A cold chill rocked through my being. Three hours had passed, and I was still shaking. It was this uncontrollable fear that licked and tore at my insides.
I tugged the blanket tighter around my body. Maybe if I managed to squeeze it close enough, I’d wake up and this would be nothing but a terrible, horrible bad dream. Maybe if I prayed hard enough, I could go all the way back to the beginning. Change it. Do it all over again.
“She needed me.” The words were a rasp. A scrape across my raw, aching throat. My own plea. God knew I was looking for a voice of reason in a world that made no sense.
That voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s our sister.”
My twin sister. My best friend. My other half.
Chelsey spun around and crossed to me in a flash. Her hands shot out, gripping me by the face and forcing me to meet her eyes, her expression anguished as she grated her appeal.
“She’s our sister who’s going to get you killed. Don’t you see it yet, Alexis? You’ve been trying for years, and there’s nothing left to do. Nothing you can change because she won’t change. The only thing that’s going to happen is I’m going to lose you, too, and I’m not willing to stand aside and let that happen.”
Agony cut through me. A dull, bitter blade.
The desperation to save someone who didn’t want to be saved.
All of it warred against a physical fear so deep I could feel it infiltrating my soul.
Vile, vile hands. Malicious threats in my ear. Sickening stench in my nose.
I didn’t know if I could ever scrape him from my skin.
I felt…dirty. Sick.
Memories flashed from tonight, flickers and blips of black-and-white images—my sister’s call, the evil I’d faced, my deliverer. That mysterious, intoxicating man that’d come to my rescue.
I’d almost thought I’d been hallucinating. My mind so desperate to remove myself from the situation, I’d been deluded into believing I was being saved. As if I’d been lost to a fantasy that there was someone brave and selfless enough to actually risk himself for me.
I’d crumbled with gratitude when I’d realized he wasn’t a figment of my imagination.
I didn’t think I’d ever, ever forget the expression on his face when they’d loaded me into the ambulance. The way he’d looked at me both soft and hard, as if him seeing me there caused him physical pain.
Chelsey gripped me tighter. “Promise me you won’t ever go down there again. I don’t care what she says, Alexis. Don’t let her ruin you, too. I know you’d give up anything for her, but what about me?” Desperate, her fingertips curled into my cheeks. “Promise me.”
My older sister loved me. Cared for me. But she didn’t know what she was asking me to do.
I nodded, whispering, “Okay. I promise.”
Even when I knew it wasn’t true.
Chapter Six
Zee
“Any other information you can give will be appreciated.”
I paused at the door. The glass was a hazy texture for privacy, the investigator’s name stamped on the front. I looked back at him where his hand was still poised over the notepad on his desk that he’d been scrawling notes on for the last half hour.
“Believe me, I have anything to give? I’ll bring it.”
His head cocked and his eyes narrowed like he was searching me for truth. “And you’re certain you’ve never seen the guy before?”
The investigator had been asking it again and again, looking for any detail I might’ve left out or tried to keep hidden. So maybe he was having a hard time believing it had been a chance encounter.
I was struck with another flash of that familiarity. It was so goddamned vague I shook it off. I gave him a harsh shake of my head. “No. And if I did? I wouldn’t hesitate to hand it over. I want the bastard off the street just as much as you do.”
Probably more.
The horror on that girl’s face came unbidden into my mind. The way she’d felt in my arms. The need to protect her.
My entire body clenched. Adrenaline was still a wild hammer inciting a war in my veins. Every cell riding this twisted, savage high.
Maybe it was just exhaustion. I hadn’t managed to catch even a wink of sleep last night. Not that it could have been considered night since I’d finally stumbled through my door when the sun was breaking the horizon.
I’d stayed to talk with the officers on the scene until well after the ambulance had carried the girl away.
They’d asked me to show up here at ten to answer more questions.
Thing was, I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was off. The unsettled sense that time had continued to spin on while I felt stuck in that dark hour.
Would time have ended for her had I not been there? Which led me to wondering what would have happened if things had ended up going down in a blaze of bullets and maybe time would have ended for me, too.
What then?
What about him?
Was it wrong I’d been willing to take the risk? Couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d tried, anyway.
Hell, what kind of influence would I be for Liam if I hadn’t stood up for what was right?
But since the smoke had cleared, my head was spinning with my responsibilities. With duty and obligation. Guilt rose, like it could take hold of all the emotions clotted in my chest, and tried to eclipse the nagging, almost frantic urge to seek her out.
I knew her full name.
It wouldn’t be all that hard to find her.
I just wanted to make sure she was okay. To see her face and know this girl, who clearly was good and pure, wouldn’t be held back by the scars that bastard had every intention of inflicting.
Maybe I wanted to see if this foreign feeling simmering in my gut was real. This overwhelming need to brush my fingers against her skin and let her know my touch would never hurt her.
It was a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Not since I lost her. Not since my life had quite literally been twisted in two.
And that feeling right there was the very reason I had to make sure I stayed away.
I couldn’t afford it. Not when it would cost me everything.
“If I remember anything else, I’ll call you,” I told the investigator.
He gave me a nod. “I appreciate that.”
I dipped my head once before I headed out into the hall and toward the waiting room out front. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found Ash and Anthony sitting in the hard, plastic chairs lined against the wall.
The second they saw me, both of them shot to their feet.
Ash’s entire being sagged with relief. “Zee... Thank God. Took you long enough in there. I came as soon as Anthony told me what was going down. I was out here about to lose my mind.”
Ash Evans was Sunder’s bassist. He was just about as cool as they came. Always quick with a grin and at the ready with a taunt or a tease, but none of it was done with spite or malice.
When I’d stepped up and taken my brother’s place as drummer in the band seven years ago, Ash had been there, taking me under his wing. For years, he’d lived this over-the-top lifestyle, the guy a poster child for the old sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll cliché.