"Ask him how many of us there were."
I threw off the sheets and stood up.
The floor was cold. The air was cold. Everything was cold, had been cold since Gabriel left, since I woke up in that motel room with clean hands and no memory of how I'd gotten there.
I needed air.
I needed to move.
I needed to stop thinking about the blonde who wasn't there and the collar that wasn't on my throat and the man who'd promised me forever and then disappeared.
I pulled on jeans. A sweater. Boots that had seen too many miles. The knife went into my waistband. The gun went into my pocket. The phone went into my other pocket, dark and silent, waiting for the next message I didn't remember receiving.
The door.
The hallway.
The stairs.
The street.
The city was quiet at this hour.
Four in the morning—or maybe five, or maybe three. The sky was the color of old bruises, purple and grey and black bleeding together at the edges. The streetlights cast pools of orange on the sidewalk, and I walked through them one by one, counting, because counting was the only thing that kept me from screaming.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
"Daddy."
I didn't realize I'd said it out loud until I heard my own voice, soft and broken, echoing off the buildings.
"Daddy, where are you?"
No answer.
There was never an answer.
I kept walking.
The shadow was across the street.
I noticed it at the corner of my vision—a flicker, a movement, something that didn't belong. I turned my head, and there it was. A figure. Tall. Male. Standing under a streetlamp with his hands in his pockets, watching me.
I stopped.
He stopped.
We stood there for a long moment, frozen, the distance between us crackling with something I couldn't name.
Did I know him?
Had I killed someone he loved?
