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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHARLOTTE

“ W hat the fuck was that?” My babysitter whirls around, gun lifted—then seems to think better of it, because he jerks his gun back to point the barrel at my face. Immediately I shoot my hands over my head again.

“You said that motherfucker was dead,” he barks. “Who else is here?”

“No one!”

I’m immediately answered by another scream. It’s long, loud. Undeniably male.

“Then how do you explain that?” my captor snarls.

“I don’t know!” The gun barrel leers at me. I feel dizzy. I killed my kidnapper with my bare hands only to get shot by some random asshole? How the hell is that fair? “I was kidnapped two days ago. I don’t know what the fuck is going on?—”

More gunfire. But worse—another long, agonized scream. Then: begging. I can’t make out what he’s saying, not exactly, but his desperation is more than clear.

Suddenly, lights flare on from the direction of the house, white and blinding and throwing everything into harsh, jagged shadows. The metal shed. The man pointing a gun at me. The dead fence.

“What the fuck ?” my babysitter spits out, his voice trembling. “You said?—”

“Maybe I didn’t kill him!” I shriek-whisper, panicking because the floodlights reveal a terrifying truth: his finger is on that gun’s trigger. “Maybe he just—maybe he passed out and I didn’t—” The man glares at me. “I was kidnapped ,” I finish.

Screams echo across the yard.

He believes me. Or at least part of him does. That’s why he’s hesitating. But I’m not sure I believe myself. Because I saw Jaxon’s face. His blank, empty eyes. He was dead. I’m certain of it.

“Go,” my babysitter snarls, gesturing toward me with his gun. “Find out what the fuck is going on.”

“No!” I shout it just as the screaming stops, so my answer is unimaginably loud.

My babysitter whispers a furious, “ Fuck, ” and then lunges at me, grabbing me around the waist and pressing the cold barrel of his gun against my temple. I choke out a sob and fight against him, but his grip is tight. Determined.

It occurs to me that I only won my fight with Jaxon because he let me.

“Come on,” the man whispers in my ear, his breath hot even through the balaclava. “Let’s see if you’re telling the truth.”

He kicks at the back of my legs, forcing me to stumble forward. I fight against him, digging my feet into the damp grass, but he’s stronger and shoves me forward. The gun never breaks contact with my skin.

“I will shoot you in the head,” he snarls.

He forces me around the side of the shed, and for a second, the light blinds me. All I can see is a blaze of white, like I’m staring at the sun.

Then a shape emerges. A silhouette. Tall. Strong shoulders. A sturdy build. Walking toward us in slow, lopsided steps.

“Let her go.”

I scream because it’s Jaxon’s voice. After the last forty-eight hours, I’d recognize it anywhere.

“She said she killed you!”

The cold steel of the gun disappears from my temple, and for a second I think my babysitter’s actually going to listen to him, that he’s going to let me go. Escape a trap, fall into another, then get thrown right back into the first.

But no. He’s pointing the gun at Jaxon now.

Jaxon keeps moving toward us. He’s dragging something. A sack. A?—

Body.

A headless body. He’s dragging it by the arm, and I can see the bloody, ruined stump where the head should be.

My babysitter fires his gun. It’s not pointed at my temple anymore, but the stupid thing is still right next to my head, and I feel the blast deep in my ear. Everything rings.

Jaxon says something and laughs, but it sounds like he’s underwater, and I can’t make out his words.

My babysitter fires again. Jaxon doesn’t even react.

How is he not hitting him?

I sob again, and then Jaxon flings the body toward us, an assault of blood and bone and degradation. Something hot and wet splatters across my face. My babysitter roars in terror, but he does let me go, shoving me aside and firing his gun in rapid blasts. Blood bursts up. I don’t think it’s Jaxon’s. I also don’t care. I dive sideways and run as fast as I can, looping around the shed until I come to the place where the two men cut a hole in the fence.

Behind me come more terrible, protracted screams, then a wet, rhythmic thumping.

I duck through the gap in the fence without thinking—the fucking power’s back on, what if it’s electrified again? But it’s not. It must be connected to some source separate from the house. I don’t dwell on it. I’m focused on one thing.

Getting the hell out of here.

I plunge into the thicket on the other side of the fence. Tree branches and vines and grasses and other unidentifiable plants—at least, I hope they’re plants—claw at me, like they’re trying to suck me deeper into the swamp. I splash into a shallow pool of stagnant water, the mud squelching into my shoes. But those screams keep echoing behind me, and that’s enough to drive me forward into the thick, muggy darkness.

The screams cut off suddenly, just like they did before, and a cold, sick emptiness fills up my stomach. The silence is worse somehow, because it seems to amplify my footsteps as I splash deeper into the swamp. Every splash, every rustle. I hear things moving in the dark, and I’m not sure if they’re me.

The road , I think. There has to be a road nearby. Get to it.

The fence gate, and therefore the driveway, had been to my right, so I veer in that direction, throwing my hands up to block the woody vines crisscrossing over my path. I can’t believe how dense this swamp is, so close to Jaxon’s property. His house feels a million miles away.

But it’s not. He’s not.

He’s still alive.

I can’t think about that right now. I was panicked; I must have imagined seeing his blank eyes. He probably only passed out just long enough for me to escape. Maybe he was stalking me this whole time and only got interrupted by those two men?—

Whoever the hell they were. Dennis Randall , they said, which sounds familiar. A name I’ve heard before. I can’t place it right now, though. I just need to get to the road.

And then I hear something. An echo of my footsteps.

I freeze, trying desperately to still my panicked breaths. They sound as loud as a hurricane.

Silence. Or at least as much silence as a swamp can muster, even in the middle of a winter.

I take one hesitant step backward, moving slow as molasses and still managing to step on something that snaps in the dark. I freeze, my body tense with anxiety.

“Charlotte.”

It’s him. Jaxon. He says my name like he’s caught me doing something I shouldn’t.

“Charlotte, you can’t run through the marsh at night.”

Footsteps echo between the trees. Every now and then, there’s a rustle of leaves, a splash of watery mud. I back up, two quick steps, and slam against the wide, smooth trunk of a tree. I can barely see anything. Just shadows braiding through more shadows.

“You’re just going to get lost out here.” His voice rises and falls with the damp wind. “I know it a lot better than you do.”

He’s close. I can sense him crashing through the underbrush, not even trying to hide his approach.

Well, then I won’t hide my escape.

I take off running, plunging into the darkness, my head ducked to avoid the attacks from all the plants that call this place home. Behind me, Jaxon curses.

Then he’s running too.

“Fuck,” I whisper, pumping my legs to go faster. It’s not easy. I’m not much of a runner to begin with and running in a muddy marsh isn't exactly something you can train for in San Jose. I claw away the vines and palm leaves and splash through the thick, squelching mud. A branch slaps at my arms like a cypress tree is trying to catch me on Jaxon’s behalf.

“Charlotte!” he shouts. He’s close. I swear I him breathing. Or maybe it’s my own panting breath. “You’re going to fucking hurt yourself.”

“What do you care?”

He laughs, cold and cruel. A killer’s laugh.

I veer sideways and run straight into some kind of tangled bramble, shrieking as the thorns slash through my bare skin and stick like Velcro to my dress’s fabric. I flail my way through, tiger stripes of pain all over my arms and legs, only to step into a black puddle of water?—

And fall.

I hit the puddle with a splash, and filthy, muddy water soaks my hair and dress. Jaxon’s footsteps loom closer. The motherfucker doesn’t even sound like he’s running.

“You okay?” he calls out.

“Fuck you!” I try to stand up, but the bottom of the puddle is slick with mud and loose rocks, and I lose purchase and fall sideways?—

Right into Jaxon’s arms.

“Got you,” he whispers into my ear, and it doesn’t sound like a threat.

Not exactly.

“Let me go!” I squirm against him, but he just tightens his grip around my waist, his big arms impossibly strong. And covered in something wet and warm and sticky that’s definitely not mud.

“I don’t think so.” He hauls me out of the water and presses me up against a nearby tree, close enough that I can see him even in the dark. His hair is loose, hanging in sweat-damp strands around his face, which is splattered with gore. He reaches up and brushes my wet hair out of my eyes, and his hands are black with blood. It streaks across my cheek.

“Don’t touch me!” I jerk away from him and choke back a surge of nausea, then try to rub the blood from my skin.

“Don’t do that,” he says softly, smoothing more of my hair away from my face. “It looks good on you.”

I slap his hand away and glare up at him, trying to mask the terror surging through my system. He matches my glare with an intensity of his own. Hot. Burning. Not angry, though.

In fact, it reminds me of the expression he gave me right before he died, and my pussy reacts in a way it absolutely, positively shouldn’t.

“What did you do?” I whisper, flattening my back against the tree like I might sink through it and disappear out the other side.

Jaxon tilts his head a little, his eyes never leaving mine. He smooths my hair again, then keeps running his blood-sticky hand down the side of my neck, over my shoulder, along my bare arm. His touch sends electricity jolting through my body, but I still jerk away.

“Why is there so much blood?” I add.

Jaxon grins. Leans a little closer to me. “I killed two men with my bare hands.”

My stomach twists, and the scene from earlier flashes through my memories. “That’s not possible,” I spit out, even though I saw the evidence. “You—that—” I swallow, and Jaxon just keeps watching me. Keeps grinning. “There was— You threw a corpse at me. ”

Saying it out loud is even more absurd.

“I know. Sorry about that, by the way. I wasn’t aiming at you.”

I shake my head wildly. Jaxon’s so close to me, his body hemming me up against the tree, and I’m reacting to it in a way I shouldn’t, the same way I reacted when I woke up coming with his head between my legs.

The way I reacted when I killed him.

You clearly didn’t kill him .

“You did not decapitate that man with your bare hands.” My voice shudders. Even though he’s clearly strong enough to fling a grown man’s corpse through the air.

Jaxon cups one blood-sticky hand around my neck, sliding his thumb softly over the tender flesh of my throat. I stiffen, drop my eyes to his neck.

Are those bruises ringing where the chain had been? No, it’s blood. It’s too dark to see anything else.

“You’re not asking the question I expected,” he says softly.

I immediately jerk my eyes up to meet his. They’re black. Soulless. He keeps thumbing my neck, the touch gentle enough that it feels like a lover’s caress, not a murder threat.

Even if he is smearing more cooling blood across my skin.

“Let me go,” I whisper.

Jaxon stares at me. “I can’t,” he says. “Especially not now.”

He presses into me, still pinning me up against the tree by my throat. His thigh slides between my legs. His breath is warm on my skin. Warm. Hot. Alive .

“Please,” I whisper, even as I sink down on his knee, sighing a little when his rough, blood-soaked jeans make contact with my clit.

You do not like this. You do not like him .

But to my horror, Jaxon notices, because he makes a surprised little noise in the back of his throat. And then he smiles again and presses his mouth to my ear.

“You killed me so sweet, Charlotte Careta,” he says softly. “And now I want to return the favor.”