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“I don’t care about the board anymore. If you care so much about it, you watch it.” Her voice came out brittle, defensive, and she hated how it revealed too much. He stepped in front of her, blocking her path to the vehicles. This close, she could smell the clean scent of soap and something else—something uniquely him that she’d noticed before but never allowed herself to acknowledge. Could see the worry etched in the lines around his eyes, the tension in his jaw.
“What is going on?” She stopped, chest heaving, acutely aware of how near he was. Too near. Close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his body in the cool garage air.
“Elena—”
“I can’t be around anyone right now,” she said, her voice breaking. She was shaking—not from cold, but from something deeper. Fear, maybe. Or panic.
He touched her shoulder. She flinched but didn’t pull away.
“You’re scaring me,” he said. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I just…I need to go. I need to be alone.”
“Elena, whatever this is—”
“Please, Brock.” Her voice cracked. “Just let me go.”
Something in her eyes—raw terror mixed with determination—told him she wasn’t going to tell him anything. Not here. Not now.
“You can’t stop me from leaving,” she said.
“You know I can,” he said.
“Then you can go straight to blazes, Brock Carter.” She pushed past him, nearly running toward the elevators.
He stood there, watching her go, his chest tight. Every instinct screamed at him to follow her. But she’d asked for space.
He gave her sixty seconds, then headed for the elevator.
Elena made it back to her apartment and locked the door behind her, chest heaving. She tossed the duffle on the couch and paced, trying to think.
Her phone buzzed.
Another message.
Another image.
This one was worse. Marguerite’s face, streaked with tears. A man’s hand visible in the frame, holding her chin.
Ticktock, Elena. Time is running out.
The room spun. Elena stumbled backward, her hip catching the edge of the coffee table. She went down hard, her chin slamming into the glass surface.
Pain exploded through her jaw. She tasted blood.
The phone clattered to the floor beside her. The image of Marguerite still glowing on the screen.
She tried to push herself up, but her hands slipped. Broken wine glass—when had that happened? Sharp pain lanced through her palm, hot and immediate, blood welling up between her fingers.
She watched it drip onto the white carpet with a strange detachment, the red blooming like flowers made of violence. She couldn’t breathe. The apartment walls closed in, the ceiling pressing down, and all of a sudden she wasn’t in Dallas anymore.
She was back in that alley, back in that room, back in that moment when she’d realized they weren’t going to kill her quickly, that they were going to take their time. The smell of dirt and blood and sweat. The feeling of rough hands. The sound of her own screaming that eventually just stopped because her voice gave out and no one was coming anyway.
“No,” she gasped. “Not real. Not real.”
But it felt real. The terror, the helplessness, the certainty that no one would come.
She pressed her bleeding hands to her face and sobbed.
