Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) by Rachel Caine (red white royal blue TXT) 📗

assault; this is far worse. I feel the panic of being outside, vulnerable, watched, hunted. My brain is reacting to a threat by dumping survival adrenaline into my blood at near-toxic levels, and there’s nothing for me to fight. Nothing but myself.

I can’t breathe. I try, but it feels like my diaphragm has frozen solid, like my lungs have filled with heavy ice. My pulse is pounding so hard I can’t hear anything else. I know I should control it, can control it, but nothing works. Nausea slides over me like grease, but I don’t even have the ability to vomit it out.

I collapse against the wall, gasping for air, and see Sam rushing to me. I read his lips as he crouches beside me. Breathe. Try to breathe. He turns his head, and I think he’s shouting at Lanny, who’s hovering a step behind, hands clenched into fists. She takes her phone out of her pocket and drops it, picks it up, finally makes the call. I want to say I’m okay, I need to, because I know I’m not having a heart attack, even though that’s how it feels.

I’m having a full-on panic attack. Haven’t had one in years.

I hear Melvin’s cold voice, clear as hail on the roof: I always knew you were weak. Look at you, you sniveling little wreck. You can’t protect our kids. You can’t even stand up.

I shut my eyes and search for peace in the storm. And this time, I hear different voices.

My daughter saying, “Mom? Mom, it’s okay, the ambulance is coming. Mom? It’s going to be okay.”

And my son’s unsteady, soft voice near my ear saying, “It’s okay, Mom. I understand.”

I know that he does most of all of us.

Feeling comes next. Sam’s arms around me. Lanny’s hand fever-warm against my face. Connor holding my hand.

The storm fades. Silence sets in.

I gasp in a sudden, convulsive breath. My head is spinning and aching, but I’m here. I’m with the people who love me. My circle of protection. It blindsides me that I’ve been so busy trying to protect all of them that I’ve utterly failed to protect myself.

I burst into tears and hug them close, all three of them. Vee’s hovering on the edges of this, part of it but separate, and I wish she’d come in, I wish I could be better, I wish this sudden, melting peace could last.

But I hear the siren of the ambulance coming, and I know it’s already starting to disappear.

The paramedics don’t find anything wrong with me, other than elevated blood pressure and low oxygen saturation, but they advise me to see my doctor about it. I thank them and wince at what this will cost us, but at the same time, Lanny did exactly the right thing. Better a bill than a funeral.

Sam’s standing with me as the ambulance pulls away. People in the parking lot and across the street are watching us, and I feel their eyes on me like groping hands. I suddenly, desperately want to be out of here. “We should go,” I say. “You drive.” I hand him the keys. He kisses me gently on the forehead, pulls back, and gives me a long and searching look. “What?”

“You’re all right,” he says, and I feel the quirk of his smile tug at something deep inside me. “And you’ll be all right.”

Lanny and Vee are standing near the SUV, shoulder to shoulder, and they turn as one as we walk toward them. “You scared the shit out of me,” Vee says. Her surveying look is not kind. “What the hell was that?”

“Panic attack,” I tell her crisply, as if I’m not ashamed of it. I shouldn’t be, but it’s hard, hard for me to admit weakness, especially to her. Vee’s got a predator’s unerring instincts, and though she’s not cruel, when she goes in for an emotional kill, she’s efficient about it. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

“Guess I won’t get more lessons,” she observes. “Seeing as you’re famous again.” She reaches in her pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “I took it off one of them other cars.”

I know what it is before I unfold it. The flyer. The same one that I got from the range master.

When I look up, I see pieces of paper fluttering under windshield wipers all around the lot.

I want to howl. I don’t. I just say, “Let’s put it on hold until I find another shooting range. It’s Knoxville. There are plenty.” About a dozen, in fact. But I know that if my stalker continues to come after me, it’ll be easy to find me no matter where I go. He could cover a dozen places in a couple of days. I need to stop him. Now.

Sam glances over and sees the flyer that Vee’s handed me. I hear his intake of breath, but he doesn’t say anything. I see the blood draining from his face. This hurts him, too, in ways that I can’t truly appreciate.

“You want to talk about that?” he asks. I shake my head. I don’t want to talk to him, and I know that’s irrational and cruel; it isn’t his fault someone resurrected his favorite form of punishment and used it against me. It isn’t his fault, but it feels like it is. And I need to settle that in my head.

But I don’t get that chance because from the back seat, Lanny leans forward and grabs the paper. “Oh my God.”

“Give it back,” I tell her, and my voice is too loud, too tight.

She doesn’t surrender it. She knows what she’s looking at—she remembers it very well. She says, “They’re doing it again.” Her voice sounds like a little girl’s again, shocked and traumatized. I feel my breath catch hard in my throat, and my eyes burn with tears. I see Connor take the flyer and examine it, then carefully fold it up and give it back to Vee.