Page 39 of Knot Their Safe Haven

"So maybe it's about time I saved you from your misery."

"What?"

The word came out slurred, wrong. The phone slipped from nerveless fingers as a wave of dizziness crashed over me like a tide. I cursed, trying to reach for it, but my arms moved like they were underwater, heavy and uncoordinated.

Something's wrong. Something's very, very wrong.

I forced my head up, vision swimming as I tried to focus on the rearview mirror. What I saw there made no sense—people running, abandoning cars, faces twisted in terror. The businessman who'd been pacing was now sprinting, his expensive suit forgotten as he fled from something I couldn't see.

My neck muscles protested as I turned, looking through the back window. Police. SWAT vehicles screeching to stops, officers in tactical gear swarming the area. And there—far enough away to be safe but close enough to see clearly—was Dimitri.

Three officers held him back as he fought against their grip, mouth moving in what looked like screams. The same words, over and over, his face red with effort.

What is he saying? What?—

Sound returned in pieces. First, the muffled chaos of panic—screams and sirens and the crack of boots on pavement. Then, threading through it all like silk through steel, music.

"Where Have You Been" by Rihanna.

The orchestrated remix that had played on my last ride home from the gym, the one that had felt like mockery then and feltlike prophecy now. It was coming from somewhere close, maybe the car's speakers, maybe my phone, maybe just my oxygen-deprived brain providing a soundtrack to disaster.

I've been everywhere, man, looking for someone...

Dread crystallized in my chest, sharp and cold despite the growing numbness in my limbs. This wasn't random. This was orchestrated, planned, targeted.

This was for me.

I tried to move, to reach for the door handle, to do something other than sit here like a drugged princess waiting for rescue. But my body had become a prison, muscles refusing commands, neurons firing into nothing.

A woman ran past my window, mouth open in a scream I could barely hear through the fog descending on my senses. But one word cut through clear as crystal, sharp as the glass that would soon cease to exist.

"BOMB!"

The word registered in slow motion, understanding coming in pieces. Bomb. There was a bomb. Near me. Maybe under me. Maybe?—

The world exploded.

Not outward, like movies had taught me to expect. Not heat and fire and dramatic flames. Instead, the ground simply ceased to exist, and I was falling.

The car disintegrated around me like a house of cards in a hurricane. Windows became diamonds of safety glass, catching sunlight like tears. The leather seats tore apart in strips of expensive hide. The roof peeled away like paper, revealing a sky that was suddenly too far above and getting further.

Down.

I was falling down, not out. The bomb hadn't thrown me—it had removed whatever was beneath me, created a void that gravity was eager to fill.

Time stretched like taffy, each second lasting hours. I could see everything with crystalline clarity—the other cars tumbling around me like toys, the debris creating a deadly ballet in the air, the faces of people above growing smaller as I plummeted toward whatever waited below.

The screams were muted now, like someone had turned the volume down on reality. But that song—that fucking song—kept playing, following me down into the darkness.

Where have you been all my life, all my life...

My body wouldn't respond. Whatever drug had been in the air—because that's what it had been, I understood now, a paralytic agent to keep me compliant—had locked my muscles in useless stillness. I was a consciousness trapped in dead weight, aware but unable to act.

The fall felt endless until it wasn't.

The impact drove every molecule of air from my lungs as I hit water—water, there was water beneath the street—with enough force to rattle my teeth. The paralysis that had been curse became blessing for a single moment, keeping me limp enough to avoid shattering on impact.

But then I was sinking.