This response wasn’t a surprise. The court vacated her conviction but did not declare her innocent. A gust cut through her jeans. She tugged her sister’s leather jacket tighter.
“Keep moving, Sarafian,” a guard muttered.
She trudged toward the outer fences looming with razor wire. Microphones bristled beyond them.
“Audrey! Over here!”
“Did you kill them?”
“What are your plans now that you’re free?”
“Papers,” a guard said, snatching the documents from her hand.
The gates buzzed open, and cameras clicked like gunfire. She moved toward them, fingers on the cold fence. For a heartbeat, she was eighteen again—covered in blood, Cary’s jacket slipping as police led her from the smoking ruins. Headlines read:THE MONSTER IN PIGTAILS. But the reflection in the camera lens now showed someone else—a hollow-eyed, feral-looking woman.
She swallowed hard and kept searching.
Still no sign of Alex. At first, she scanned the crowd with steady determination, but that confidence curdled into a twisting ache.
Whatever else was happening—the murderer’s voice, the media circus, the old nightmare opening its eyes again—Alex was still the first thing that mattered.
Alex was more than just her lawyer; he’d been her anchor since childhood, sharing bruised knuckles and hastily whispered secrets under blankets. Together they’d survived everything, including the slow grind of the justice system. In all that time, Alex had never once left her stranded.
The truth gnawed at her…he’d never been late, not even five minutes. This delay felt impossible, almost like a betrayal by the universe. Her hands clenched and unclenched, shaking a little before she stilled them in her pockets. Something cold slipped down her spine when she remembered the calls that ended as soon as she spoke his name, the dead silence on the other end. The more she tried to brush it off as nerves, the more her thoughts spun out of control. Was Alex in trouble? Had something happened to him, right now, because of her?She wanted to believe it was nothing, but an anxious pressure ratcheted up inside her, making every breath feel shallow. Maybe Alex wasn't just delayed. Maybe something went wrong.
He isn’t coming.
Her grip on the chain-link tightened.
Ask yourself why.
She refused to believe him or respond. Yet Audrey found only reporters and cameras. Before giving up, her eyes snagged on a woman leaning against a dented sedan, cigarette burning low with a crooked smile.
It was Skyler, a former prison ally Audrey knew from years earlier.
“Hey, stranger,” Skyler called. “You interested in a ride? Maybe a bed and some work?”
Before getting out, Audrey had heard stories about people preying on recently released inmates.
“Not shopping,” Audrey said.
“Sure.” Skyler stepped forward and pressed something into Audrey’s hand. “Just in case you change your mind.”
It was a folded scrap with Skyler’s address and number scrawled across it.
Behind Audrey’s ear, the voice stirred again.
He isn’t coming.
She closed her fingers around the paper and pocketed it. “Bye, Sky.”
Maybe she’d be back, but now Audrey had other priorities. If Alex wasn’t coming—and if the man from the fire came for her freedom—he’d made one mistake.
He’d left her alive.
A bus idled at the curb.DESTINATION: TOLUSA.
The biggest city in the US was so dense it disappeared into itself and was infamous for swallowing people whole. Rumors said if you ran fast or low enough, no one would ever find you again in its endless maze of alleys and high rises. Yet, Tolusa wasn’t just any city; every story she ever heard or half-remembered warned that Tolusa changed people or uncovered their secrets. People said it drew dangerous things to its center.
