Page 83 of Bitter Truth
I put my hand on his chest. “Neither have I.”
“I guess that means it’s going to be a late night.”
Gathering a fistful of his shirt, I pull him toward me. Hold his gaze as I start walking backward, tugging him with me toward the tack room.
“Or an early morning,” I counter.
“Sleep’s overrated, anyway.”
He loops his arms around me, pulling me close. Gives me a kiss that’s electric. I feel safe, and happy, and loved. I feel home. I’ve never had my life flash before my eyes, but if it ever does? These are the moments that I want to remember.
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Want more of Cassie, Jake, and the sanctuary animals? Read on for a sneak peek at book five in the series, SINISTER SECRETS…
1
The dream is always the same, probably because it’s based on memory. Or maybe waking nightmare would be a more apt description, since that’s what it was. But that’s all minutiae. None of it changes the fact that it literally feels like I’ve been transported back to the pitch-black basement where I woke up handcuffed to a metal support beam. The one that belonged to a serial killer.
His body is on the dank dirt floor in front of me. The cold has seeped into my bones. Lactic acid burns in my muscles. Mildew and a sweeter, more ominous smell, tickles my nose. I can literally taste the place, earth and fear and panic coating my tongue like moss on a stone.
My fingers shake as I release myself from the cuffs, raw, weeping indentions encircling my wrists where the skin’s been worn away. I look around, taking in the space around me as my eyes grow accustomed to the light. The bare bulb hanging from the ceiling among wispy spiderwebs. An aged set of wooden stairs leading above. Dark stains on the soil like grave markers.
I pull my legs to my chest for warmth. Hiss as the tender injury between my shoulder blades presses against the pole behind me. I need to get out of here. But first, I need to find my shirt. I need to check the portion of the room I can’t see.
The lump in my throat grows at the thought of turning my back on the man. I know my fear is irrational. He’s dead. I killed him, and now he’ll never be able to hurt me—or anyone else—ever again.
But that doesn’t stop my trembling from shifting into overdrive as I tear my eyes away, gaze drifting toward the shadows, hoping, praying to see the long-sleeved button-down top that will allow me to leave this place with what dignity I have left. My teeth chatter as I twist around. As I do, a blast sounds from somewhere above.
I cry out, cowering against the soil and debris raining down on me. My ears ring with the echo as adrenaline surges through my veins. The shock is exactly what I needed to shake me from my stupor.
Abandoning my fruitless search for the missing shirt, I haul myself to my feet, but as I try to make my escape, hands rise from the dirt. Fingers reach for me, pale, rotting, probing, the ghosts of the women who weren’t lucky enough to get away grasping at me, pulling me back. My feet sink deeper and deeper with each step, the soil beneath me sucking me under like quicksand until finally I reach the stairs.
I haul myself up one riser at a time, each step a battle, the cries of the those who lost their lives to Harold Griggs deafening, their breath hot on the exposed skin of my back as they chase me up, up, up. Finally, reaching the top, I fling myself through the reinforced door, slamming it shut behind me. Panting, I look around the unfamiliar kitchen that I find myself in.
Flies swarm in black clouds of anger. The walls weep blood. The sound as I pull a knife from the wooden block on the counter is that of a hissing snake. Tightening my grip around the pale bone of the hilt, I creep cautiously into the next room. Sirens are already sounding faintly in the distance as I spot my partner’s lifeless body on the floor.
I approach slowly, staring down in disbelief at the mangled mess of his chest, my brain struggling to comprehend what I’m seeing, the huge portion of flesh and bone and organ that’s been obliterated by the shotgun blast. The gun itself dangles from a rope attached to a pulley on the ceiling. The sirens grow louder as my eyes trace the twisted nylon down the wall, across the floor, where a length of it is now tangled between my partner’s still feet. A booby trap.
Suddenly, his eyes flash open. Though milky and glazed, his gaze burns with the fire of his rage as it locks onto mine. The heat sucks the breath from my lungs, sneaking out bits of my soul with it.
His mouth opens in a snarl, spittle stretching between razor sharp fangs as he raises a finger and points at me. Though he doesn’t speak, I hear his voice, his words like daggers, each one stabbing me from the inside out. “This is your fault. All your fault.”
The nightmare goes on but the dream doesn’t because I’m awake now, struggling to catch my breath as my ears continue to ring with the shrill whine of police sirens that have followed me back to reality. I blink against the darkness, grounding myself, releasing the fistfuls of sheet knotted in my sweating hands as I wait for the noise to fade. Do my best not to think about what it had felt like, sitting on the front doorstep of a serial killer’s house, arms wrapped tight around my shirtless torso, shivering but no longer feeling cold. No longer feeling anything at all.
My lungs fill. My heart slows. But the noise inside my head still hasn’t fallen silent. Instead, it’s grown louder.
I bolt upright, realizing that I’m not imagining the sound—it’s real. My body goes rigid, the adrenaline from the nightmare colliding with the adrenaline I feel now, fresh waves of it rushing through me as the sirens grow louder than they ever have before when they’ve raced past the Sanctuary on the Tamiami. I’m either losing my mind, or…
“Jake.”
My voice breaks over his name. My palm feels feverish as I lean across the bed, reaching for his shoulder to wake him.
“It’s okay, Cassie. You’re safe now,” he says, mumbling in his sleep as he wraps an arm around me, pulling me to his chest.
A jolt of confusion is quickly swept away as understanding dawns—this has happened before. How often does he comfort me in my sleep? Why hasn’t he ever mentioned it?
