I clench my teeth, the idea like tangible violence in my bloodstream.
But I push it aside for now, my foot on the gas, fingers close to snapping the fucking steering wheel in half as, for one of the first times in my life, hockey doesn’t eat at my brain. Neither does the fact I might miss the game tomorrow night. It all seems far away, and the contract does, too.
Nothing, though, is further than Neve, my north, and the anticipation that tastes like vengeance when I see Tasia and Nolan. No bad call on the ice, no hit, no penalty—missed or otherwise—has ever made me feel like this. Not even my father, but maybe because I feel absolutely nothing for that man.
Yet when I think of how Neve’s soft, sleepy voice sounds in the morning, the way her eyes narrow when she’s reading her course books, the quick sarcasm laced in her wit when she snaps back at Sylvan, how well she takes both of us, the future that looks like blond and dark-haired babies both, anyone or anything standing in the way of that has to simply… disappear.
“Faust.”
I blink at Sylvan’s crisp word, worried I’m about to drive off the road or something, the way my mind is tunneling into vengeance. But I’m in the fast lane, going 130, no one in my way.
I cut my eyes to his and see he’s staring straight ahead.
My pulse rises and I narrow my gaze, looking back at the road.
There’s nothing.
“Spit it out,” I snarl, his strangeness heightening my anxiety.
Then again, isn’t he always fucking strange?
“What if it wasn’t Tasia?” His voice sounds raspy. Haunted.
I shake my head once. “You have her number in your phone for some ungodly fucking reason?—”
“No, I mean…” He trails off and ice crawls down my spine, just like the edges of the road, the snow and debris plowed to the side.
“What? Like someone is spoofing her number?” Is Nolan that good at hacking? Is it how he turned off the cameras that should have caught him by the library, stabbing Will? How many people has he fucking killed in his life?
Sylvan is silent so long I want to wreck the car just to get him to fucking speak.
We’ve got half an hour to Drayton, and I still can’t get a call through to Neve. That means calls can’t come through to me, which means I have no idea if she’s safe, if Lincoln knows anything else, if more texts have been sent, nothing. I’m in the dark, and if there’s one place I don’t want to be, it’s the fucking dark.
“No,” Sylvan says slowly. His voice sounds far away. “It’s her number. Her phone.” He takes a quiet breath. “But it’shimtexting Neve?”
My body goes rigid.
I don’t look at him, as if meeting his gaze will confirm his theory.
“He’s with Tasia. Or her body,” he finishes with quietly.
I glance in my rear-view mirror.
Then I nudge the speedometer up higher.
FIFTY-NINE
NEVE
Isit outside of Cynthia’s door, my spine to the wall, a blanket around my shoulders, phone clutched in my hand. The butcher knife, plus several other blades, are within easy reach, and I lean my skull back, resting my eyes a second.
I got disconnected with Faust and Sylvan half an hour ago, and I don’t know quite how much longer it’ll take them to get here. They said Lincoln told them nothing but got in his car to head back to campus, too.
No knocks on the door.
Tasia didn’t answer when I called her. Ten fucking times.
I didn’t reply to her text, and she hasn’t sent any more. Nolan’s cell seems to finally have gone dead, and I haven’t bothered with Mom. She’s in North Carolina, and whether she felt she needed to distance herself from a possible psychopathic son or not, she didn’t have to leave me too, no explanation, letting me assume she simply chose my estranged stepdad over her children.
