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Exhaustion bears down on me as I descend the stairs, hurrying to the parking lot. Thankfully, I still have my keys with me. I jump into my car, relieved that I can finally breathe. Though I have no idea what awaits me at that storage facility. I grab my map from the glovebox and note the address on the receipt.
Guilt strikes again, this time much more heavily. But I can’t go back now. Things may never be the same between me and Blake, regardless of what happens next. I drive off, knowing what I find could very well determine my future with him—or without him.
As I get closer to the storage facility, my thoughts race faster and faster. Even my stereo blasting isn’t enough to drown out the fears and doubts that plague my mind. What if this is all a mistake?
My heart thumps as I pull into the parking lot of my destination. The main office proudly displays the We-Store Self Storage sign on its roofline. The place looks unremarkable, is out of the way, and easily missed—which doesn’t make me feel better about all of this. As I park and exit my car, a wave of anxiety threatens to overwhelm me.
The deserted atmosphere adds to my unease as I wander through the aisles, fingering the key in my pocket while searching the outside units. Finally, I locate number 465 tucked away at the rear of the property. Taking a deep breath to brace myself, I quickly glance around before inserting the key into the lock.
The lock clicks, and I lift the metal door. I peer inside, not knowing what to expect, my eyes adjusting as the morning sun pours into the unit. Before me is a blue tarp covering what looks like a vehicle. I yank it off, revealing a plain gray hatchback without a license plate. I attempt to open a door, but it’s locked.Strange.
In the unit’s corner, there’s a fuel canister—which I discover is mostly empty. And beside that is a trash bag filled with a dozen license plates from different states. “What the fuck?” I ask out loud, my gaze soon drawn to the cardboard boxes stacked in neat rows against the wall nearby.
With trembling hands, I flip open the top closest box. Inside are a few burner phones, a rubbed-banded wad of cash, and a thick manila envelope. I reach for the envelope, carefully opening it to find a paper-clipped stack of documents and stapled receipts. Some detail money transactions from a cash-back place outside of Fallbank, others are signed and dated forms for rental cars—all with different aliases.
“Holy shit.” My stomach lurches. Everything I’m finding points to Blake—or whatever the fuck his name is—attempting to hide his identity. Though for what reason? I know I’m a hypocrite for getting upset; I’m doing the same thing to him, after all. But something about all this just doesn’t feel right.
I shut the box and set it aside, then open the next one. But when my eyes land on its top contents, my mouth falls open. Inside are photos ofme, going back years. I stumble backward, my back hitting the side of the hatchback, barely able to process what’s in front of me.
Rage and confusion fill me as I rifle through the box. There are so many pictures of me—when I was little, yearbooks, of my family before everything went to shit. Newspaper clippings from the many papers reporting my father’s misdeeds to the masses and magazine articles theorizing the odds of me snapping and becoming just like him.
One clipping features a snapshot of me taken by a pushy journalist, with a slanderous title featuring my real name. ‘Gwendoline Cirillo’ is underlined half a dozen times in red ink, with hearts sketched all over the page. At the top of the article, someone had written mine, mine, mine repeatedly.
I imagine the stereotypical obsessive psychopath, with pictures upon pictures of me taped up on walls, covering every inch. I retch as it sinks in—that someone has been following me for all these years, collecting intimate details of my life and cataloging everything about me to an obsessive degree.
I push the box aside and move on to the next one. Inside, I find a stack of letters, all written in my father’s unmistakable handwriting. The letters boast about his crimes and how proud he was of ridding the world of whom he deemed trash. They are also addressed to someone named Damon.
Damon …
A chilling realization dawns on me.
Blake—no,Damon—had been watching me all along. He had always been my mystery stalker, the murderer who has been terrorizing cities with his twisted brand of justice. And he was more deeply connected to my life than I ever could have imagined.
I quickly shove everything back into the box, feeling violated. I’m filled with a deep sense of dread, like someone is always watching me no matter where I go, and my body shakes with anger. How could someone do this? And how could they get away with it for so long?
My instinct is to run, to get as far away from Damon as possible.
After putting everything back in order and tossing the tarp back onto the hatchback, I leave the storage unit. A feeling of unease washes over me, as if Damon is watching and knows exactly what I’ve done. I don’t know what his end goal is, or why he’s been tracking me for so long. As I get in my car and drive off, I can only hope that I will never find out.
Because I intend to leave Pennsylvania and drop off the map. Forever.
But as I unlock the door to my apartment, searing pain explodes from my side.
“Red really is your color, Little Finch.”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
HIM
There are countless reasons why I’m obsessed with her.
It’s the way she tried to regain her composure after nearly running into me on the stairs before I helped her move boxes into her new apartment. How, after, she almost ran into me again before asking me to hang out sometime. I teased her, and she blushed madly before I gave her my number.
Even then, she was already smitten. I could tell.
It’s the way she asserted herself at her job interview at the video store, how she stood her ground against her tyrant boss. How she rattled off facts about horror movies while I played dumb about the genre. We click with each other like no other, spending hours together chatting about our favorite films—the dark, the macabre.
