Page 6 of Burn With Me

I flashed her a hard stare, freezing whatever else she was planning on saying.

“You disobeyed me, and in public, you don’t get to come until much, much later.” My eyes flicked to the soiled dresses. “I guess your decision has been made, you’ll be getting them all. Now take them up to the register and buy them.” I opened the door and stepped out. “Oh, and Brit, don’t clean them off.”

Okay, maybe I was an asshole.

Derek

The world was blind.

One thing that I’d become acutely aware of since my escape was that for all the cameras and phones and fancy tech that had come about, there were much fewer people that paid attention and more that were content to bop around in their little bubbles of merriment. As if they were ostriches with their head in the sand, they would stay to themselves, hoping that no one saw them. The exact opposite was true. The more they didn’t see me, the greater the target they became.

This guy sitting beside me was a perfect example. He had massive headphones on as he softly recited the lyrics of his song. His hood was pulled up on his hoodie while he remained one hundred percent fixated on his phone.

Did he notice me staring when he put in his lock code?

Nope.

Did he notice me reading his messages while he talked to multiple women at the same time?

Nope.

I looked closer. Unbelievable. He relayed the same messages of love and affection and how they were the only one. Did he notice that I heard his entire conversation with his buddy about where they would meet up later and how much fun they would have?

Nope.

In the twenty minutes that I’d quietly sat beside him, I’d learned more about his life than he realized. The other thing I had noticed since being out in the mainstream of society was that people had an arrogance to them now. A ‘you can’t touch me,’ or ‘I’m going to tell my mommy’ attitude. Here, have a tissue, you sorry saps of walking burnable flesh. Their arrogance only fueled me further.

They thought they were untouchable, so I made sure to remind them that they were no better then the generation before them and the one before that, and they would burn just as bright.

I was the equalizer that society needed. I was the dragon that had been set loose on the world to remind all those who’d forgotten that even in this new fandangle tech society, there was still a pecking order, and I was one of the few at the top of the food chain.

Asher had gone soft or maybe had forgotten where his roots were. I wasn’t sure yet, but he lived in a spacious home inside a gated community. He worked as a firefighter, which made me laugh. But what really burned my ass was the fact that the asshole had grown up to look like a fucking supermodel, and other than one shitty photograph of us together, there was nothing in or around his home that suggested he even remembered me. I planned on making sure he remembered.

I didn’t think I could hate my brother any more than I already did for sending me to that fucking nut house and then never coming to see me, but…I was wrong. With each passing week, my hatred morphed into a loathing that was getting harder to suppress.

However, the one thing I did respect about him was his observance of those close to him. His head was always turning, and his eyes searched the faces that passed by him. At least he’d learned one thing from our time as children. I hadn’t been able to get close to him, but I’d also managed to go unnoticed as I followed him around, which made my next moves so much more exciting.

Once more, I became the hunter as Asher stepped out of the high-end female clothing store with the woman he was seeing. She was hanging all over him. He looked like a pack mule with all the bags he was carrying, and I dropped my head to look at my own phone as they drew closer.

“Asher, sweetie, I’m parched. Can we go get a drink before heading home?” the woman begged like she was a dog looking for a bone and not a human.

“No, you can wait,” Asher said flatly, and the corner of my mouth pulled up as she huffed and made a little pouting noise.

“But, Asher—”

“I said no. Do you need another lesson,” he asked, as they passed by and I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I found their entire exchange entertaining. A flash of Asher hitting the woman to teach her a lesson flashed before my eyes and my smile fell. I glanced up at their backs and studied the woman closer. No, her body language didn’t fit. She looked more like she wanted to toss Asher down in the middle of the mall floor and fuck him in front of everyone.

Their steps receded as they moved further away from my perch. I moved quickly through the department store that would take me to the same parking lot where they were headed. It was best not to look like I was interested in them. Instead, I became a shy introvert just trying to get some shopping done. I grabbed a deodorant and a new T-shirt as I walked toward the exit and quickly used the self-serve checkout.

Dora’s cards were coming in handy. My heart hurt as my thoughts drifted to the woman who had seen more than a monster in me. I’d never forget her kindness, and I still kept everything about her farm as clean and neat as the day she died. Her mail was gathered, the car was used, and anyone who saw the daily work in the fields and gardens would think that she was still alive and well.

In some ways, she was.

Pushing my way outside into the hot midday sun, I shielded my eyes, immediately fixing on the couple that was ambling along the row to a car parked at the end of the large lot. I walked slowly toward the bicycle that was neatly chained up and knelt to undo the metal links and watch my prey.

I’d memorized his truck, but that was not the vehicle they approached. The woman he was with had expensive taste indeed. She got in the driver’s side of the fancy red sports car, and I quickly stored the plate number, make and model away in my brain as it approached.

Peddling on my bike, I headed toward the stoplight that left the parking lot and turned in the same direction as her blinker. I cruised down the sidewalk and could hear the sports car’s loud motor approaching. It flew past, but they didn’t head for the freeway and instead made a direct line for the expensive condos that looked out over the ocean.