Black flares at the corners of my vision,. The sound and color melding like it does whenI play my harp, but this time the music and the notes are different. Violent and hideous.
“What’s happening?” I shout, but my voice, weak and not used to volume, doesn't carry.
“She’s not letting us get closer," Hendrick calls back, apparently understanding my question just fine.
“Who?” I shout again, pressing to his back as he weaves about, cursing as the same pink happens on the other side. I see the next bullet hole appear in the metal on the bike’s beautiful black exterior and grip him tighter. “Who, Hendrick?”Not again. Not him.
He grips me one handed, and then heads straight for the office where we met his boss. It’s a suicide run. Even I know that.
Athena.
He knew, and he said nothing. And I… I knew too. All her rules. All her deceptions. Bile rises in my throat.She killed Milo. Milo is dead because of me.
Hendrick never stops, determined as always to do the job he was hired to do. Protect me. But who will protect him?
“Keep your head down, love. Make it inside, and that’s all you have to do.”
Fear grips my heart. I know what he’s doing and I’m not okay without it, even if it is his job. I didn’t sign any of the paperwork or hire him but that doesn’t mean that I want them to die because he shouldn't be protecting me in the first place.
“No. No, you oversized asshole," I manage to shove out volume, unknowing if he can hear me or not. “No, no, no!”
He laughs and increases speed, looking around for the source of the shot. I spy it before he does, the glint of sunlight on metal. I don't know if he’s counting in his head, but I am. The Ranch comes up fast. Real fast.
But not fast enough.
“Eight,” I mutter, gathering my legs beneath me. “Nine.”
“Not yet, love,” Hendrick reassures me. “You have time. I'll get you there.”
“I know you will.”
I kiss the back of his neck as I launch, pushing my arm hooked around his neck and I swing, hoping I don’t pull him off the bike or over him or anything catastrophic.
Mind, death is fairly catastrophic too, but I need him to keep going and not stop until we get there, no matter what.
I need him to stop taking bullets for me. But I also need him to live.
Even if I don’t. Because I shouldn't have survived that first bullet outside the theatre the night he met me. I know that, and maybe I've been living on borrowed time for a while. I don’t pretend to understand why Athena does things that she does, but it makes a strange sort of obsessive sense.
For ages, I assumed that my stalker was male. Hendrick made the same mistake. We all did, and Athena fueled that fire. Let us believe the lie. She was the one who created my false persona. The one I perform under. She created my rules and made me live by them, the strict ones that made me seem like such a diva when I hated treating people like that. Milo understood, he got it. Sometimes I wondered if he ever saw through the facade.
Now I wonder if his death was an accident—maybe she genuinely thought that I was on that bed and this morning she thought that she’d found me and that scream was one of frustration at getting it wrong, or if she killed Milo for anotherreason–because he was the sweetest, nicest man a girl could have a as a best friend and if she was obsessed with me, maybe I couldn’t have that?
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Too many questions. Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe I won’t get a chance to ask. At least, not after this.
I complete my swing around the bike, crashing into Hendrick’s side. He catches me with an oath, and I smile, relieved that the bike doesn’t topple. The Ranch where his boss and the Lone Star security company is just ahead.
We did it. Mission achieved.
And when the impact comes that I expect, taking the shot intended for me all along as he did for me that first night, it’s not painful at all. More like a punch. Two of them. A double whammy of all things that Athena has slammed into me even though. All the pent up rage and obsession and resentment that she seems to have harbored for so long.
The horror on Hendrick’s face isn’t right. I try to smooth the lines, even as my hands drop on their own. He faces too, and my voice. I push it out, anyway.
“I love you,” I mouth, because that's all that I have in me.
And then I’m gone.
