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“I want to get closer.”
Shit. Fine. Whatever. But he was sticking to her. When she started walking again, he was right at her side, shadowing her movements, searching for threats in the darkness.
“I’m not someone you should be obsessed with,” she murmured.
Yeah, she was.
“I’m not brave. I’m not a fighter. That night, I was terrified and desperate. I didn’t have a choice. It was either find a way to survive or die like my friends.”
They were nearly at the edge of the fountain.
And the closer they got…
Was there something in the water?
“You have the wrong idea about me,” she said. “I was just the lucky one who survived. There is nothing special about me.”
He happened to think she was damn—
Something is in the water.
He surged forward, his hands slapping on the stone wall of the fountain. A body floated in the water—red water. The water was red with blood. “Call nine-one-one!” Hunter bellowed. He leapt over the fountain’s exterior wall. Grabbed the body. A woman. Her long, wet hair floated around her. He flipped her over, and blood swirled around him even more.
He heard Shelby speaking on her phone. Voice desperate. High.
But his eyes were on the woman.
I know that face. The girl from the diner. Tiffany. His foot kicked against something in the bloody water. A phone? But he ignored it as he hauled her out of the water.
A long, deep slash covered her throat. There were other slices. Other wounds. She hung limply in his arms, unmoving. Soaking wet. He carried her out of the fountain. Lowered her onto the ground. Shelby reached for the woman, trying to help, but there wasn’t anything they could do. He knew that.
No pulse. No movement. No breath.
But he still tried. Dammit, he tried.
His hands flew over Tiffany because she hadn’t been gone long from the diner. She’d been there with them just minutes before.
It hadn’t been long at all.
Ten minutes? Fifteen?
Her blood filled the fountain, and her battered body didn’t move.
Shelby had dropped to her knees beside him. “No, no, no…”
They were still crouched over Tiffany, trying to bring back a dead woman, when another vehicle screeched to a stop nearby. A door opened. Footsteps thundered toward them.
A man’s voice shouted, “What in the hell is happening?” Then, “Police! Put your hands up!”
A flashlight’s illumination hit Hunter in the face. Hunter and the dead woman before him.
“I found her like this!” Hunter snarled. “I didn’t do it!” But he lifted his hands. Wet from the water and her blood.
“We found her,” Shelby corrected.
The flashlight bobbed toward her. Then…“Fuck. Shelby? Shelby!” The flashlight lowered as the cop rushed forward. And as he came forward, the illumination from the fountain’s lights allowed Hunter to see his face.
Speak of the fucking devil—
