“I love you, Bria Brooks,” Eli’s voice says on a loop.

Something grazes my leg in this illusion and I look down, a dahlia bloom tumbling next to me on a low-lying breeze. I pick it up, examining the petals whose conical edges have browned from a once-vibrant white. I set it back down and it blows away.

The breeze picks up, bringing with it the whispers I try to fight but can’t. How do you subdue a specter? How do you fight your own mind when you can’t even sleep?

Do you do that every time? Fuck a guy like me to get closer to your target? 

But if I could, I would love you. I would have loved you forever. 

When I open my eyes to the real world, my lashes are wet and cold in the autumn air. I sit cross-legged on a yoga mat, the gentle waves of the lake lapping at the dock. Usually, I find peace with the rhythm of the water, even when it’s too cold for a comfortable swim. I find relief in the autumn sun that doesn’t remind me of the scalding desert. I find peace here. But today, there is none.

It wasn’t here yesterday either. Or the day before that.

I haven’t felt peace since the morning my world fell apart. Not since I woke up in Eli’s embrace. I can still hear his heartbeat beneath my ear. I can feel his warm skin on my cheek and the weight of his arm across my back.

No, I haven’t felt peace since then.

When I left the cabin at Ogden, I took my laptop bag from the trunk and waited in the shadows of the pines until I heard the car leave. I didn’t look at Eli. I couldn’t bear it.

I stayed hidden as he checked out with the elderly owners and drove away. Then I walked back to Ogden. It took well over an hour, though I lost track of time. I found a Suzuki dealership and bought a motorcycle and helmet on the spot with my credit card, got it added to my insurance, and drove straight here to Samuel’s cabin on Lake McDonald.

That was four days ago.

I slept an hour or two that first night out of sheer exhaustion, waking long before dawn. With a short text exchange, Amy happily agreed to feed Kane. I emailed my supervisors with yet another lie, telling them I’d contracted mono and would be out for an unspecified period of time. The fake doctor’s note from the template Samuel stored to our server years ago did the job, and after receiving kind messages of well-wishes in reply, I went back to bed and tossed on the sheets until I gave up.

With my interviews recorded to the laptop, I’ve managed to get some analysis done during my time here, though it’s taken me longer than it should. My thoughts have been scattered and unfocused. And honestly, even though I went as far as going to the university on the second night in an attempt to jumpstart my interest, the desire to put effort into my work has waned. I took a backpack and grabbed a few books from my office as well as my bonsai tree. I even snuck down to the third floor, not expecting anyone to be there given the late hour. I just needed to be close to a space where Eli’s presence lingered. I didn’t expect his office door to be open and the light to be on. The pull to go toward that light was so strong it felt like my heart would melt through my ribs and crawl toward it without the rest of me. But I caged it inside, then turned around and left.

Since then, I’ve barely slept.

I stand and roll up my yoga mat, looking down at the little cherry tree I bring with me every day as my companion. And each time I do, I try to convince myself to throw it in the lake and let go of the illusion that any of these feelings were real. But every day I can’t. So this time, I leave it to the side at the end of the dock, hoping that some space away will give me back my harder edges and my practical mind.

When I head back into the cabin, I sit on the couch, listless and irritable. There’s a vial of ketamine and a syringe on the table, and I resume the war I’ve had with myself over the last thirty hours. On one hand, I desperately need sleep. It’s only a few days before I’m due to meet Caron Berger and I need to be on my game. On the other hand, I've never taken any drugs and I don’t like the thought of being completely knocked out, especially not knowing for sure if Eli could send the feds my way. But I need sleep. Desperately. I just don’t know what else to do.

I roll my sleeve over my shoulder and pick up the syringe, withdrawing 0.6 cc of ketamine from the vial before hovering the needle over my flesh. It only takes the return of my whispering thoughts to prompt me to plunge it into my deltoid.

Within fifteen minutes, I’m asleep on the couch.

When I wake in a daze sometime later that afternoon, it’s to the sound of alarms.

My mouth feels packed with cotton as I roll off the couch and stumble toward the tablet, tapping it to bring up the security cameras.

A Praetorian SUV is creeping up the driveway.

“Shit. Shit.”

I turn in a circle, trying to gather my discordant thoughts. Disarm the alarm first. Close the laptop, shove it under the couch. I push the ketamine and syringe under there too. Those fuckers don’t need to know I’m still half out of it. Not the best spot to hide things but they’re here for me, not my tech or drugs.

Grab the phone. Take the tablet. Get the weapons and run.

I bolt out the lakeside door to the boathouse, bringing up Samuel’s number on my phone with the desperate hope he’ll be able to answer.

“B-bria,” his calm but unsteady voice says on the other end as I pull the quietest weapons I can find from their hiding places.

“Uncle,” I whisper. I pause to check the security cameras. The SUV rolls to a halt down the driveway as I watch. “I’ve been better,” I say.

Our code.

Someone is trying to kill me. 

“I’m going for fifty-six fifty,” I say, pulling the quiver over my shoulder for the arrows of the compound bow. It’s another code, my swim time for the 100 m freestyle. He’ll know I’m going to escape by swimming to a hidden bug-out stash across the lake. “If I make it, it’ll be Honeycomb.”

“Honeyc-comb,” he says. It’s a feature of a small house on the east side of town, yet another lair. It has hexagonal tiles in the hallway, a detail only he and I will know.

I take a shuddering breath. I didn’t think my heart could be crushed more than it already is, but the sound of Samuel’s slower, slurred speech as he repeats the word “honeycomb” a second time breaks its final shards.

I check the cameras. Four men are stalking toward the cabin, guns drawn. I can’t stay here for more than a minute. It’s little more than a storage shed for our kayaks and canoes, with no space for me to hide. I won’t be safe.

I press my eyes closed and take a deep breath.

“Uncle, I…you were right. What you said. We’re not like other people. I tried. I thought I could be…different.” I swallow, tears glassing my vision. I wipe them away with the back of my hand. “I just…I want to thank you. For giving me this life. For choosing me. You might not think it’s true or feel it too, and that’s okay. But I love you. And if I fail this time, I just wanted you to know.”

“Bria—”

“Goodbye, Uncle.”

I hang up the phone to the sound of Samuel shouting my name.

After grabbing the tablet and my weapons, I sneak out of the boathouse, tossing my phone in the lake before creeping into the woods.

This is our home. Our sanctuary.

And I’m going to kill these Praetorian motherfuckers.

I crouch at the treeline behind a rocky outcrop and key the security system to disable the other tablets and any outside access, including Samuel. It means he will never know the details if I don’t make it. He doesn’t need that, not when he’ll only feel powerless to find vengeance. I can’t do that to him.

The nocked arrow warms beneath my fingers.

When the first man appears at the lake side of the house, my head is already swimming with the combination of ketamine and adrenaline. He follows the path leading to the lower door that sits below the deck as a second man passes him, heading toward the boathouse. I check the tablet and the two remaining men are at the front of the cabin, one checking the windows while the other stalks toward the garage.