Page 137 of Pretty Nightmare

His words echo in my head. And then I picture that day when everything went wrong.

And then, like I’m being hit with a bolt of lightning, I know why it went wrong.

“Carter was there,” I whisper.

“He has always been there, Indie. You knew this.” He shakes me. Hard. “You knew this. And you know he’s here now, Indie!” He takes my face in his hands. Stares into me with those light-light eyes I would recognize in the darkness. “I’m sorry I left you when I was five. OK? Don’t you think I fucking regretted it every single day when I had to see you here? In these woods? Losing your fucking mind, day, after day, after day?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think!” He taps my head. “Remember! For once in your life, please! Just… make yourself face the fucking truth! Every day you came out to these woods and lost your mind. Every single fucking day you were living in some dream world where we had friends in other towns, and ate ice cream in drugstores, and… and had fun.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t fun, Indie. It wasn’t fun watching you go crazy every day, then talking you out of it before I could send you home to Adam and McKay and that piece of fucking shit, Donovan!”

“No. That’s… no. I remember everything now.”

“Is that right?”

“It wasn’t all fake. I didn’t make it all up. We have a child together. I loved you. And you. Loved. Me.”

His face softens now. “I do love you. The only reason I’m here right now is because of you. You wanna know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been working for Nick fucking Tate trying to stay one small step ahead of Carter Couture and his brood of little girl assassins all these years. But he caught up to me a few days ago. And he took the last two friends I had. I came here to get you and Maggie and get the fuck out of this place and away from these people once and for all! I’m sorry I left you when I was five. And I’m sorry I stopped trusting you four years ago. But you’re all I have left, Indie. You and Maggie are all I have left. I’m not leaving you now. And you’re not staying here. But we need to get Carter before we go or he will use all those little girls he made to hunt us down and—”

“Carter?” I gasp.

“We need to kill him, do you understand?”

“No!” I shake my head. “No! We can’t kill Carter!”

“We have to, Indie. There is no other way.”

I struggle against him. “No, no, no!”

And then I’m free.

On my feet.

Running.

But he grabs my ankle and I go down hard, hitting my head again.

And black out.

CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO - DONOVAN

He’s holding Maggie in his arms. She’s… not awake.

Probably not sleeping, either.

Not dead, drugged.

And then the image of the little empty vial of Brevital starts to make sense.

“Well, there he is.” My brother’s accent was always different than mine. It’s the one thing that really set us apart. “Finally. He shows.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Come on, Donny!” His laugh scares a small animal in the thick underbrush near his feet and it goes scurrying.