” He glances in the mirror, then at another, jaw locked. “I’m making sure we aren’t being followed.”
A horn blares behind us. Ethan ignores it. He cuts through a narrow street, then another, taking turns so fast the town becomes brick, glass, traffic, sky, then brick again.
I twist to look out the back window. “Can you see anyone?”
“Stop turning around.”
“I want to know if someone’s behind us.”
“And I want you facing forward in case I have to brake hard.”
I do it because his voice leaves no room to fight. My hands are shaking so badly that I shove them under my thighs.
I feel sick. Ethan takes another corner, then brakes hard enough that the seatbelt bites into me. We are in a narrow side street lined with brick walls, bins, and the backs of shops. No pedestrians. No easy line of sight from the main road.
He kills the engine.
“What are you doing?” I ask. My voice sounds thin and wrong.
Ethan is already out of the car.
My breath catches. “Ethan.”
He slams his door and scans both ends of the alley, one hand disappearing under his jacket. He steps to my side and yanks my door open. “Out.”
I scramble out because the tone in his voice says this is not the moment to argue. My legs feel weak when they take my weight. He pulls me behind the Porsche and pushes me down into a crouch beside the rear wheel.
“What are we doing?” I whisper.
“Waiting.”
“For who?”
“To see if anyone follows the route I just took.”
I swallow hard.
A motorbike goes past the mouth of the alley. Then a van. Then nothing.
Ethan watches the opening to the street with a focus that turns him into something colder than human. No wasted movement. No visible panic. Just calculation and fury.
My phone buzzes in my bag, which I dragged out with me for some reason.
I flinch so hard I almost hit my head on the car.
Ethan’s eyes cut to me. “Don’t.”
“It’s him.”
“I know.”
It goes silent.
We stare at each other as my blood pounds in my ears.
A car screeches into the alley. A silver Audi.
“Fuck,” I mutter and press closer to Ethan.
“It’s Callan,” he says.
The car pulls up right on the Porsche’s bumper, and Callan gets out, crouching next to us. “What in the fuck was that?”
Ethan’s face is carved from ice. “Shot from across the street. Missed on purpose.”
Callan’s eyes snap to me, sweeping over my face, my hands, my knees. “Are you hit?”
“No.” The word catches on my tongue. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think?” he bites out.
“I’m not bleeding.”
He exhales once and drags a hand through his hair. “Fucking cunt.”
Ethan holds out his hand. “Phone.”
I stare at him. “Mine?”
“The message.”
My fingers fumble in my bag. The vibration has stopped, but the thing still feels alive. I pull it out and hand it over. Ethan unlocks it with a look from me and reads the screen. His jaw hardens.
Ethan turns the phone so I can see it.
Missed you.
A horrible sound leaves me. Half laugh, half panic. “He’s enjoying this.”
Callan’s expression goes dead. “I’m going back to the industrial estate.”
“No,” Ethan says at once.
Callan stares at him. “He just took a fucking shot at her.”
My hands tremble as I take the phone back from Ethan. It instantly buzzes in my hand. Locking gazes with Ethan, I lick my lips and then tear my gaze away from him to the screen.
You’re prettier than I expected when you’re scared.
“Fuck off,” I grit out in a whisper. “Why is he doing this?”
Ethan glances at the screen and grimaces. “Pretty. I’ll fucking make him really pretty before I fucking slam a blade into his throat.”
“Pretty,” Callan murmurs. “I really fucking hate him.”
“Join the club,” I mutter. “We can’t just sit here like idiots out in the open. Can we please get off the street?”
“Yes,” Ethan says, casting a glance up and down the alley. “No one is coming to finish the job. But we aren’t going home.”
“Then where?”
“Somewhere he doesn’t know about,” Callan says.
Ethan gives him a flat look. “There are very few places he doesn’t know about.”
“Then somewhere he can’t get to quickly,” I snap. “Just pick one.”
Ethan studies me for a second, then nods once. “Fine.” He gets to his feet and helps me up. “Get in the Audi. You’re with Callan. We’ll split up and meet at the location. Ping Aidan and me when you’ve decided.”
Callan’s hand lands at the back of my neck for one brief second, steering me to the Audi, then he takes it away before the contact can settle into anything.
I slide into the passenger seat, bag clutched to my chest, and slam the door.
Ethan is already back in the Porsche. He doesn’t look at me again. He just tears out of the alley.
Callan gets in beside me and starts the engine. “Seatbelt.”
I yank it on with shaking fingers.
He pulls away at once, not too fast, not too slow. Ordinary. That seems to be the trick in this nightmare. Look ordinary while everything burns.
My phone is still in my hand. I want to throw it out of the window.
Callan glances at the phone, then at me. “Put it on silent.”
“What if he messages again?”
“He will. You don’t need to hear it buzz.”
I switch it to silent and drop it into my bag like it might bite me. “Where are we going?”
“Working on it.” He takes a left, then another, checking mirrors more than the road ahead.
The town passes in chopped-up bits. Brick terraces.
A row of takeaways and a florist with buckets of bright flowers out, that I can’t bear to look at.
A bus stop full of people who have no idea my life has just split open again.
I don’t ask where we are going. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s somewhere my head won’t get blown off, accidentally or otherwise.
Callan drives in silence for nearly five minutes before he says, “I’ve got one.”
“What?”
“A place.”
I turn to him. “And he doesn’t know it?”
His jaw tightens. “He might know of it. He doesn’t know we use it.”
That is not comforting in the slightest. “Fantastic.”
“It’s better than fantastic. It’s practical.”
“You really know how to sell things.”
He takes a roundabout, exits toward a quieter part of town, then finally looks at me for half a second. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” I’m not okay. I’m nowhere near okay and haven’t been for a long time.
“Liar,” he murmurs, but lets it go. He reaches for the phone in the holder on the dash and dials. Aidan answers.
“I’m not available right now.”
“Sounds like you are,” Callan says.
“I’m hunting.”
“How rude. Treslock, five miles east of the coast. 50 Handmere Road.”
“Got it, but won’t be there for a while. Tell Ethan.” He hangs up.
“Hunting?” I gulp.
“Means he got something.”
“And he’s running into danger.”
“Aidan doesn’t run into danger. He saunters. Smugly.” He shoots me an icy smile.
“Not helping.”
I sink back into the seat and stare out of the windscreen. My palms are damp. My knees ache where they hit the pavement outside the library. Every time I blink, I see the splinter in the door behind me at the height of my face.
A shot meant to miss.
That is worse than if he had failed.
“He wanted me frightened,” I say quietly.
Callan keeps his eyes on the road. “He got what he wanted.”
“Thanks. But what I mean is why? Why not just kill me if that’s his intention anyway?”
“Jack likes to play games.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“I know. It’s all I’ve got.”
Callan is quiet for a stretch after that, and I let him be because I do not think either of us has anything useful left to say. My nerves are scraped raw. My thoughts keep circling the same point and finding new ways to make it worse.
He saw me.
He watched me leave work.
He lined up a shot at my head and chose to fire it to scare me, not kill me.
My stomach turns. “I don’t like us all split up.”
“I’m calling Ethan now. We’ll be back together soon.”
“Minus Aidan,” I mutter as Callan makes the call. Nothing about that sits right with me. I want them all with me. I need them all with me.
I can’t do this without them.
And that right there is the problem and the solution.