Her adamant disbelief bristled and I didn’t even know how to respond. “It wasn’t like he messed up. Plus, you gave me that key, remember? After he locked me up for the night, I figured out how to get the handcuffs unlocked but I was still trapped in that room. He padlocked it from the outside and all the windows were barred. I heard him coming down the hall as I was trying to shake the steel bars loose. I know, not my most brilliant plan, but when he barged into the room I hid in the closet. He saw that the window was open and I think he panicked. He went immediately over to it to check it, even though the bars were in place. I jumped out then and held my knife on some very vital organs; he saw the value in keeping them attached to the inside of his body and I handcuffed him to the window. The rest was pretty easy. I left the house immediately and kept to the shadows. I probably would not have made it to the bleachers though if Miller hadn’t released all those Feeders. They were actually getting ready to detain me when Miller burst out of the school building screaming at the top of his lungs with those disgusting things crawling after him.”
“So you held Kane at knife point, he handed you his gun and then you just walked out of his house?” she clarified, looking more confused than ever.
“Yep.”
“Did he say anything to you? Did you talk at all?”
“I don’t know,” I deflected, not wanting to go over all his asinine threats. “Why are you asking me this, Tyler?”
She shook her head and went about dampening her own washcloth with bottled water. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted slowly. “It’s just…. well, I don’t know. Neither Kane nor my dad are capable of letting things go very well. And Kane just looked…. he looked so possessive of you. I have a hard time believing he’s going to let this drop or that he’s not out there right now looking for you.”
“But why? Especially after how I embarrassed him.”
“Because he’s incapable of not getting what he wants, of being denied. Because he doesn’t ask for much or ask often, but when he does it’s with a fierce conviction that terrifies most people. And Reagan…. I don’t know, he just seemed, I mean, the way he looked at you…. I just don’t want him to ever find you.”
Wow.
Thanks for all that confidence Tyler. Yeesh!
“I don’t want that either,” I whispered. I was fine in this dark, dingy, smelly bathroom until Tyler walked in and reignited my childhood fear of the boogeyman.
“Just be careful, Ok?” she asked me in a way that made me even more nervous. She was dead serious, her eyes heavy with shame, her expression heated and flushed.
“Ok,”
I shook my head and left her alone to what thoughts still haunted her and kept her up at night. According to Tyler my fears were justified, my worst nightmares part of real life.
Now I didn’t only have to dodge Feeders and terrible human beings, but I had just been put on the radar of the worst stalker in the history of stalkers and would have to dodge him for the rest of my life too.
Just perfect.
Chapter Three
I walked back to the freezer with Hendrix, who had been waiting outside the bathroom for me. He watched me as I walked out of the bathroom with dark eyes that let nothing out of them.
He heard Tyler’s warning.
But there was nothing I could do about that. I was crazy to worry about a guy I would never see again. There was just no way he could find me.
Once back in the freezer, we helped pack up and ate a quick breakfast of protein bars and more Gatorade.
As often as I was around athletic events whilst the world was still right and sane, I had never acquired a taste for any sports drink. But suddenly I couldn’t get enough. It didn’t matter what flavor or how warm and old it was, Gatorade tasted amazing. I downed mine in one solid guzzle.
I was going to have to pee again before we left, but that was Ok with me too. Better to hover and feel like a human being than squat along the side of the road and pray a Feeder didn’t catch you with your pants down.
Page stood up on her own and waited for us to put our remaining possessions in our backpacks and collect our spoils. That was a good sign. Her eyes were still sunken in and blue with fatigue, her color still ghostly white and I could see her fingers trembling from here.
But she wasn’t puking. She was only barely feverish. And she seemed to regain some of her fight. All good signs.
“What time is it?” Haley asked as we hovered near the door to our safe little haven, nobody really wanting to leave the quiet space.
Harrison held up one of the lanterns to his watch and said, “Six-thirty.”