Sera.
Chapter 2
Eddie
IwakewithSera'sname in my mouth and ice in my chest.
It’s not a dream. It’s not the usual late-night anxiety spiral where I replay every mistake I've ever made.
No, this is different, a physical sensation, like someone reached through my rib cage and squeezed my heart with frozen fingers. A pulse of wrongness so sharp that it puts me on my feet before my eyes are fully open, and I’m grabbing my gun and my keys from my nightstand in the same motion.
My phone shows no missed calls or texts.
That doesn’t make me feel any better.
Seconds later, I'm in the car, driving with one hand and calling Sera with the other. It rings and then goes to voicemail. I call again with the same result. I try Rivera next, and the call goes straight to voicemail, no rings.
The cold in my chest spreads.
I drive too fast through empty streets, blowing through two red lights and a stop sign. But the feeling won't let up, like afrozen fist around my heart, squeezing in a rhythm that isn't mine. Like someone else's panic bleeds through walls I didn't know existed.
Sera.
I don't know how I know. I can't explain the certainty that something catastrophic has happened, that the woman I've been protecting and falling for has been taken from the one place she was supposed to be safe.
But the ice in my chest and her name echoing in my skull won’t let up.
I turn onto her street and see the house.
Every window is dark. The porch light is gone, the fixture reduced to a twisted metal stump trailing wires. The front door hangs open at a wrong angle, the frame cracked and splintered like something tried to punch through it from the inside.
Cold pours from the doorway in visible waves, misting in the night air like breath from a giant's mouth.
I’m no longer shocked to find the house like this because I’ve seen it this way before—when Red Hands waited inside Sera’s car and the devil inside her house tried to warn her.
Rivera's car is parked in the driveway.
My adrenaline spiking, I park behind it, kill my headlights, and draw my weapon.
I reach the driver's side and look through the window.
Rivera is slumped against the headrest, chin tilted up, mouth slack. A trail of white foam has dried down her chin and neck, crusted into the collar of her jacket. Her eyes are open and blank with that particular emptiness that tells me everything I need to know before I even check for a pulse.
I check anyway.
She's dead.
A Monster energy can sits in the cupholder. I glove up with a wadded pile I keep in my jacket pocket, reach past her, and lift the can carefully to my nose.
Beneath the chemical sweetness of the energy drink, there’s something else, almost like almonds but not quite.
Poisoned. Probably slipped into the can before she opened it or injected through the base with a syringe fine enough to leave no visible puncture. That likely required access and planning, a quick trip into Gas N’ Go and a sleight of hand.
I can only think of one person so prepared, so patient, soobsessivethat he’d go to such lengths.
Red Hands.
I set the can down. Then I see the shape on the lawn.
