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God, he can NOT seriously be thinking this!
“Absolutely sure! Marcus, I swear, I haven’t even thought about him once, in like, seven years!”
“Alright,” he says slowly. “I believe you.”
“Good,” I snap.
I’m fucking terrified of a murderer coming after us and threatening our lives, and his implication that I might be wilfully choosing to protect someone who killed an innocent person, someone who meansliterally fucking nothing to me, is insulting, and for the first time with him, I feel slightly hurt.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
“Thanks.”
I slump down into the soft cream cushions of the sofa, thoughts swirling around my mind like a hurricane.
The murder happened Friday night. It’s currently only Sunday afternoon.
There’s still time. They’ll get him. They have to get him.
“Do you still have the detective’s card?” I ask.
Marcus reaches into his back pocket and pulls it out. I glance at the name. SIO John Torres - GMP Salford. I’m not sure why, but it’s reassuring that it’s the same detective quoted in the article as the one who had come to see us.
I start to think that maybe Marcus is right, that we should report it. I open my mouth to say so, but a darker thought cuts in before the words can form. Would reporting it make me look guilty by association? Would they think that I intentionally withheld information when they spoke to us at Marcus’s house?
My rational brain is saying to call and tell the truth, but fear stops me. The thought of my flat back in Manchester stops me. The way the air itself had felt threatening the moment I walked in. I can see the knife marks slashed across my sofa and my bed, tearing through the space like it means nothing.
Marcus was right. It wasn’t random. It was a warning.
And suddenly, the idea of telling anyone feels like standing at the edge of a cliff and willingly stepping off.
Marcus reaches out and takes my hand. “Are you alright?”
I shake my head. “I’m scared. As much as I love being here with you, which literally feels like a dream, I wish it didn’t have to be in this… circumstance. I don’t know what to do. I keep watching the door, listening for any sound of a car outside. I just… I don’t know.” I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye, suddenly feeling all the emotions of the past few days bubbling up to the surface.
“Come here,” Marcus says, pulling me in closer. He wraps his arms around me in a big, warm hug and kisses the top of my head.
“It’s going to be alright,” he says, rubbing my arm reassuringly. “I promise.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. He doesn’t know where we are. As long as we stay quiet, don’t post anything online, don’t tell anyone anything, we just wait here until the police have caught him. They’ll do their job,” he insists. “They’ll find him.”
I can’t help but wonder if Marcus is trying to convince himself as much as me.
“Everything will be okay,” he says. “I promise.”
Chapter 37
Marcus
I’m scared too, but I can’t let it show. My job is to protect her. That’s the whole reason I brought us out here – somewhere no one would think to look. Somewhere safe. The alone time with her is an added bonus. But right now, every sound has me on edge.
I run through any possible ways we might have been followed.
“Have you told anyone where we are?” I ask.
“No. I told Angela we were going away, but I didn’t say where. I didn’t even know myself until we got here,” she says.