Page 98 of Killing Me Softly

Aaron couldn’t move. Couldn’tbreathe.

“You used to sneak out of the halfway house too, right? Just to go clubbing. Always evading authorities when you wanted to get laid. Now do it to save your friend’s life. Because you have ten minutes. As for every minute you’re late, she’ll lose a finger.”

Aaron pulled the phone away from his ear, trying not to cut the call to send Kenny a text.

“Where am I going?” He glanced over to the police officer, but he’d been called away by security, off rushing to somewhere else. Well, that made that easier. Maybe Kenny had called them. Unearthed where she was, and they were heading there now. So he snaked through students to the exit, while also sending Kenny a text. But, fuck, his battery was in the red. He hadn’t charged it at Jack’s last night and hadn’t checked when he got to his room. “Where do I go?”

“Follow the music, baby brother. Follow the music. You remember the music, don’t you?”

Aaron’s phone died.

“Fuck!” He burst out of the other end of the building toward the back, glancing one way, then the other. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes! He had no time. Not enough to launch over to Kenny’s office. No time to do anything but run. Despite what Kenny had said. Despite everything. He couldn’t leave Mel to her fate. He had to hope the police had been called to Kenny as he was onto something.

So he ran.

Not just ran. Pelted as if hunted. Limbs burning, boots pounding the pavement

He fumbled with his phone, shoving it in his pocket and hoping to fuck the text had got through to Kenny before it died, and he sprinted to the back of campus. Along the river. He knew exactly where she was. All the memories had come loose now. The same abandoned space their parents had once used to store things that shouldn’t have existed. The one he’d stumbled upon when he’d discovered her.Follow the music.The music his mother played at full volume when Aaron thought she was just dancing when, in reality, she’d been hiding her misdeeds. From him. From the world.

He pushed through the pain. Through the ice-cold terror gnawing at the edges of his mind. He should go to the police. That’s what a rational person would do. That’s what Kenny would tell him to do.“Don’t do anything stupid.”But the police were too slow. Too wrapped in fucking procedures. Aaron knew what they’d do. They’d log the report. Pull surveillance footage, issue alerts, track signals. Set up containment perimeters. And by the time they actually moved?

Mel would bedead.

And he wasn’t fucking waiting for that to happen.

The police hadn’t saved any of the other victims. Not Kenny’s sister. Or Rahul.Taylor! And he couldnothave yet another person die because ofhim.

His lungs burned as he tore through the woodland, feet pounding the uneven earth beneath him. The trees were dense, thick canopies swallowing the daylight, their skeletal branches clawing at his hoodie as if trying to stop him. The river roared nearby, its waters dark, relentless, churning against the rocks as he sprinted alongside it. He barely registered the twisted roots threatening to trip him, the wet, moss-covered ground slickbeneath his boots. His body moved on pure instinct, legs aching, pulse pounding like a war drum.

He was leaving Ryston behind.

Running toward a place that had never been a home. Only a graveyard of memories. The little village of Wilton. Picturesque and rotting. Pretty on the surface but steeped in blood beneath the foundations. Like him. His house was gone now though. Reduced to nothing but an empty lot, overgrown with weeds, the land marked for new development. They wanted to erase what had been there. Erase the ghosts. Build flats, bring in new families, pretend the land hadn’t once housed monsters.

And Drew Whitmore’s house? Boarded up. A SOLD sign out front. The same fate awaited it. Raze it. Rebuild. Make something clean out of something rotten.

Aaron didn’t stop.

The past could burn for all he cared. Because he wasn’t here for ghosts.

He was here forMel.

Adrenaline kept him moving, faster, harder, until he burst through the weeds and bramble-strewn land, mud spraying up his legs as he tore across the clearing. There, he saw it. The warehouse.

A rotting, forgotten husk of a building, its remains menacing. Half the roof had caved in long ago, leaving jagged beams jutting out at odd angles, like the exposed ribs of a carcass left to decay. Windows were either shattered or too dust-covered to see through, metal sheets peeling away from the structure’s sides, rust eating into every surface. The air smelled of damp, mould, and the metallic tang of old, forgotten industry. A place where his parents had once operated in the shadows.

Aaron launched at the door, banging his fist on the rusted metal. Hard. Loud. Unrelenting. “Open the fucking door!”

Silence.

Then, the groan of rusted hinges.

The door swung open to reveal Mel. In the centre of the room. Bound, ankles tied, wrists behind her back, body rigid. Her breath hitched the moment she saw him, her entire frame trembling, tears carving fresh tracks down her face, her wide, panicked eyes pleading to him as she fought against the gag stuffed into her mouth.

Aaron surged forward. But a poke at his back stopped him. A blade. Close.Too close.

“Ah, ah, ah.”

Slowly, so fucking slowly, he turned his head.

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