Page 91 of To the Grave

He was going to force me to go with him.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked, scrambling for the door handle, afraid to take my eyes off him.

The car was in drive, the doors locked. I flailed at the buttons, heard one of the rear windows go down, then thethunkof the doors unlocking.

The car was already in motion when my hand closed around the door handle.

I spilled out onto the wet ground and was immediately lashed by wind and rain. I gasped, trying to process what had just happened. What was still happening.

The Tesla stopped moving. He was coming after me.

I got to my feet and ran for my car. I didn’t dare look back to see if he was following. I ran as fast as I could, yanking on my car door and throwing myself into the driver’s seat.

I turned on the car and the headlights cut through the rain, illuminating Gray running toward me.

I punched the gas and swerved around him, out of the parking lot. In the rearview mirror I saw him run back toward the Tesla, the eerie red light of Mo’s disappearing in the gloom.

I hit the gas hard.

Chapter 63

Jace

“This is bad,” I said. “Really fucking bad.”

“It’s not good.” Wolf’s voice was grim, his eye on the road as we left the campus behind.

Neither of us were talking about the storm: the cloud cover turning the night pitch black, rain pelting Benji in sheets so thick it was hard to see the road.

“Why would he come back?” I asked, trying to work through what we knew. “Why would he leave Blackwell Falls, change his name, get two fancy degrees, build an empire, and come back to Blackwell Falls?”

Wolf shook his head. “Beats me. Seems like you’d want to leave it behind after going to all that trouble.”

“Exactly.” We merged onto the highway and Wolf moved all the way to the left, punching the gas even though the few other drivers on the road were crawling through the storm. “I have a bad feeling. A really bad fucking feeling.”

Maybe it was just the storm, but I didn’t think so.

“Same,” Wolf said. “I’m going to call Daisy.”

He used voice to text on his phone, sitting in the holder on the dash. Daisy’s name popped up on the screen but the call went straight to voice mail.

Just hearing her voice made my chest hurt. She suddenly seemed too far away. Way too fucking far.

“Try Otis,” I said.

Wolf did but it went to voice mail too.

“Think the power’s out?” I asked.

Service was spotty at the top of the Falls, especially when the Wi-Fi was down.

“Maybe.” The worry in Wolf’s voice was an echo of the dread seeping through my gut like an oil slick.

I looked at the clock on the dash and guessed we had another hour before we were back in Blackwell Falls the storm didn’t slow us down.

“I don’t like this,” I said. Otis was capable, but he was also alone. Maybe it was the storm and our distance from Daisy and everything we’d learned about Michael White/Piers Cantwell, but I was paranoid as hell. “We need reinforcements.”

“We could try Rafe,” Wolf said.

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