Hidden (To Love A Killer #1) (3 page)

              The onslaught of thoughts that entered her mind led Hunter down the darkest alleys of her memory and it wasn’t until she reached her apartment stoop that the images and stomach churning emotions ebbed away, fading into the noises of the street.

              Hunter began to ascend the stairs. As she climbed higher and higher, heels clicking against the tiles with each sluggish step, she wondered what her life would be like if she had been raised in a real family. Who would she be coming home to at 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday night if she were someone who had been raised, for example, in the suburbs by loving parents who instilled values and provided a moral compass? Would she live in this shitty walk-up? Would she work part time in a failing coffee shop for minimum wage and bullshit tips? Would she be able to let a date touch her without being triggered, without turning into a reactionary, fearful hysteric like she currently did whenever she was alone with a man? The answer to all that would be “no,” but by the fifth flight Hunter, didn’t necessarily care so much. She was the way she was, and she had learned to live with it. The only thing she truly wished she were capable of was love. She wished there was a way to shed all of her instincts with men. If she could do that, then she would seem normal, well adjusted, deserving of love. She wouldn’t attract abusers or react to nice guys as though they were out to harm her. She wished she had a barometer to tell the difference. Ultimately, she wished that she would make sense to someone and that someone would make sense to her. Did she even have a prayer of that? Or was her heart so damaged that the darkness seeping out of it would always repel, repulse, and drive away the ones she wished would come closer?

              When she reached the landing, Hunter felt suddenly dizzy, enraptured, as though some force was taking hold, claiming her. For a split second, she thought she was becoming triggered. Was she panicking, losing her grip? She braced the wall and paused, focusing on breathing deeply and fighting against the urge to let her eyes go dark and fade away entirely. But after a moment, she realized that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t triggered. Rather, she was overcome with a heightened state of awareness. It was overwhelming but not unpleasant. It was as though she was pure instinct, not the debilitating kind that paralyzed her mind and body. She was in a state of acute perception. Knowing filled her, certainty, and it felt uncanny. She was having a premonition. Suddenly Hunter knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would encounter her neighbor. And she knew he was thinking it as well.

              The feeling stayed with her as she inserted her key into the deadbolt lock. The trash shoot smacked loudly and Hunter’s heart skipped a beat almost at the exact same time. She knew he was there even before she turned.

              His gaze met hers, eyes black and brooding. His eyes conveyed so much anguish, pain, loneliness, as though they were a mirror to her own heart. The energy building between them was electric. They were communicating beyond words. She sensed he wanted her. Deeper down she sensed he already had her.

              He began to approach her, walking slowly down the hall out of one shadow and into the next. He moved with grace, yet there was a predatory nature in his step, fluid and sexy, wild and dangerous. Hunter’s heart began to pound out of her chest when it appeared he might come so close as to press himself against her. He didn’t. He stopped just shy of her door, staring intently at her but remaining silent. Weren’t his eyes blue before? Why were they now dark and smoldering?

              His lips parted as if to speak. Words didn’t come. He was looking at her, from her eyes, down to her nose, her lips, to her chin, and up again. He was the absolute essence of sexuality, and Hunter couldn’t help but melt, soften, weaken under his gaze.

              “I’m Ash,” he said in that deep, smooth tone that soothed her through to the bone.

              What was happening to her? She felt like she was under a spell, and yet she knew she was in full control of her faculties. She had never experienced this kind of connection if that’s what this was. It felt grander than a connection, however. It felt as though they were unified on some level she had never known existed, as though he was completely familiar to her even though they had never met before.

              If he was special at all, if he was someone worth getting to know in the future, then Hunter had to keep him away from her at all costs. She gripped her purse, holding the stone cold gun beneath the fabric.

              Then, trying with every fiber of her being to keep her voice steady, she whispered, “Stay away from me.”

              She pushed hard on her steel door, swinging it open until she was able to slip inside. She closed the door firmly and locked the deadbolt, letting out a long sigh of regret. She had sounded nuts, but it was for his own protection, not that he’d ever know that.

              Hunter finally turned and proceeded down the hall.

              When she emerged from the sheltering doorway, out into the rest of her studio, a man was standing dead center in the middle of her room.

              “Hello, Hunter. It’s time to come home.” 

              It was hot in Ash’s apartment, humid. The air felt thick and stagnant in his lungs. It was punishing. The apartment hadn’t come with an air conditioning unit. He was hoping the city would cool so he wouldn’t have to buy one. It was nearly September. Didn’t New York cool down in the fall? He hadn’t lived here long enough to know. Time would tell.

              He peeled his tee up and over his head, freeing his damp body from the clinging cotton in hopes of getting some relief, then approached a rickety wooden table that was in front of the window. On it was a blue ceramic dish filled with loose change. He casually removed his keys from his pants pocket and tossed them into the dish. They clanged against the quarters on impact. He gazed down at the key chain, a relic from his former life, and began to get lost in thought.

              At the end of the key chain was a bullet. He remembered the day he had gotten it. It had been a gift, a reward for shooting a rabbit. The rabbit had been fluffy, butterscotch in color. It had floppy ears. Ash had been nine. He hadn’t wanted to kill the rabbit, but he didn’t have a choice.

              The rabbit had been the first of many. They had turned him cold. He could kill anything now and not feel a thing.

              A bead of sweat trickled down his spine. Ash caught it, wiping it away with his palm. The heat was unbearable. He hated sweating this much, unless it was the result of being with a woman.

              He flipped a pack of cigarettes open after taking it from the counter, and extracted one between his teeth. It took five flicks of his lighter and a couple shakes to get the fluid to catch in a flame, but when it did, Ash lit his cigarette with one long suck to help it burn strong. He exhaled after a long moment, staring out his window. The smoke bounced against the glass windowpane and swirled back into his face.

              He lifted the window open in hopes of getting a little air.

              The sounds of the street below flooded through his apartment. Cars honking, bums shouting obscenities, the faint wails of an ambulance in the distance; all of it created an odd chorus, the sad song of the city, one of loneliness, secrets, and desperation. Ash thought he’d never get used to it, but somewhere along the way he had. Maybe it had been a month in, maybe two when one night he opened the window and the noises from outside reminded him that he was home.

              The air from outside wasn’t exactly breezing in, not that it mattered. He was pretty sure it wasn’t more than a degree cooler out there, if that. Not enough to make a real difference inside.

              He flipped on a fan that was resting at an odd angle on the windowsill, then sat down in a dingy armchair.

              Trails of smoke rose as if by some attraction towards the fan, then disappeared, scattering into nothingness in the fan’s stream. Ash watched the trails rise and disappear with each drag of his cigarette, as he thought about the girl, the neighbor with the light brown hair.     

              He had spotted her a little over a month ago when she had struggled to enter into the building. Ash had been walking towards the glass entrance from the lobby, and there she was, forcing her key in, her sharp gaze narrowing, brow furrowed. She hadn’t thanked him when he opened the door, letting her in. She hadn’t so much as raised her gaze to meet his. So many people in this city insisted on maintaining their privacy by avoiding eye contact, refusing to acknowledge others. It didn’t surprise him that the girl had done the same. She had seemed dark and secretive during those first few moments when they passed each other at the front door. And the few times he’d seen her since, she seemed no different, eyes lowered in a downward gaze, distracted in some kind of dark mood, saddened by something perhaps, tired and in need of seclusion. It hadn’t been until earlier today that she had made eye contact with Ash for the first time. It was as though she had opened a window, letting him see in, if only as a momentary peak.

              There had been something about her eyes, something alluring and mysterious in the way she had looked at him that Ash couldn’t get out of his head. Those eyes, round and deeply brown, angling upwards at the outer edges, were unforgettable, but he couldn’t place why. There was something primitive in her gaze, fiercely animalistic and wild with a hint that she had already been wounded.

              What struck Ash the most about his neighbor was that he felt like he already knew her. He felt connected to her. It was an eerie feeling he couldn’t explain or make sense of, but one he trusted. She wasn’t normal and neither was he. He liked to think of himself as keeping an eye on her and at times would let himself fantasize about protecting her, holding her thin body close, escaping with her in his arms. He knew it was a weird thing to do. In this instance, there was a fine line between fantasy and reality. Ash hoped that soon the two would intersect.

              Besides, people couldn’t help where their minds wandered to, he reasoned. It wasn’t as though he had control over every thought. He liked to wonder about what she might be thinking, what her dreams were, her hopes for her life. People like them didn’t exactly hold on to high hopes. Usually it was some form of simple peace they were after. He wondered how similar her dreams might be to his own. He wondered if she liked his name. Did she like his face? 

              Ash snubbed his cigarette out, scraping it firmly against the iron radiator, and flicked the butt in the general direction of a wastebasket that was resting in the corner of the room. Smoking had done nothing to cool him down. The cigarette may have even made the stagnant temperature of the apartment worse. And yet the discomfort that resulted compelled him to light a second. This was how he liked to unwind, how he needed to decompress after a long day of waiting, watching, tracking. It was a strange life. There was little reward, but Ash had no choice. He had to stay off the grid, which meant no payroll jobs, nothing that would require filling out paperwork, providing a social security number or any form of ID.

              He had lived his entire life outside of society. It was how he had been raised. It was what he had been designed to be, a ghost of sorts. A “contract” had brought him to New York, and Ash was starting to wonder how much longer he could tread water. Some contracts made less sense than others. This one had turned into an ocean of fantasies and mysteries. The risk of drowning was increasing.

              Ash ran his fingers through his damp hair, which clung momentarily back then fell messily into his eyes. He should shower, maybe after this cigarette. For the time being, he was more interested in staring out his window, watching how the light from the girl’s apartment spilled out across the rusted fire escape railings, then he was in the shower, rinsing away the sweaty stickiness from his skin.

              He had once watched the girl climb out onto her fire escape to smoke. He wondered if she might do something like that again tonight.

              Ash rose to his feet and leaned against the soot stained windowsill, arching his head out the window to see if he could catch a glimpse inside the girl’s apartment. He could see nothing but shapes and shadows. There seemed to be no movement over there, so Ash let his gaze wander across the vast cityscape. The city sparkled, the bright lights twinkling, encouraging all who gazed out that their dreams would come true. Here and there lights rolled from yellow to red, from red to green, rhythmically orchestrating the distant flow of traffic. He caught the faint briny scent of the water, though it hid well mingling under the smell of hot garbage that wafted up from the street and his own cigarette smoke lingering in the air.

              He reached his hands up, bracing them against the window frame, and leaned out a bit farther. His arms flexed hard under the strain. The muscles were long and lean, chiseled and glistening with sweat. Ash looked down. The people below continued walking along, completely unaware anyone or anything hovered above. That’s how everyone was here, unaware. No one was looking, seeing, or even caring what anyone else was doing. That’s why it had been so easy to disappear here. That’s why it was easy to stay hidden and not be found. He knew that’s what his neighbor was up to: staying hidden.

              Suddenly, Ash noticed the sounds of muffled voices. It was subtle, but he picked up on it. The voices seemed to be coming from the girl’s apartment, carried through the night air. He could have easily dismissed it, chalking it up to a midnight conversation, but his ear caught something more. He wasn’t listening to a calm chat between friends. One of the voices sounded distressed. It was the girl. She wasn’t talking, she was having an argument. Her words, though unrecognizable, were spoken sparsely, few and far between, and contained an edge of terror in their tone.

              Ash realized, as he trained his hearing even more keenly on the voices in the neighboring apartment, that something over there was wrong. And it immediately started to give him a very bad feeling.

*              *              *

              Hunter was trembling. She could feel her rib cage quake with each inhale. Her legs turned soft and rubbery. She feared her knees would buckle, go weak. For as terrified as she was, however, Hunter was determined not to show it. Her palms felt numb. Her head was swimming with dizzying thoughts, but she kept her gaze on the man, glaring at him. Her expression hardened, stone-like and severe.

              She was tempted to rip the gun from her purse. She wanted nothing more than to annihilate him, but if she glanced down at her purse, if she broke eye contact, she feared it would afford him the opportunity to lunge towards her.

              How had he gotten into her apartment so easily? It had to have been through the window. He had to have climbed the fire escape. But how had he known she lived here? How did he find her?

              His face was cracked with deep furrowing creases across his forehead, down his cheeks, and around his mouth. His skin looked like leather. The clothing he wore had the unmistakable mark of country living, the slowed down life of fixing cars and drinking beer. His thick fingers and stout hands were grease stained. The dirt seemed to be so deeply imbedded in the skin, under the nails, that it was now a part of him. There was no way of separating the grime from the man.

              This was not at all how Hunter remembered him. Life up north must have aged him. It must have chipped away at his decency, at his goodness. If his spirit was anywhere in there, Hunter couldn’t see it.

              She also couldn’t see how she was going to make it out of this alive. The gun in her purse was her only hope, but it seemed miles away. He could seize her before she even gripped it in her hands. The thought was petrifying. 

              She had been told not to hesitate. She had been told to shoot first and think later. The voice of the skinny Latino kid rolled through the back of her mind, mocking her. She knew she had already hesitated, already failed, missing her window.

              That’s when Hunter noticed the man had a knife drawn. He was rotating it slowly in his palm. There was something hungry about the movement and it turned Hunter’s stomach nauseous.

              This put her at a disadvantage. The folds and zippers of her purse stood between her and the gun. Hunter’s heart pounded against her chest just thinking about what it would take to fumble through those layers. She knew the second she motioned for her purse, he would be on her.

              “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, her tone flat and low, seething with disgust. She thought she heard her voice crack, wavering in its conviction with fear, but it didn’t matter. He was already laughing at her, enjoying her like a performance. “If you leave now, I won’t call the police, but if you don’t...” Her voice trailed off into a thin whisper until it was nothing more than a thread, “I’ll kill you.”

              The smile faded slowly from his face, as his eyes grew dark, menacing. He turned the knife handle over in his hand, and over again, thinking, envisioning where he might plunge it into her, where he would most like to thrust it in. His mouth pressed into a hard line. Hunter knew he probably wasn’t allowed to seriously harm her, only retrieve her. The real blows would be saved for when she was back at the farmhouse, though she knew anything could happen between now and then. He could deliver her in a bloody mess, making any argument he wanted to excuse her beaten state. If that’s what he really wanted to do, Hunter knew he could.

              “Leave right now,” she said, making every effort to raise her voice.

              “You know I’m not going to leave, not without you, Hunter,” he said coldly. His voice was devoid of humanity. There wasn’t a shred, not a trace of compassion. It was as though he was soulless, a dark shell of a man. “Come here.” The command sounded more like a threat.

              “I haven’t done anything,” she replied, as her voice cracked with distress, paving the way for tears. “I haven’t said a word to anyone. Just let me be, please. You don’t need me. No one up there needs me for anything. And I won’t say a word to anyone. No one will ever know. I promise.” She hated that she was being reduced to begging. Tears rolled slowly from the corners of her eyes, betraying her deepest fears, and there was nothing she could do about it.

              “You know too much,” he said.

              “But you know I haven’t done anything with it. I just want to live my life, that’s all. I’m not going to report anything. You know that. If I was going to, then I would have already,” she said.