No. This isn’t happening. I’m not turned on.
Putting on the first T-shirt I find, I stagger back to bed and collapse on it, wrapping myself in the blanket. The room is doing cartwheels around me, and my stomach roils along with it. I pant through the nausea and realize my lids are growing heavy as my thoughts start to drift.
Clenching my teeth, I force my eyes to open. I can’t pass out until I decide what to do about tomorrow.
Staring at the spinning ceiling, I mentally go over my options.
The sane thing to do would be to tell Ryson about this and hope they can protect me. Except if my suspicions are right and Peter Sokolov is indeed watching me, he’ll know that I contacted the FBI, and I might not survive long enough for the agents to reach me.
Of course, if he decides to kill me, I might not survive even with the FBI protection. The people on his list certainly didn’t, and he said he’d come after me.
He promised to find me no matter where I go.
Still, it’s probably worth the risk, because the alternative is going along with whatever cruel game Peter is playing. I don’t know what he wants from me, but whatever it is, it can’t be good. Maybe he hated George enough to want to torment his widow, or maybe, despite what he said, he thinks I know something—like the sister of that poor man he killed.
At this very moment, he might be devising some new, exotic torture for me, something spectacularly horrible that somehow involves coffee.
My eyelids droop again, and I rub my hands over my face, trying to keep my eyes open. I know I’m not thinking straight, but I can’t go to sleep without making this decision.
Do I call the FBI or not? And if not, do I actually go to that Starbucks?
A violent shudder ripples through me as I try to picture meeting my husband’s murderer for coffee. I don’t think I can do it. Just the idea of it makes my insides somersault. But what would I do instead? Hide in bed all day and then go to my parents’ house for dinner with the Levinsons as promised? Pretend the monster who destroyed my life isn’t after me?
It’s the thought of my parents that decides it. If I were on my own, I might chance the FBI’s dubious protection, but I can’t endanger my parents that way. I can’t force them to leave their house and everyone they know on the unlikely possibility that Ryson and his colleagues would be able to protect us better than they’ve protected the others. And leaving my parents behind is out of the question; even if their age wasn’t an issue, I can’t risk Peter interrogating them like he interrogated me about George.
There’s only one thing I can do.
I have to meet my tormentor tomorrow and hope that whatever he does to me won’t extend to the rest of my family.
When I finally close eyes and pass out, I dream of him again. Only this time, he’s neither torturing nor fucking me.
He’s sitting on my bed and watching me, his gaze warm and strangely possessive on my face.
14
Sara
* * *
By the time I pull up to the Starbucks at noon, the stabbing pain in my skull has quieted to a dull throb, and my stomach doesn’t threaten to revolt every second. However, my palms are damp with anxiety, and my hands shake so much I almost drop my keys when I come out of the car.
I cross the parking lot, feeling like I’m going to my execution. Fear pulses through me with every rapid heartbeat. He could kill me at this very moment, just take me out with a sniper rifle. Maybe that’s why he lured me here: to murder me in a public place and leave my body to terrorize everyone.
But no bullet finds me, and when I come into the coffeeshop, I see him right away. He’s sitting at one of the empty tables in the corner, his big hand wrapped around a Starbucks cup.
I meet his gaze, and everything inside me jolts, as though I got shocked with a defibrillator. For the first time, I see him in the light of day without alcohol or drugs in my system.
For the first time, I fully comprehend how dangerous he is.
He’s leaning back in his chair, his long, jean-clad legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles under the small round table. It’s a casual pose, but there’s nothing casual about the dark power that rolls off him in waves. He’s not just dangerous; he’s lethal. I see it in the metallic ice of his gaze and the coiled readiness of his large body, in the arrogant set of his jaw and the cruel curve of his lips.