Page 28 of Lights Out

He shook his head and kept going.

I must know him well enough to recognize his voice if he was going to such an extreme. Who was he? One of the cops I’d just threatened him with? I could think of several who were about his size, and it would explain how easily he’d found me if he’d used government equipment to do it.

I’m just giving you a ride,he said.I saw what you went through, saw how dead on your feet you were as you started to pack your things, and I thought I should come.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and debated screaming for help. “Why would you think that?”

You didn’t tell me to stop, Aly.

I dropped my hand and glared at him. “Because I was interrupted by a goddamn tragedy.”

Say it now, then,he typed, then raised his head to look at me through those soul-sucking black eye holes.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

Say it, Aly,I thought.Say it, goddamn it.Just fucking tell him to stop like the mentally healthy, rational person you used to be before his videos took over your social media feed.

I tried to force the words out and felt like I was choking. Fuck. I couldn’t do it. What the hell did that say about me? What did it mean? Was I actually into this?

It’s the exhaustion,I tried to tell myself, but the lie fell flat. The ugly truth was that I’d felt more alive in the past few days than I had in years. Sure, I’d spent half that time terrified, but at this point, fear was preferable to numbness. Until he broke into my house, I’d been living in a world of grays, going about my life like a robot. Work, gym, home, repeat. The brief flashes of feeling that bled through the haze all revolved around this man and his videos.

I let my gaze roam over his mask, and even though he looked out at me from a frozen plastic façade, I swear it looked like the corners of the lips had tipped up in the slight hint of a grin.

I pointed my mace at the cracked window. “Just because I’ve gone stupid enough that I can’t say it right now doesn’t mean I’m getting in the car with the man who broke into my house and filmed me without my consent.”

I hoped the parking garage cameras were recording all this and he hadn’t found some way to freeze or loop them. If someone did jump out and manage to overpower me, it’d be the only visual evidence of what had happened to my dumb ass.

He typed something else, and I was already over this communication style.

Just speak!I wanted to yell.

My phone pinged, and I did the same glance-up-and-glance-down dance I’d been doing the past five minutes.

Look in the passenger seat,he said.You’ll have all the power.

“If someone is waiting to jump me over there, I’m going to murder both of you,” I told him. “I’m not feeling very friendly toward men tonight.”

He nodded like he expected no less and motioned at me to get on with it.

I ground my teeth and cautiously rounded the bumper toward the other side of the car. He must have sensed my reluctance to get too close because he leaned over and pushed the passenger door open. My gun and a wicked-looking knife sat next to each other on the seat. He leaned back, pointed to them, and then at me.

Another frigid gust of wind tore through the parking garage with a howl, and a full-body shiver wracked my body. I might be wearing a heavy coat, but my scrub pants were thin, and I’d been so out of it when I stumbled out of the hospital that I hadn’t thought to pull on gloves.

I stepped toward the open door and the warmth pouring out of it, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He made no move to lunge at me, merely leaned back and slowly raised his gloved hands to show he was unarmed. I dove forward and scooped up the gun, then leaped back again and quickly checked to see if it was still loaded. It was.

Its weight in my hand felt like a security blanket. He didn’t have a weapon on him that I could see, and at this distance, I could easily shoot him before he could reach for one. I did have all the power, and it felt good to have the upper hand with him for once.

This was the part where I should order him out of my car and call the cops, but I was starting to crash again as my adrenaline faded, and I was so cold that my teeth were chattering. I didn’t want to take an Uber and have to find a ride back for my next shift. I didn’t want to call the cops either. There was no rational explanation for my reticence about involving them – I workedwith them daily and knew they’d have my back – but something was stopping me.

Maybe it was that I’d met a lot of bad men in my line of work. Murderers, rapists, gang members, drug dealers, burglars, pedophiles, you name it. My gut instincts had been honed over the years, and I had developed almost a sixth sense for recognizing danger. Those instincts were silent right now. It was only my mind telling me to involve the police. And not for nothing, but Fred liked him. Fred didn’t like anyone. He hissed or ran and hid. That was his MO with anyone who came over. The fact that he’d actually played with the Faceless Man still blew my mind.

My gut told me to get in the car and see where this went. It wasn’t like I’d be helpless if I climbed into the passenger seat. I’d have a gun and a knife, and I could hold them both on him while he drove. The second he took a wrong turn or tried to hurt me,blamo!Being a nurse meant I knew right where to aim to do the most damage possible.

And, God help me, I was curious. On some level, I wanted to see how this played out. Despite the potentially catastrophic consequences. Despite the fact that no rational person would do it.

Fine. I wasn’t rational. It was time to accept that about myself. Sometime in the past year or two, I’d waded into darkness, and now I was swan-diving into the deep end. I was a sex-craved, sleep-deprived woman more interested in a kinky fuck than safety and comfort.

It was oddly freeing to admit that. Now that I’d stopped fighting myself, I could look back at the past few days and see what I’d been trying to ignore: I wanted this. I’d been lonely as hell my entire adult life. The men I met on dating apps or social media didn’t seem to mind when I flaked on them or forgot totext them back for weeks on end. They just moved on to someone else, like Tyler had.

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