A hot stream of air assaults my cheek.

Immediately I understand, like a shark can smell blood from miles away. I haven’t seen Eric Prince in a year, I was never close enough to smell him, and yet somehow I know his scent. Sharp anger, acidic desire for justice.

My worst nightmare. Except, this isn’t a nightmare at all. I’m wide awake.

Terror seizes my limbs. A burning heat assails my thighs as my muscles tighten and bunch. I’m lying on my side on the couch, facing away from him. I don’t know if he knows I’m awake. Surprise is my only friend right now, but I, too, am shocked. I have no way of knowing if my limbs will do as I say when I tell them to.

“Finally,” he breathes the word into my ear. “You fucking bitch.” His voice is too soft for such harsh words. He could be crooning a lullaby to an infant.

I have two options. I could open my eyes and try to talk some sense into him. Maybe if I could make him understand that I didn’t hit them on purpose, that his wife was sick, then maybe—

Silly me.

Sense can only be talked into someone who’s sensible. Eric lost his mind when he lost his family.

Second option, then.

I sit up suddenly, swinging my feet to the edge of the couch and bolting upright. Behind me is the small stone fireplace, the back of the living room. The only way out is past Eric. I lean left, prepared to skirt the coffee table and run when Eric lifts his hand. Extends it between us. My limbs freeze, my breath comes in pants. My brain screams words, so many words, and they are all the same word.

Gun.

Black. Matte. Metal. Capable of ending me before I get the chance to atone for my sins.

I really want that chance.

Eric’s lips curl into a smile. It’s dark and menacing, oozing like a poisonous sludge. He trains the gun on me. I don’t know if it’s cocked, can’t remember if I heard the click. The seconds aren’t passing the same way they were before. They’ve slowed, each one more crucial. My breath feels unnatural, thick and barbed.

And then, in a moment that feels wrong but is actually perfect, I see Amy Prince. Her gaze. Eyes that saw my car, chose it. In my imagination I hear her voice, something I never heard in real life. Do it, she instructs herself. Three… Two… One…

“Go ahead and sit down.” Eric’s voice grates out into the present, snapping my thoughts away from the terrible mess of that morning. He inclines his head to the chair in the corner.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” he says after I’m settled in the chair. My body is ramrod. Left leg bouncing as if a jackhammer is inside it. Placing my hand on my thigh doesn’t make it stop.

From his pocket, he produces two zip-ties.

I shake my head. “No no no no no.” My voice cracks on each word.

He points the gun at my head. “Maybe I’ll change my mind.”

My whole body is rigid. I’ve been numbed to the sight of guns by movies and TV shows, but the reality of it is more terrifying, more paralyzing, than I ever could’ve guessed.

I do as he asks. I think of kicking him in the face when he bends to zip my ankles. I imagine elbowing his back when he tightens the tie on my wrists, but by the time I’ve gathered enough courage to do anything, it’s too late.

He steps back from me. “I prefer not to shoot you right away. Too easy. It’s important you understand suffering.”

Bending at the waist, he sits back on the couch and keeps the gun trained on me. He is more than disheveled. The scruff on his face has grown in patchy, and on his left forearm is the bloody crust of a picked-apart scab. Holding the gun in his right hand, he lifts two fingers from his left hand and rubs them across his lower lip.

“There’s comfort in imagining all the ways I can make you pay. You outsmarted the boys in blue, playing the victim like you did. Lying,” he snarls when he says the word. One finger taps his temple. “But not me. I knew my Amy. She would’ve never done what you said. She loved Samuel. She loved me.”

I force my breath to slow, and will my heartbeat to moderate. “She was sick, Eric.” Despite the quaking of my voice, it’s buttery soft. Easy does it. Eric doesn’t need provocation. He’s far past that point.

“She was not sick,” he nearly screams. Flecks of saliva fly from his mouth.

Nothing I say will mollify this man. He is out for pain. My pain. He won’t stop until it has been wrung from me.

The room is almost dark. The last of the day’s sunlight has disappeared, running to hide behind the tall pines. Standing, Eric walks to a light switch and flips it. The floor lamp in the corner sends out a soft glow, and he hurries back to the window and pulls the curtains closed.

He’s not doing a good job keeping the gun pointed at me as he moves around the room. A shred of hope lodges itself in my chest. He sits back down. Gets up. Sits down again. He seems at a loss.

“Eric,” I whisper. Hate-filled eyes meet mine. “It wasn’t a lie. They have footage from the traffic camera. You can see it for yourself. I know it’s terrible, but—”

“Shut up,” he shrieks, launching himself over the coffee table.

I shrink back and close my eyes. Cool metal grazes my forehead, slips down my temple, traces my jaw.

Dampness spreads between my legs. It’s warm. Is that…? If I wasn’t so terrified, I might feel embarrassed.

His lips are at my ear. My stomach twists at the feeling of his flesh on mine. “Don’t say one more word.”

He backs up, looks at me. A sick pleasure ripples over his features. He goes back to the couch and sits.

“I know you’re wondering. Your mind is racing, thinking How did he know,” he barks a dry laugh. “You make a habit of getting yourself into the paper, don’t you?”

I shake my head. No. I declined the photo requested by the journalist.

“Oh, yes. You stupid girl. That’s the thing about girls like you. You love your image so much you can’t help but share it. I was buying cigarettes yesterday when the guy at the register was reading the paper. There you were, in the background of a photo, standing near some trailer. I bought the paper, almost forgot my cigarettes, and ran home.”

He turns his head slowly from side to side, exhaling a short breath of disbelieving laughter.

“I watched you for so long. Almost every day. You liked brown sugar latte’s from Lappert’s and sushi from that place on the corner. You never went far, especially since you were usually on foot. Always alone, too.”

He clucks his tongue, as though my solitude was a travesty.

“And then one day you stopped leaving. I realized it was because you weren’t there. I looked for you, but that was one thing you did well. You left zero breadcrumbs.” He pauses. Sighs. Continues. “I lost my temper a bit last weekend. I knew you hadn’t sold your place. That was easy enough to check. I paid a homeless woman twenty dollars to write a note for me.” He grins maniacally, proud of his subterfuge. “I didn’t mean to kick a hole in your door. My anger got the best of me.”

I want to scream, to run, to hurl myself at him and take away his gun. I want to save myself, but there’s no way I can. I’ve been in danger since the day Amy Prince used me to take two lives, but this is the first time my death feels imminent.

“Your passport is on your bed. You don’t have plans, do you? I wouldn’t be surprised. Running away is your thing.” He sits casually on the couch, crossing and uncrossing his ankles. Menacing words should be accompanied by a sneer and a growl, not spoken indifferently like we’re discussing dinner options. “In case you’re wondering how I got in, I punched a hole in your kitchen window and unlocked it. Your door alarms are cute though.”

He sighs deeply and looks at his watch. His lips twist as he watches me.

“Detective Wilkes will know it was you.” I blink twice, the sound of my own voice taking me by surprise. “I called him after you kicked in my door,” I tell him.

“Detective Wilkes and I settled that. He knows it wasn’t me. It was a female’s handwriting, right?”

“He’ll know and—”

“That’s enough,” Eric barks, pushing the gun into the air, closer to my head. “You sit there, shut up, and we’ll wait for one of your friends to come by. Will it be the girl from the parade? Or the asshole you cried to on the street today? Connor Vale, is it?”

He watches my face twist in horror and looks pleased. “That’s right. I was there, and your boyfriend had all his info plastered on his truck for the whole world to see.”

Please, Connor, don’t come for your goodbye. Please hate me. Go home and plan to never see me again.

Eric removes a tablet from a black bag on the floor and sets it up on the coffee table. His hold on the gun is sloppy and I’m terrified he’ll misfire.

“This is something I’ve been wanting to show you since you hit and killed my wife and child.”

Bending over, he presses the little arrow at the bottom of the screen. Amy’s image springs to life. She’s in a hospital bed, lying on white sheets. She wears a light blue nightgown printed with tiny flowers. Her eyes are tired but radiant. In her arms is a tiny baby, barely visible in the wrapped blankets.

“My lovely wife.” Eric’s loving and devoted voice charges from the screen and into the room, bouncing around me. “Tell us what just happened.”

Amy beams. Perhaps the sun was living somewhere in her chest at the moment. She looks blissful. “This is Samuel Bennett Prince,” she says, her sweet voice floating from the screen, wrapping around me, making her more real than ever before.

“Oh,” I cry involuntarily. I don’t look up at Eric. The screen has captured me.

“He is seven pounds, four ounces of perfect.” Amy keeps talking, looking directly at the screen, maybe even right into my soul. “I didn’t know perfect had a weight.” She grins, pulling the blanket away from the baby’s face. “But it does.”

Eric presses the pause button. “This is what you and I will do until someone you care about arrives.” He stops to consider something for a moment. “Actually, let’s make sure someone comes by tonight. What do you say?” Keeping the gun on me, he walks to the kitchen and grabs my phone off the counter.

“Let’s see…” Eric presses a few buttons, swipes, and talks into the phone’s microphone. “Come over. We need to talk.” He presses one more button and tosses the phone back onto the counter.

“Who was that?” Fear drips into my voice.

Eric walks back over to the table where the tablet sits. “It’ll be more fun if it’s a surprise.” He bends down, his finger hovering over the play button.

“Now we wait, and watch.”

An infant’s wail fills the room.