Brittany’s eyes jumped to my face once more. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but maybe it’ll spare you some trouble. If you ever hear her mention someone or something named Montrose, ignore it. Don’t ask any questions. Pretend it never happened, just trust me.”
I stored the name in my memory and wondered what it referred to. Their supplier? A shipping company? A location?
“Didyouask?”
Her face burned again. “Yes, and it cost me my job. I still have no idea what it refers to, so I can’t tell you anything else anyway. Just know once you’re on Melanie Browning’s badside, you’re pretty much exiled in this town. I’m lucky I got this job. Your total is $36.30.”
That was all I was going to get, I knew it. And it wasn’t nothing.
I reached in my wallet for forty dollars just as the doorbell jingled again. “Thanks for the info, and sorry things didn’t work out for you.”
Brittany took the money and made my change with a shrug. “It’s fine. I just need something to help cover rent for the rest of this semester, and I’ve always loved books, so it all works out. Good luck.” She handed me a handful of loose bills and coins, then pushed the wrapped books at me.
“Thank you,” I said as I stepped away, juggling the change, to make room for the woman shopping for romance novels who had queued up behind me. I took two steps into the young adult shelves when I stopped dead in my tracks. My change fell from my hand, the bills fluttering to the floor and the coins dropping like heavy rain on the carpet.
The man who had been outside my window the night before stood in the middle of the aisle, staring right at me.
The ghost.
My brain could not make sense of it. I hadn’t seen him for a decade, and he was dead.
But there he was.
My body went rigid with fright. An icy-hot blast of adrenaline hit me so hard, my fight-or-flight response turned into freeze-and-gape.
I had to be dreaming. IknewI was dreaming. It was impossible.
The man who’d held a gun to my head that night in the hotel room a decade before—the man my father had shot and killed—was standing right in front of me. He had the same nearly invisible blond hair cut close to his scalp. His face was pocked with more signs of age, but the unmistakable scar that slashedacross his right eye in an angry, puckered welt was as prominent as ever.
“Hello, princess,” he said in the voice that had haunted my dreams since that night. The way my body began trembling at the sound, a reflex as if no time had passed and we were back in the hotel room, told me I was not dreaming. His thin lips turned up into a sinister grin and he stepped toward me. “I believe you have something of ours.”
At those words, my insides liquified. I shoved my wallet in my pocket and turned to run. He was blocking my path, so I peeled back around the end of the aisle and headed up its other side. He was halfway to the other end of it already and stepped out to grab me as I dashed for the front door.
He lunged and got a grip on my left arm, knocking the books loose. I let them fall and let my instincts kick in.
In a blink, I whirled on him and drove the heel of my palm into his nose with a sharp uppercut. He never saw it coming. When his head snapped back, I swung the side of my rigid hand into his exposed throat. I could have cracked his windpipe with the right pressure, but the thickness of his meaty neck spared him. Still, he stumbled and gasped, clutching at his face and now struggling to breathe. It allowed me to free my other arm from his grip. The woman shopping for romance novels screamed and threw her hands over her mouth. Brittany ducked behind the counter. I’d lost sight of the teen shopping for YA books and prayed he wasn’t live streaming the whole scene from his phone. I threw myself out the shop’s door without a glance back and ran like all get-out up the sidewalk.
My mind was near blank with panic. How he’d finally found me, I didn’t know—how he wasalive, I didn’t know. All I knew was I had to get away.
I flew past all the fancy shops, turning heads and forcing myself not to look back. Turning to look would only slow me down, I knew from experience. I also knew from experience he was following me. The bad guys always followed unless youknocked them down. All I’d succeeded in doing was pissing him off and giving him watery eyes and maybe a nosebleed. I might as well have poked a grizzly bear with a sharp stick.
I heard gasps behind me as I sprinted past the hair salon, and knew he was following. A woman with a dog on a leash appeared in my way, and I leapt over the goldendoodle like a hurdle.
I’d stayed in shape for a decade for this precise reason: escape.
The loud scrape of a café table being thrown aside and dishes shattering on the pavement followed by shocked screamsalmostmade me turn around to look, but not quite. I kept sprinting, my pounding heart pumping blood to my limbs, and lungs pulling air. He was gaining on me; I could sense it. He was much larger and swallowed up huge sections of the sidewalk with each step. Thought of his size took me back to the hotel room when he’d grabbed me and held the gun to my head. He had felt like a brick wall with arms behind me, towering over my teenaged body, which hadn’t been much smaller than my adult body was now.
The row of buildings ended up ahead, with a gap before another row started.
An alley.
Short of diving into one of the shops, it was my best bet.
I turned the corner wide, my feet smashing the concrete as the smell of trash bins and damp pavement hit my nose. A fence blocked the alley at the other end, of course it did.
I began breathing deeper, prepping my legs to launch me up over the fence in a climb for my life because I knew if he caught me, he would kill me.
The end of the alley felt miles away with every step closer he came. I heard him gaining on me, his breath heavy and thick.
