It was hard to sit still. The bus lumbered through the University District. Not her first choice for a getaway vehicle, but it had been stopped near the taxi when Caro jumped out. She perched on the plastic seat, vibrating with urgency. She wanted to jump up, run, yell, do something, anything. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Noah Gallagher staring after her cab as he sprinted down the middle of a busy street, as if the honking cars swerving around him were not even a relevant consideration.
She almost wished he’d caught up with her. So strange and sexy, to be seen like that. So deeply. Delicious and toe-curling, that a man like him wanted her attention so much he’d run out into traffic to try and catch her.
It was more fun to think about her fantasy lover than to dwell on the terrifying real issues of her life. But please. She had to stay focused. A psycho killer was after her ass. No one was going to save that ass but her. She was almost certainly being followed, which meant Mark probably knew where she was. She couldn’t swoon off into romantic daydreams. Much less full-on sexual fantasies.
The suspicion that she was being tailed began yesterday after she’d seen Bea. By now it was as big and heavy as a rock in her throat. There was no one in the bus to inspire mortal dread, just a Goth girl rocking out to headphones and an old lady opposite her. A plaid purse on her lap held a yappy little dog. The dog stuck its head out and eyed Caro balefully, as if it knew something that Caro didn’t.
She’d seen the guy twice yesterday. Big, tall. Black ponytail, hawk nose, strolling casually about a block or so behind her. He hadn’t looked directly at her, but that meant nothing. The competent ones never seemed to be looking.
Then she’d spotted him again at the Stray Cat after that stupid bachelor party gig. That clinched it. More than once was once too often. He’d filmed her on his phone. There were no coincidences. If something seemed sinister, it was sinister. Count on it.
She craned her neck until it ached, squinting through the rainspotted window at headlights and taillights. She didn’t dare draw any more unhealthy attention to Bea, who had problems of her own. It was wrong to pull anyone into the toxic mess of her life.
Like she’d done to Tim.
She shoved that thought away fast, before it could swallow her.
She’d been on the bus since that bizarre belly dancing gig, just riding the loop and hoping to keep Ponytail off her trail until she pinned Bea down one last time.
Sexual fantasies were a huge improvement over her usual thought patterns, at least. Noah Gallagher was going to haunt her dreams, and her dreams were already haunted. His smoldering gaze was a mindblowing distraction.
One she didn’t need. Not when she had to fight for her very existence.
Her eyes stung from lack of sleep. Lashes were gummy from old mascara. She rubbed them, and when she opened them, her stomach dropped into a bottomless hole.
Her hands were wet, crimson. Slippery with blood. She held a boxcutter in her shaking hand. It dripped with hot gore.
She looked up, in dread. The big guy who had been with Mark Olund on the night of the attack at Dex’s office stood before her. The one who had held her down on the worktable while Mark murdered Dex.
She’d killed him. Almost by accident. She’d grabbed the boxcutter at random with her scrabbling hand, and gotten in a wild lucky jab right to his neck. He’d cut her too, in the brief struggle that took place afterwards. She’d barely noticed at the time.
The ghost man stared at her with pale, accusing eyes. His bloody fingers pressed against the hole she’d punched into his throat. Slowly, tauntingly, he lifted his hand—and hot pulsing spurts of blood pumped out, drenching her.
He grinned, with bloody teeth, and toppled slowly toward her.
She jumped up to evade his falling body with a cry—
He was gone. So was the blood, the boxcutter. Of course. It was just the old lady on the plastic bench, peering up with a suspicious frown. Her tiny dog stuck its head out of the purse and bared its sharp yellow teeth, growling low in its throat.
The bus was dead silent. Everyone was giving her the Look. Shrinking away as far as they could get from a crazy passenger who yelled at things no one else could see.
It made her cringe to be that girl again. With her overdeveloped capacity to visualize, combined with extreme stress, hallucinations could happen out of nowhere. The first time was when she was little, after Mom died. Since then . . . she’d had others.
She knew the difference between fantasy and reality. And it wasn’t all bad. Her freakish visual ability had given her art, masks, costume design. It had brought her to the attention of Dex Boyd of GodsEye Biometrics. Which had transformed her life.