A memory hits, taking me back to that night.
Remus looks up and smiles at me before the man steps in behind him and takes him by the chin. And the knife slices straight across his throat.
Rick turns in his chair, making it squeak, pulling me from the recesses of my mind. He looks at me, confused as he stands and reaches for me. But I step further away.
My throat is tight as I shake my head and scramble in my pocket for my phone, pulling it out and trying to swipe it open.
“Are you okay, honey? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I blink up at him, the frame still frozen in the background, before I look down at my phone again, just as my sister’s name populates.
Everything in my head comes out in a stream of consciousness. There are no breaks between my words as I tear out of Rick’s trailer, hearing him yell to me, but I’m already heading to my car.
“Goldie, he’s alive ... He’s fucking alive. I can’t believe this—I saw him on the video ... I saw his face. He was supposed to be dead, andhe’s not dead. You need to get here. And Noah needs to get Chase. He’s not answering. Noah needs to call Chase because oh my god, he’s alive, Goldie ...”
“Evie!” she screams, snapping me out of my panic and stopping me in my tracks. Her voice is laced with tears, unsteady as she levels, “Open the message.”
My blood turns to ice as I swallow the lump already formed in my throat. It’s as if my mind’s already figured out something important I’m missing in the moment.
“Goldie ...” I whisper, but she repeats herself, so I pull my phone away from my face. My hand’s still shaking as my chest begins to tremble with the sobs gathering there.
There’s one unread message.What the fuck? I didn’t even hear my phone ding.I swipe it open, hitting the video link.
And the world around me goes dark, until every single piece of me feels like it’s shattered, so I look to the sky and scream.
Chapter Twenty
Him
Leaves rustle and gnash under the weight of his body, and a groan escapes him before his whimpers mix with his own harsh breath.
He hurts. I made sure of it.
I drag his body by the ankles over the ground as dirt and sticks leave a wake behind him.
“Evie,” he whispers.
I often wondered about this moment, picturing it almost sentimentally in my mind. It always felt strange to think of it that way, because how can I feel sentimental about something I’ve never done?
But that’s how intensely I’ve yearned for their deaths. How viscerally I live out this moment in my mind.
This is my legacy. Just like death will be theirs. It’s fucking poetic.
He groans again, his weak hand trying to latch onto a passing tree, but it’s no use.
“We’ve reached our destination.”
I drop his heavy feet to the ground, causing a thud, a reverberation of his impending death, through the forest, before I squat close to his face.
Blood trickles from his nose, the tight skin around his bottom lip popped open like a can of biscuits.
He calls her name again. And I laugh.
“Even in this moment, one that should elicit your life to flash before your eyes ... you’re only thinking about her.”
Poetic.This is exactly where I want you.
I suck in a breath of the crisp air. “I shouldn’t tell you this. I’m going to kill you and let them watch.”
