by Ava Benton
My own voice caught.
I hadn’t heard her voice in two years. She was rarely even awake when I was around. The worst part was not being able to remember the last thing we talked about. I hoped it was something nice, at least.
“I miss you,” I whispered.
She didn’t flinch.
I remembered being glad at first that she had lived.
At least you still have her with you, I would hear from just about everybody who came to visit.
And I had believed that, because she was my mommy and I needed her.
Over time, however? I had started to wonder if there weren’t worse things than death. Like being trapped inside a body that wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do. Like not being able to express an opinion or voice a need or even scratch an itch on the tip of my nose. And forget privacy. There was no such thing for her anymore. And she was always such a private person, too.
My feet dragged a little as I left her—it had been nice to forget my problems for a little while, even when she couldn’t really help me in any concrete way.
I had at least been able to stop worrying and obsessing for a while so I could worry over her; she would never get better.
I was so deep in my thoughts about her, so completely on autopilot, that I didn’t notice the black SUV behind me until it almost caused a collision when it sped up to make a left turn after it should’ve waited.
My eyes darted up to the mirror to see what all the honking horns were about.
The sight of the car—and the tall, hulking driver behind the wheel—started my pulse racing.
“Oh, no, no,” I muttered, fingers squeezing the steering wheel until my knuckles went white.
No way. He wasn’t following me. I couldn’t let myself jump to conclusions like that. He was only in a hurry and didn’t feel like waiting for the next light. People did it all the time. I wouldn’t let it freak me out.
Until he made a right turn behind me. Then another left.
My palms grew sweaty and slid along the steering wheel. My heart started racing. I couldn’t breathe as the panic started taking over.
No, no, not when I’m driving.
I looked around and saw a gas station coming up on my right—it was a split-second decision to cut the wheel and make a skidding turn into their lot. I drove straight to the little convenience store and barely put the car in park before I ran inside.
“There’s somebody following me,” I whispered, looking outside.
The teenaged clerk behind the register looked, too. “Where?”
“I don’t know—maybe they didn’t make the turn fast enough, I might have lost them. Him. I’m sure it was a him.”
I went to the door and looked both ways. It was funny how I was both glad he wasn’t anywhere around and a little pissed off, too. I looked like a crazy person.
“What kind of car?”
“Black SUV. Maybe I should go, in case he doubles back.” I realized I was shaking from head to toe and wrapped my arms around myself.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be driving,” the kid said. “You don’t look so good.”
I didn’t feel too good, either.
A cup of coffee was in order, and something out of the donut case. I was really dipping into the bottom of the barrel, eating sugary carbs when I avoided them like the plague—not because I hated them, but because I liked them way too much and needed to fit into my costumes—but I needed a quick jolt of comfort. The coffee was hot, at least, and pretty tasty.
“You sure you’re all right?” the kid asked. Kid. He was less than ten years younger than me, and I was thinking of him as a kid.
“I’ll be okay. I don’t live far from here. Thank you.”
I just feel like the world’s biggest smacked ass, that’s all. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I went back to my car. I needed to get my life in order, or else I’d end up in a loony bin.
I shook my head in mild disgust as I made the rest of the drive. Nobody followed me. I was imagining things.
Oh, God, I’m going crazy. It’s really happening.
I wondered if it was time to seek out a shrink. There had to be somebody who could keep me from completely falling apart. I knew it was important to process trauma or else risk never healing. I needed to heal. I couldn’t live a life where I was always afraid. I took a big bite of my donut and tried to console myself. It didn’t hurt.
The parking lot around my building was still fairly empty with it being the middle of a weekday and all, which made it easier for me to spot the cars that were there. Like the black SUV sitting where my car was parked before I left that morning.
“Oh, no…” I looked around, already intent on escape.
I was close enough to the car for the driver to notice me—he moved, and his door started to swing open.
My foot poised over the gas pedal, ready to floor it.
But something stopped me. I didn’t know what. Rage? Could’ve been.
Instead of bolting out of there like a bat out of hell, I parked the car and stormed out with my coffee in hand. This was my home. This was my life. He didn’t get to follow me around and haunt me and make me afraid to put a toe outside my front door.
A tall, imposing figure got out of the SUV. Almost impossibly big, like Schwarzenegger back in his early days.
I didn’t care how big he was. I would kill him before I let him hurt me again.
He closed the door and turned to face me as I almost ran to him.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I screamed.
Sunglasses covered his eyes, but his eyebrows jumped halfway up his forehead.
Before I knew what I was doing, my arm jerked forward, and almost twenty-four ounces of hot coffee flew through the air, splashing him from head to foot.
He roared and sputtered. “Are you crazy? Are you fucking nuts?”
“If I’m fucking nuts, it’s because of you!” I screamed, then turned to run up to the apartment. I wasn’t feeling so brave anymore.
He caught me with one wet hand before I got very far.
“I’m supposed to help you!” he growled. “I’m here to help you, not hurt you. And I get almost burned to death because of it!”
6
Slate
I had never felt so disgusting in all my life. Coffee—with cream and sugar, because of course—soaked into my tee and jeans, ran down my chest into my shorts.
I was sticky and would’ve burned, probably, if my skin was as vulnerable as human skin. I normally drank my coffee by the gallon. I finally knew what it felt to wear it.
I had her by the wrist.
She tried to pull away.
“What do you mean, help me? You don’t even know me.”
“You thought you knew me, though. Didn’t you? Or is this the way you always greet strangers?” I took off my sunglasses and used my forearm to wipe away some of the coffee that was dripping into my eyes.
“Who are you, then? Really?”
She tried one more time to pull her wrist out of my grasp, but it was pointless. I had almost one hundred pounds of muscle on her—maybe more.
“I’ll tell you if you would please, please let me wash my goddamned face.” I looked over at the car door, which was also dripping coffee. Great. I’d have to take it to the car wash. It was turning into a fantastic day.
“Just tell me first why you were following me,” she ordered.
“I wasn’t following you. I’ve been here all day.”
She frowned. “You’ve been here? In this car? Why?”
I shook my head. “My brother was following you. I was waiting here.”
“You what?” she shrieked.
The tension grew every second. We would start attracting attention pretty soon if she didn’t stop overreacting.
“Please. Can we please just go inside? I can explain everything. We’re only trying to protect you.”
“From what?” she whispered. Her chin quivered.
“From whoev
er hurt you. Yes. We know.”
We looked at each other for a long time. She was just like a wounded animal, trapped and scared senseless, frantic for a way to escape.
I had seen that look too many times to miss it.
“I’m only here because somebody wants to keep you safe. It’s my job to make sure this guy never hurts you again. Okay? But please, I’m begging you, for the love of God…” I looked down at myself.
She looked down, too. “Okay. Come on. I’m sorry about that.”
She led me through a little walkway between two wings of her building. The word “wings” was probably generous. “Halves” might have worked better. Up the stairs, then down a bleak, fluorescent hall.
“Did this used to be a motel?” I had to ask.
“Actually, yeah. They renovated it years ago, though.” She unlocked the door, and I wasn’t sure what I could expect to find inside. The outside was pretty bleak.
Inside was a different story. She had tried to put a little of herself into the décor, she really had. Big, framed prints on the walls of cities from around the world. Cheerful curtains. Potted plants, flowers, colorful blankets, and pillows. “Do you do a lot of traveling?” I asked as I noted the Moroccan lamp, the Japanese tea set.
She turned her face away and cleared her throat. “No. They’re from work.”
“Work?”
“Yeah. The World Showcase. I go shopping there sometimes.” She handed me a damp dishtowel.
I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough.
And she could tell.
I watched as she frowned, tapping her foot on the floor.
“You need a shower. God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did.”
“It’s all right… I guess.” I looked down at myself again. “I guess you wouldn’t have clothes that would fit me.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I slid my phone out of my back pocket and dialed Roan.
“Who are you calling?”
“My brother. I need clothes.”
“Wait, wait.” She waved her hands. “I still don’t know who sent you here and you’re calling your brother? I don’t like this.”
I nodded. “Grab me another set of clothes and wait outside the apartment for me,” I told Roan.
“What’s going on? I lost her at a gas station.”
“Yeah, well, she found me.” I looked down at my clothes again. “I’ll give you the go-ahead on when to come up with them.”
“Okay.”
Roan didn’t sound too sure of himself, which I could understand. I didn’t feel very sure.
She would need a lot of coaxing. I noticed the way she kept eyeing up the knife block on her counter—not like she could get to it before I did, but it would be cute if she tried.
“See? My brother’s not even going to bring me dry clothes until you’re sure it’s all right,” I said, holding up one hand while I used the other to put my phone back. “We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to keep you from getting hurt.”
“How do you know about that? What is there, some kind of big, scary guy network?”
“You think I’m scary?”
She shrugged. “You’re big, and you were parked in front of my building in a car just like the one that followed me around today.”
“Point taken.” I guessed I would be a little freaked out if I saw a guy like me sitting in front of my apartment after what she went through.
“How do you know?” she asked again.
Answering meant possibly giving her more information than she needed at that point, but she deserved to know who had attacked her.
I leaned on the cheap, chipped countertop. “You might want to sit down.”
“Bullshit. Tell me.”
“Your decision.” I took a deep breath and watched her closely, just to be sure she wasn’t gonna pass out on me. “He wasn’t human. He was a shifter.”
The shaking started in her hands, then moved up her arms.
“I told you, you should sit.” I put an arm around her waist and guided her to the sofa.
She sank back against the pillows and sounded like she was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Head between your knees,” I ordered, pressing her shoulders down until her head was where it needed to be. She was so small, so easy to manipulate.
“Ouch!” she squealed, straightening back up like I had electrocuted her.
“What?”
She winced, stretching a little. “I’m… I have bruises.”
I chewed the corner of my mouth. “Can I? I won’t hurt you. I just want to see what he did.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
I couldn’t explain why. It just felt like what I needed to do. I needed to know what he did to her.
When she nodded and turned her face toward the window, I very gently raised the back of her sweater. What I saw turned my stomach. Big, ugly, purple bruises that covered most of her back. She was so thin, too. I was amazed that he didn’t break anything.
“Can you breathe all right? I don’t mean the panicky stuff. Do you have pain in your ribs? Any coughing?”
“No,” she muttered. “I don’t think I have anything broken, if that’s what you’re asking.” As she spoke, she unwound a scarf from around her neck. I managed not to recoil when I saw what the scarf was intended to hide.
“He tried to strangle you,” I murmured.
“I would say he succeeded,” she shot back in a low, toneless voice.
“But you survived. That’s important. You made it out.”
“Who cares?” she whispered.
“Hey.” I sank to my knees in front of her. “That’s very important. You survived a shifter attack. Not many people can say that.”
“Why me?” She didn’t move her head, but looked at me from the corner of her eye. “Why me?”
“I don’t know. When we find him, we can find that out.”
“You think it’ll be that easy?”
“We found you, didn’t we? And all we had to go on was a name. Who knew about your attack?”
She looked away again. “I went to the hospital and did the whole signing in thing, but when they wanted to bring the police to talk to me, I bolted.”
I shouldn’t have been glad to hear that, but I was.
She might have needed treatment, but the cops would’ve eventually clued into the fact that a shifter attacked a human.
“You didn’t know he was a shifter?” I asked.
“No. How could I? I mean, now that you mention it, I guess that makes sense. He didn’t seem human. He had these eyes…” She trailed off, staring out the window.
“Maybe somebody at the hospital knew him,” I murmured more to myself than to her. “Or maybe they knew enough shifters to know a shifter had done it. You have pretty extensive bruising. It would take a lot of strength to make that happen. And maybe they told somebody. I’m not sure. But word got out somehow. And that’s how I found you. How we found you.”
“We? Who is we?”
“My brother, like I already told you, and my two cousins. We work together. Ex-Special Ops. We help people like you who are scared and need protection.”
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Yeah. I know.” I was still trying to put it all together—how he found her, why he would take such a chance. “Where did this happen?”
“Outside work. I was leaving for the night. He was… he was hiding behind my… c—car…” She covered her face with trembling hands. I reached out and ran a gentle hand over the back of her head—there was a bump there, just like I had guessed.
“He’s not here now,” I said.
“I know. It’s just that I can’t get him out of my head.” She lowered her hands and looked at me with enough hopelessness and fear to just about break my heart.
“I understand that. It’ll take a while.” I stood, slowly thanks to the way my jeans were drying and
getting stiffer by the minute.
She noticed. “Your brother can bring your clothes up. I have clean towels in the linen closet, and the shower pressure might not be super strong, but the water’s hot.”
“Thanks.” I texted him to come up, then had a thought. “Which hospital did you go to after the attack?”
“Orlando General.” I sent Roan another text, telling him to talk to Mary.
We had to get Maggie’s records out of the hospital system, if there were any. Too much time had already passed. The next step would be to find out how Vincent’s spy had heard about the attack. There was my hospital theory, but another was that the shifter might have shot his mouth off. By the time we got to Florida, almost five days had passed since the attack—he could’ve told anybody.
“I’ll show you the way.” She stood up on stronger legs than before, and I gave her credit for pulling it together. She wasn’t as weak as she looked.
We stepped into the tiny bathroom, and I realized too late that we couldn’t fit in there together. I pressed myself to the wall and held my breath as she moved around me.
“Here you go,” she said, handing me two towels. “I’ll leave your clothes outside the door.”
“Thanks.”
She stopped short of closing the door, then smiled. “I just remembered something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know your name. Men who take showers in my bathroom have to tell me their name.”
I grinned. “Slate.”
“Maggie.”
“Yeah. I know.” I was still grinning as she closed the door.
7
Maggie
Roan was a lot like his brother—tall, ridiculously built, with dark hair that practically begged for fingers to run through it. He had icy eyes though, while Slate’s were a warmer blue. I trusted those eyes.