Whatever Tolusa wanted from her, she only needed one thing from it first: Alex. After she found him, they would both find the answers to this mess straight from the killer’s mouth.
As Audrey walked ahead, she mapped out her next moves with crisp determination. Arrive in Tolusa, track down Alex, then get to the truth about the man who haunted her family. If Tolusa were a place to disappear, she would use it to hunt. If the voice wanted her, he would follow—and she would confront him on her terms.
Keep listening, she thought.
Oh, I am. You’d better run.
She broke into a jog. “Wait—hey, wait!”
The driver cracked open the doors, and Audrey stumbled up the stairs. As the bus lurched away, heat blasted from the vents, making the air smell of coffee and wet wool. She shuffled past staring passengers to an empty seat.
That’s her.
Everyone knows her face.
She’s the reason for this media circus.
Audrey sat and pressed her forehead to the glass. A woman with hard eyes glared. “You. They said you were innocent. Now you think you’re better than us.”
Audrey met her stare. “You have no idea what I’m thinking. And they never said I was innocent.”
The woman’s lips curled as a shank flashed low. “They gave you forty dollars. I want it.”
Her pulse steadied into a calm rhythm. “I’m not afraid of you,” Audrey murmured.
The woman moved first, but Audrey caught her wrist. The rudimentary weapon still nicked her palm. When the bus stopped hard, more voices erupted.
How did she…
The way she moved…
She’s not normal…
Shock and fear pooled around her, and the woman froze, open-mouthed. Audrey stared back, daring her to try again.
She didn’t.
Audrey wiped the blood on the seat and looked away. The city ahead had more people than she’d been around in years, and she needed to be ready. Two hours to Tolusa meant two hours to plan her next move. She would find the man who haunted her family and force him to tell the truth about what happened that night. More than just clearing her name, her reputation—and her very sense of self—hung in the balance. If she could finally unravel the truth, she might recover not only her innocence but the last pieces of her lost family, and maybe even her sanity. In chasing him, everything was at risk: her hard-won freedom, the fragile grip she kept on her mind, and the hope that one day she could stop running. She could almost sense a thread, fraying but unbroken, tying her mind to his, waiting to be tugged.
For years, she’d speculated that the killer had wanted something from her that night. While she hadn’t heard himspeak to her in prison, he circled her nightmares. Was it revenge or something stranger, something only she could give him? Maybe it was a secret buried in her mind or a talent he could use for himself, something the fire was supposed to destroy but somehow survived inside her. Now, his words throbbed with warning, as if he expected her to remember something she was supposed to have forgotten.
Unable to help herself, she shot a glance over her shoulder. A dark sedan followed closely. When the bus turned, the sedan turned. Audrey eyed the car. He was no longer just a voice in her head; now he was flesh and blood.
You didn’t think I’d let you wander off alone, did you?
She straightened in her seat, tuning out the bus. As it rumbled on, she resisted turning around again. Predators made mistakes when they believed they were hunting prey.
You want me? Come get me.
His response was instant.I will.
A smile spread across her face.
Not because she wasn’t afraid…but because she was done pretending not to know how to break things. She’d once torn open a locked evidence room with nothing but a broken chair leg and raw nerves. In prison, she outsmarted guards twice her size and kept herself alive by reading moods and intentions behind words.
If anyone doubted her grit or thought she was helpless outside those walls, they were about to find out otherwise.
2
