Once I make sure I haven’t missed a single detail, I slap the notebook closed, then change out of my work clothes. While Fraser groans and throws his body left and right as much as the ropes allow, I slip into the clean jeans, T-shirt, and hoodie I brought with me.
“You’re wasting your breath.” After picking up my backpack off the floor, I give him a look that saysyou might be suffering, but I’m bored as hell. “After the stunt you pulled, I bolted the chair to the floor. Or have you forgotten?”
His bloodshot eyes stare back at me, his desperation leaking through his gaze.
“Is that aplease, let me go, Fraser?”
“Mmm.” He nods.
“When Steven begged you to stop hitting him…” My keyring rests in my hand, my body already angled toward the door. “I’m willing to bet you never listened. You never stopped. That’s how I found him.”
I turn fully around, lowering my face to his.
“How I found you.”
At that, he starts crying all over again, louder this time.
The temptation to hurt him worse makes me stay rooted in place instead of leaving like I should.
After I come up with an idea, I go over to the table.
The syringe I pick up is already filled with a sedative, a precaution for the slim chance Fraser manages to work himself loose from the ropes.
“Sweet dreams, fucker.” I angle the needle toward the freshly stitched muscle in his thigh and push it in.
Before I even press the plunger, Fraser pisses himself. I helped him to the bucket earlier—the one I dumped into the acid barrel—but fear has a way of taking control of a person’s bladder.
“I’d stick around to clean up after you”—my thumb presses down on the plunger, emptying the syringe into him—“but I have somewhere else to be.”
His only reply is his head lolling to the side, hanging limp while I discard the syringe.
With that, I leave, locking up behind me so I can take a quick shower before heading out to Lilith’s.
The corners of my lips quirk the farther I get from my storage unit.
Then, when my thumb hovers over the elevator button, I hear it.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
The stairwell.
Someone’s there.
Someone might’ve been stalking me after all.
Adrenaline shoots through my blood, sharpening my senses. My instincts lock onto the threat, and in two long steps, I’m at the stairwell, yanking the door open.
As soon as I do, a silent whoosh bounces against the walls, then…
Nothing.
Whoever was down here just went out into the street.
It could be just one of my neighbors.
I would’ve believed that, if not for that feeling from earlier.
That fucking feeling.