Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 90939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Only then did he speak. “I’ll look into it. Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything that might help me figure out why you were targeted? Any small detail could help immensely.”
I worried my bottom lip, stared at the pond, then whispered, “If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.” I swallowed. “Thank you, Grayson. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“That’s why I’m here . . . to help,” he said without hesitation.
I didn’t know if I’d expected skepticism. Maybe dismissal. But he surprised me when he gave me calm and steady concern instead. And maybe that was what broke through my defenses.
I leaned in slightly, just enough that I didn’t have to speak above a whisper.
“Grayson . . .” We stared into each other’s eyes, neither one of us seeming to breathe. “Have you ever worked a case where something felt more sinister than anything you’ve ever encountered? Where it felt like an infection had taken root and there was no cure?”
His gaze and expression didn’t waver. “More often than I’d like to admit, Violet.”
My chest tightened, and I shook my head. “Maybe this is just the way the world is.” I didn’t phrase it like a question. I spoke to myself, wondering if evil was so ingrained in everything that you couldn’t escape it.
“No,” he said with more force than I’d ever heard him use before. For once, his voice wasn’t calm. It was hollow.
We said nothing for a while after that. The noise of the park filled the space between us. It felt surreal, sitting there with a man I barely knew, talking about the virus in the blood of this town. Of me.
Something about Grayson’s presence anchored me.
He shifted on the bench beside me, not to touch me, but to hand me a pen and a small black notebook.
“Write everything you remember about it. How hot it was outside. The smell. The way the blood was drying. How it was presented. Was it wrapped, laid bare? We’ll start there.”
Something tightened in my throat, but I couldn’t name it. I spent the next five minutes in silence, writing down everything in detail . . . as much as I could be honest about. And when I gave the items back to him, I knew I had to go. This was all too raw. I felt bare and exposed.
But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel alone.
Chapter Eight
Grayson
She had smelled like fear. But not the kind that disgusted me. It was an aroma that called something dark and primal in me.
Something that made me want to protect her.
As soon as she walked away, I sat there and just breathed in her absence. It made me feel some kind of way, a way I’d never felt before. It was discomfort that I didn’t completely hate.
Her presence still filled the space beside me. Her voice, the way her pulse beat erratically at the base of her throat . . . it all called to me. I still remembered the way her fingers trembled slightly when I handed her the pen and notebook.
I felt like I was high.
She’d been lying. I was good at reading people’s body language, and hers screamed that she was keeping things from me. I needed to convince her that the only way I could help her was if I knew everything, but she was fragile and I hadn’t wanted to frighten her further.
More importantly, she had come to me.
Violet had opened herself up—even if she’d been lying about the details—because she trusted me.
I hadn’t realized how deeply I needed that. And that realization shocked the fuck out of me. She could have gone to anyone, but she chose me.
It was a heady sensation to know someone had that kind of faith in you.
I waited until she disappeared down the path before standing, sliding the notebook and pen into my coat pocket, and walking in the opposite direction, back toward my motel. I should have gone straight to the station and logged this recent development with them, because no way this wasn’t all connected.
But all I could think about was her.
The way she looked at me with barely hidden desperation. The tiny hitch in her voice when she asked if the world was just . . . evil now.
My head was becoming too full of her. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Not this fast.
I’d spent years training myself to stay clean, clinical—names on reports, faces in photos, nothing more. But every time she moved behind that counter, every time her eyes flicked to mine and then away again, something slipped. A memory of her voice saying my name. The way her fingers had curled tight around the coffee mug like it was the only solid thing left in the world.