The phone starts to ring again and I swipe to answer Grey’s second call, then hold the phone to my ear and close my eyes again.
I don’t say anything and I don’t need to.
“Storm!” He sounds hysterical and I clench my teeth but drag the covers up higher around my shoulders. It’s fucking cold down here. “Something happened.”
No shit.
But I do feel some empathy. It was Grey I brought with me to the warehouse Friday night to check the product we’re accumulating. We had our meeting that way after we got coffee; I showed him the number, he said he had no idea who was textingme. It was also Grey I let drive my car so I could sideline the bitch who stabbed me. The one I noticed following us when I turned onto the abandoned road I’ve got the warehouse at.
I don’t trust Grey, but I like him well enough.
And I don’t know if Lydiaisa bitch at all. Her body pressed between mine and the tree, for one second, I was right back there in the funeral home, and for one moment, I was in control, and not my parents, not my past life, not the things they did in the dark and the paranoia that ate at me when one of them wasn’t home in the night.
Who are you now, Lydia?
“I don’t know if it’s the woman who followed us, or… Or…” He sounds like he’s hyperventilating. Like he can’t quite get everything out he needs to. He doesn’t know I know Lydia. He doesn’t even know her name. I lied and said I chased the person following us off but didn’t get a good look at her. I couldn’t tell him the truth; that she left me on a ledge.
Right now, I would coach him through his panic but I’m so tired, I can’t pry my eyes open again.
Not yet.
“It’s Indie. At the lab.”
I sigh quietly. The lab is his basement. I told him one day it might blow up the whole house but Grey is Grey. Stubborn to a fault.
I try to remember who Indie is.
Then it clicks. His girlfriend. Skinny, pale, piercings. The only details I recall of her.
“She’s…” A sound like a sob and a panicked squeak leaves his lips.
This makes me open my eyes.
He’s not usually so emotional.
“There’s a lot of blood,” he whisper-shouts. “I need… Can you come here or…”
Fuck.
Before I can offer any words of comfort or advice or bullshit, my phone vibrates in my hand.
I pull it away from my ear and check the screen.
The same unknown number I don’t take seriously anymore. Dad said even if the IP is in the Hollows, it’s spoofed. He said he knows who lives there, and they wouldn’t text me.
He doesn’t know I drove down there. Doesn’t know I saw Lynx. But when I asked directly if it was him, he denied it.
Unknown
Next time, it’s Sloane, bitch boy.
Bitch boy.
Okay.
That’s new.
“Storm, please, I need your help. I don’t know what to do and obviously I can’t call the cops and I can’t just leave her and someone wasin my fucking house!”He is losing his shit now.
