In the distance, we heard a door slam.
“Fuck, someone’s here,” Gray mumbled more to himself than me.
He put my body in front of his as one of his hands wrapped around my waist and slowly began to guide us toward the middle of the rink. It was the equivalent of being stranded in the middle of a mass of water, but at least in this position we could hear if someone approached us, rather than going to one of the entrances and being struck because we were an easy target.
My heart was beating erratically already. The only thing that made me feel a slight bit better was the fact that I felt protected and embraced in Grayson’s warmth. Too bad that sense of security only lasted a second, because the whole rink was met with a shrill sound blaring through the sound system. There was white noise, then a soft, feminine voice began to talk. It was a voice I thought I was never going to hear again…a voice that we shouldn’t be listening to.
“No,” Gray uttered.
“One…two…I’m going to get you…three…four…everyone will blame you.”
The walls I had built around myself came crumbling down at the sound of Livy’s voice. The facade I had tightly wrapped myself around, telling myself I was okay, was shattered.
“Gray…Ava.”
“Gray…Ava.”
“Gray…Ava, are you guys all right?”
I could make out Micah’s and Cruz’s voices, but they sounded distorted, almost as if I were underwater.
“It’s okay…we’re okay,” Grayson whispered in my ear.
I didn’t realize my eyes had closed again until I blinked and the whole place was lit up again. The recording had stopped, and two figures were running toward us. I scooted back, and that was when I noticed that Grayson and I were on the floor. How did we get on the floor? I hadn’t even felt us moving. I knew Graysonhad to maneuver me. He knew as well as I did that losing control on skates was catastrophic. Neither one of us could afford an injury.
“Are you guys okay?”
“What the fuck was that?”
Both Micah and Cruz spoke at the same time.
“T-t-that was Livy,” I whispered while I looked blankly at them.
“It can’t be,” Grayson said as the voice of reason, but his tone sounded doubtful.
“With today’s technology, anyone could have distorted the tone to make it sound like her. They want to fuck with us,” Cruz finished.
“What happened?” I asked as I cleared my throat. All of a sudden, it was too dry and I felt as if I were trying to swallow sand.
“Micah and I were just getting here, then we heard a weird noise, so we rushed in. Everything was dark, but as soon as we fully opened the doors, the recording stopped, but we heard it playing on a loop. The lights came back up all at once, so it was jarring to see if anyone else was lurking around… Our main concern was you guys,” Cruz added as he gave Gray a tense look.
As for Grayson, his jaw clenched, but he refused to meet his gaze. Instead, he got busy with getting us off the floor.
Micah shifted on his feet as he looked beyond the bleachers.
“Should we go check out the sound room?”
We all looked at one another and nodded. It wasn’t safe for us to split up…not now, at least. Hell, maybe not ever. Who the hell was behind this? Sending us text messages was one thing, murder another one—it made them sick and vile. But the kind of power it came with, disturbing a whole D1 of a school, that was something else. That was power, and in this person’s hands, it made them even more lethal than we could imagine. Little bylittle, we were all starting to see the strings this person had stuck to us, and now they had begun to play us like puppets.
Get it together, Ava.
I scolded myself for being so weak. The guys were holding on a lot better than I was, and for them, I could be strong—I would be stronger.
No one said anything as Grayson and I switched to our sneakers. I put my blades in my duffel bag and brought it with me, not trusting anything happening to them if I were to leave them behind. Grayson did the same, and neither Micah nor Cruz questioned it. The list of safe places we had kept getting smaller. We were wounded animals being caged in.
The four of us made our way to the back hallways of the facility, up a flight of stairs that now felt eerily creepy. We all looked at one another when we noticed the media room door was ajar.
Cruz opened the door the whole way and was the first to walk inside, followed by Micah, then me, and Grayson at my rear.
