For the first time, she noticed she was sitting on something soft, a chair of some sort. Maybe a recliner. She tried to look, but every time she tried to look down, the pounding in her head intensified, became agonizing. She had no choice but to keep her eyes glued to him.
Bile rose in her throat, and she tried to slap her hands over her mouth. Metal clanked, and her arms jerked mere inches from the chair. Her wrists were shackled. She moved her feet, but metal clanked again, holding her still.
Fear had her heart racing, and saliva pooled in her mouth. Unable to stop it, bile surged up her throat, and she threw up. Acid burned her throat as she coughed. The motion and sound sent ripples of pain across her skull.
“You’re disgusting,” he said, but for once, his voice wasn’t eerily calm. Annoyance and anger laced his two words.
Glancing at him, her stomach rolled again. She could make out the darker stains on his light-gray trousers where her vomit had landed on him. She could see discoloration from her puke on the bottom of his white polo shirt.
When he spoke again, his tone was creepily playful. “Do that again, and see what happens. I dare you, Freya.”
She may have whimpered, she wasn’t sure, but when bile shot up her throat again, she turned to the side. The pain was nearly unbearable, like someone was taking a hot metal rod and shoving it into her skull. Over and over again.
But she heard the splatter of her vomit on the floor. Not on him. That’s what mattered. Because she didn’t want to find outwhat he was going to do, didn’t want to have anything to do with his dare, didn’t want anything to do with him.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Afraid to look at him, she focused on the wall she was facing.
Her eyes narrowed.
She wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Her head was pounding, and everything was fuzzy. But when the images on the wall came into focus, she gasped.
Her heart stopped.
Photos of her and Sarah.Hundredsof photos of her and Sarah. And in almost all the photos, her face had been violently scratched out.
Tremors shook her hands, and she gasped for air.
Turning away from the wall of photos, she glanced at him again. “Who are you?”
Ignoring her question, he swiveled her chair so she faced a different wall. He pulled over a wooden chair and sat in front of her. The light on this side of the room was brighter and had her wincing.
“She agreed to go out with me that night, you know. Sarah and I talked at the party, and she was looking forward to being my date at the winter formal. But instead, you killed her.” He looked over her head, presumably at the photos of Sarah. When he returned his gaze to her, she shivered. Hate. That was the only word to describe how he looked at her.
She averted her gaze, and once again, she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. More photos, but only about two dozen. This time, they were of him and... Hazel.
Nothing made sense. “How . . . Who . . .”
He glanced at the photos behind him and smiled. “I heard about the shooting at the resort and was worried someone had killed you before I could. Thankfully, they didn’t.” He pulled a photo of him and Hazel off the wall, a selfie of the two of them ona marina dock. “Then I saw her on television talking about you. Did you know Hazel’s eyes are nearly the same shade of green as Sarah’s? That’s how I knew. When I first saw Hazel, I knew it was divine intervention. Sarah was sending me a message from heaven. It was time.”
He glanced at her with a smile that chilled her blood.
“At first, I thought Sarah had sent me Hazel in her place. A reincarnation of souls, a bodily replacement. She even called me Timmy like Sarah did—the only person I’ve ever allowed to call me that.”
A look of pure anguish flashed over his face, and fear twisted Freya’s stomach.
“But no. I was wrong. Hazel’s been useful, but she’s not like Sarah. Not at all. Sarah was pure. Innocent. Perfect. And Hazel—” He sighed and shook his head. “But that’s when I realized Sarah sent me Hazel so I could find out more about you. She chose Hazel, with the same eyes and same aura as her, so I’d recognize her. It’s quite beautiful, really.”
As he spoke, tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. The fog over her mind had eased a tiny bit, and she clung to the hope that Xander would come for her, that he’d find her, rescue her. She desperately wanted the chance to tell him she loved him, desperately wanted the opportunity to build a life with him.
But the longer the man spoke, the more reality set in.
He was unhinged.
She had no recollection of him. Nor could she recall Sarah ever mentioning anyone named Timmy. As each second ticked by, the chances of her getting out of there alive dwindled.
“The best part was that Hazel was so easy to befriend. She loves to talk, and she told me everything I needed to know. The sheer fact that Hazel was your friend—and she even had you wave at me that one night...” A far-off smile lifted his lips. “That was it. The final sign from Sarah that it was meant to be.”
He rose from the chair, and she flinched. He went to a third wall and scanned the photos tacked up. He pulled three down, grinned, and showed them to her.
