Page 48 of Rule the Night

Please let that be it.

I didn’t entirely buy my silent plea. I was obviously attracted to the three men who’d hunted me through the tunnels — two of them anyway.

Bram was a total dick. And a scary one.

“I know, but what if something had happened to you and I didn’t check?”

“What’s going to happen to me in my room?”

His expression darkened. “It’s a scary world. Anything can happen.”

Truer words had never been spoken, and I knew that better than anyone.

“Whatever. Just… don’t come in my room without permission.”

“Whatever you say.” He looked at my computer, closed on the desk. “So, who was that?”

“None of your business.” If I’d won the Hunt, he and the other Butchers would be planning Ethan Todd’s murder. As it was, Todd was still my problem.

One I still intended to solve.

Remy snapped his fingers and pointed at my closed computer. “Wait… isn’t that the podcast douchebag? The asshole who thinks women are property? Fucking incel.”

Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief. Not like I was going to be best friends with Remy, but at least he wasn’t a fan of Ethan Todd.

“He’s a manosphere hero, yeah.”

Remy scowled. “Some fucking hero. You shouldn’t listen to that shit.”

If only he knew how much I didn’t want to hear Ethan Todd’s bullshit ever again. “I don’t.”

It was a bald-faced lie. I’d watched every video he’d ever posted.

At first I’d been looking for old comments from Chris. The police had seized Chris’s computer when they’d gotten a warrant to search the apartment he shared with June, and they’d let it slip to the media that he’d been a frequent viewer of Ethan Todd’s videos, probably trying to see if they could flush out someone who’d known what Chris had been planning.

I hadn’t found any trace of Chris, which wasn’t entirely a surprise. Ethan Todd had issued a statement I knew by heart.

“The Ethan Todd YouTube and podcast channels have a combined total of over thirty million viewers and listeners. It’s beyond absurd to imply that I should be responsible for the actions of those who choose to watch my videos or listen to my podcasts. If the Blackwell Falls Police Department want to bring charges against me, they should man up and do so, not leak information about an ongoing investigation in an obvious and transparent attempt at placing blame on a content creator instead of the mentally unstable individual who perpetrated this crime.”

Remy lifted an eyebrow. “Looks like you do.”

“I just stumbled on it.” Now he had me feeling defensive. “God! Anything else you’d like to know? My blood type? Or maybe you want a DNA sample?”

He licked his lips and heat rushed between my thighs. “The DNA sample sounds promising.”

I rolled my eyes again to distract him — and myself — from the fact that it sounded promising to me too.

I wasnothere to fuck around with these three assholes. I needed to keep it together, plan for the next Hunt. Now that I knew how it worked, I’d be better prepared to run, to hide.

Next time, I’d be ready to win.

“Why were you knocking?” I was eager for him to leave, both because he was all up in my business and because there was partof me thatdidn’twant him to leave, which was more than a little confusing.

“Knocking?”

“You said you knocked before you barged into my room uninvited?” I reminded him.

He snapped his fingers. “Right. I wanted to tell you to help yourself to the books in the library. And to use the gym if you want.”