Page 106 of Till Death Do Us Part

“Now, now,” Glenn said, walking in between the two of us, turning to me. His glass eye almost seemed to be watching me more intently than his real one, cold and intense, and I cringed away when he took my chin in his hand, tilting me up to look at him. “I’m not going to hurt you… as long as you cooperate. I do apologize for the altercation last time. I misjudged the situation, clearly. You have my word that I will see no harm befall you if you comply with a few very reasonable instructions. And then, my dear, we will gladly release you back to your regular life. It’s really in your best interest to comply,” he said, a smile spreading over his lips wider as I felt the gun barrel pressing into my skin. “Unless you want your mother to watch you die? I don’t believe you’d do that to her.”

I gritted my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut.

This was my fault. Running away without thinking, just because Vera had rejected me…

Everything that happened now was on me. Everything.

And I couldn’t let them have me.

I wouldn’t comply.

Not for my life.

“No,” I said. “Pull the trigger.”

Chapter 53

vera

Someone banged on the door behind me. I’d heard them racing my way, tracking them in the back of my mind, but I didn’t care about anything right now, just ritually cleaning my gun, the parts of it laid out on the surface in front of me.

“Dammit, Vera,” Petra shouted through it. “Open the damn door!”

“I don’t feel like chatting,” I said.

“You’ll feel like something else soon enough,” she said. “Elaine left!”

An awful sensation hooked in the pit of my stomach, dragging down. My blood ran cold.

Elaine.

I told her to go. But not like this.

“She left?” I stood up slowly. “What do you mean, she left?”

“Caitlyn caught camera footage from the south side of her sneaking out and catching a car.”

Elaine.

“A car where?” My voice boiled.

“If I knew, I’d be halfway there already, Wolf. None of us have any fucking clue where she’s gone!”

Dammit. This wasn’t what I meant.

She was leaving because of me. Because I’d turned her away. Because I’d broken her heart.

Because I loved her and I wanted to keep her safe.

I gripped the desk tightly in my hand. “How long ago?”

“Footage was from half an hour ago. We hadn’t been checking on her because we knew she needed space, and by the time we noticed…”

Half an hour. She could be anywhere.

Bottom of the river, for example.

Or falling.