But why?
Audrey frowned, scanning the overfull club. Bodies pressed together as night bled toward morning. Still, the face she’d know anywhere was missing. Strobes and neon fractured her vision, flooding everything with light.
Her eyes twitched under the assault.
She half-closed her eyes and drifted, weightless in the chemical glow. The floor stuck to her shoes, throat burning from the last hit. She dug her nails into her hand, just enough to feel it.
Stay here.
Stay in your body.
Drugs worked too well. They shut out everyone and made the world unreal. She wasn’t just chasing a high—she was running from a memory she couldn’t bear to remember sober. Every timeshe slowed down, she saw the fire again and heard the screams. Her mother’s face, twisted with rage inside the flames, had haunted her in every sober moment.
Moving inside the club was easier during these times. Audrey drifted through the crowd, invisible even to herself, like an apparition with lipstick and instincts. She searched for Skyler. Even this high, Audrey kept looking back at her friend. Skyler was alive and upright—not dead in the dressing room. That counted as good luck these days.
Audrey tipped her drink back, shaking off paranoia.
If the killer lurked nearby, he’d struggle to get her alone in this crush. Too many observers, too many witnesses. The crowd’s murmur merged into background noise, easy to tune out.
She laced fingers with her client, squeezed, and nearly toppled. Wobbly from the hit, but worth it. Bliss poured through her blood. Other people’s thoughts cut out, like a severed wire.
Her stockbroker client—Mike or Mark—smelled of cologne and spreadsheets. He breathed against her ear: “You’re so beautiful. I love your tattoo.” His fingers followed the roaring bear ink along her back across the one thing about her that still felt like power.
He paid well. She wished he’d shut up so she could pretend he was someone else.
Audrey led him to the couches, dragged him atop her. She slipped her hand between his legs, cupping him in a brisk, practiced motion. He pawed at her breasts, his mouth trailing down her belly. A muted noise escaped her, more a performance than pleasure. Her head lolled to the side, roaming the room behind heavy lids.
Everyone else was busy.
Skyler had a client bent over the couch. Tara straddled another, relentlessly. Further down, an unfamiliar couple tangled together.
She didn’t know them. New blood.
The man knelt between the woman’s thighs, shadows veiling his face. The air around him was pressurized. Like the room itself was bracing for something it couldn’t explain—and she’d found the source. A maelstrom churned beneath his skin, and the sense ofotherwas so real it bordered on physical, pressing against her aura, not just her nerves.
She kept watching.
Each time the strobes flashed, his eyes seemed darker than they should. Light never reached his collar. Shadows devoured his face. Audrey ignored her client, homing in on him.
Though in darkness, she saw he was tall, lean, and strong. Tattooed forearms flexed. Black ink bands disappeared beneath his sleeves. The shape snagged her attention, drawing on memory.
She couldn’t place why.
His hands—large, veined, hair-roughened—held the woman’s thighs. Heat flushed through Audrey as he moved.
He hadn’t noticed her, but his stillness made her think he knew.
Did he?
The woman pulled him closer by his hair. He let her legs fall, fumbled his fly, freed himself, then pushed inside with a hard thrust. His hands locked on her hips, no hesitation or gentling. He stayed silent while the woman gasped. Shadows kept his face concealed.
It was impossible to stop staring. She wondered how long it would take him to notice her.
Look at me.The thought snuck in, uninvited.
His head lifted, slowly. Like he’d been aware of her the entire time and had simply decided the moment had come.
Their eyes connected through haze, smoke, and light, shocking Audrey’s system.
