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“Oh my God, you’re right. He was trying to make me fade away.”
I look at the card on the bed and shudder.
“I’m afraid to even read that.”
“I’ll read it for you, then.”
His big knuckled hand moves, fingers outstretched for the letter. I put my hand on his forearm.
“No, it’s all right. I…I have to face this.”
He nods, closing his fingers. The action makes the muscles play under his taut, tattooed skin. I can’t repress a chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Your arm. It’s like grabbing a tire! You must kill it on arm day.”
“A tire?”
“Yeah, especially when you flex.”
My fingers brush over one of his tattoos. His forearms bear an anchor wrapped in barbed wire, emblazoned under a trident against a crashing ocean wave. The wave morphs into a bullet-ridden but proudly flying American Flag.
But one of his tattoos stands out because it’s so different from anything I’ve seen before. A shark and an orca caught in mid-arc of a jump are emblazoned on his skin.
“It’s a Yin Yang symbol,” he says. “The positive and the negative. There’s a balance in the sea that you don’t find on land. Sometimes, when I’m diving–”
Cole’s jaw clamps down. “Never mind.”
He pulls his arm away and gestures at the letter.
“What does it say?”
I can’t help being hurt. I thought we were connecting, and then he got all weird on me.
Probably stupid to worry about this while my life is in danger anyway. I tear into the envelope holding the card, but before I can open it, Cole snatches it out of my hand.
“Wait,” he says. “One of his accomplices is a chemist. We should make sure there’s no powdered anthrax or something in here.”
He takes the card to the window, careful to hold it flat, and then opens the window. Cole yanks one of my curtains down, snapping the curtain rod.
“Hey!”
He wraps the curtain around the lower half of his face, looking like a ninja or something. Then he opens the window and shakes the card in the wind. Nothing happens other than the cardstock bending where it shouldn't.
“Okay, hero, give me that. You fix my curtains.”
I snatch the letter out of his hand and scan it. Only one sentence, written in cursive.
See you real soon, babe.
“This is his handwriting,” I say in a wavering voice. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”
Cole sort of fixes my curtains. I mean, there’s a little bend in the curtain rod that’s not going away. But you can only tell when you get real close to it.
“You have to leave, now. He’s already been here.”
“So what? I’m not going to let him destroy my life. I’m not leaving, Cole.”
