Page 94 of Burn

Every time I look up, the officer is closer and Scarlet is getting giddy, rolling from her heels to her tippy toes, ready to run.

Once Izzy is down, bleeding from her chin and down her neck, like a pro—something she probably learned from her boyfriend—she takes off running up the street and down an alley.

Fearing arrest, all three of us run, laughing out of fear and panting heavily.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say we gained any ground or made ourselves less obvious about what we were doing here, but at least we managed to blend into the alley behind a dumpster.

That’s about the time I face-planted, driving my face right into the pavement, and now two of us are bleeding. In reality, I had a reason to go up there now. I could ask him to stitch me up. If he can do that sort of thing. Maybe he can.

“I can’t take you two anywhere.” Scarlet looks disgusted. “Now what’s your plan?”

“We should go back to the car.” I don’t like dark alleys. Especially dark alleys in Seattle. “I’m sure we’ve lost the cop by now.”

Izzy glances around the dumpster we’re hiding by and then covers her nose. “My God, did something die in there?”

“Probably a body,” Izzy adds, moving behind me to block the smell and using my sweatshirt as her nose guard.

“That cop looks athletic,” Scarlet notes. “I think I should introduce myself.”

Just as we stand up to check the alley, Izzy elbows me. “I saw Caleb up there. That’s what I was yelling about.”

“We should just leave. I don’t—” I stop midsentence when I realize what she said. “You saw him?”

Scarlet rolls her eyes. “Nowshe’s paying attention.”

I gape at Izzy, trying to figure out how the hell she could have seen him from where she was. She wipes her chin with her hand and smears the blood. “I think I need stitches.”

“Focus.” I grab her bleeding face between my shaking palms. “You saw him? How?”

She slaps my now bloody hands away, both of us wiping away red. “Yes.” She points up. “I couldn’t get high enough, but you motioned to where the windows in his apartment are, and there’s a dude standing near the window. Could be him. If he would have pulled out his dick, I probably would have recognized him.”

Scarlet’s laughing, her questioning eyes scanning Izzy and me. “What? Did you see his fire pole?”

“Oh, yeah.” Izzy nods and holds up her hands about a foot apart, like she’s imitating the length. “I totally see why she’s stalking him.”

She’s exaggerating. If his dick was really a foot long, I would have run away.

I’m not focused on that though. Instead, I’m caught between panicking and going up there to stop this nonsense. Izzy, however, chooses this moment to take off running down the alley to our left.

This time her idea is slightly better. Adjacent to his apartments are condominiums under construction, only they had open walls on the side facing his apartment.

Why I hadn’t seen them before is beyond me. Probably because I was never serious about this stalking thing. I think deep down my intentions were to drive by like normal nonprofessional stalkers do. But this . . .thisI could work with.

We haven’t made it up one flight of stairs before I slip. The roof isn’t entirely done, and the rain has created slippery steps. And being January, it’s icy.

The thought isn’t far from my mind that if I do plunge to my death here, the Seattle Fire Department will be called.

Then what?

I would be stuck explaining myself. Unless of course I die. Then problem solved.

Soaked from the rain, bleeding from my lip and with mascara running down my face, I’m white-knuckled as I climb five flights of stairs.

At some point I think,What do I have to gain from this?But once I’m climbing, my logic is gone.

I can pinpoint the moment the logic really left. It’s when we ran from the cop.

Scarlet isn’t much more coordinated than I am. She slips, too, and tumbles backward down five steps, and then stands immediately, pumping her fists in the air. “I’m good. Christ almighty, I’m good.” And then laughs, holding her side. “Holy. Shit.”

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