Escape by Campbell Nenia

Author:Campbell, Nenia [Campbell, Nenia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, thriller, Contemporary, Adult, Suspense, Romance, Mystery
Amazon: B08636P727
Goodreads: 20985945
Published: 2020-03-18T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Serpentine

Tomorrow.

The word hung over her like a shroud—a burial shroud. I am a dead girl walking.

It jarred her. It shouldn’t have, not after everything she’d been through, but it did. Enough so that she called in sick for the first time since she’d started because her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Are you all right?” Martin asked her. He’d been the one to answer the phone.

“No,” said Val, with unfeigned hoarseness. “I’m sick.”

There was a brief pause. “Feel better,” Martin said at last, before cutting the connection.

Val set the burner phone down on her rickety excuse of a nightstand and collapsed on her mattress. She couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was just lying there, waiting to die. They know where I live. They’ve been tracking me like an animal this whole time. She shivered, pulling the sheets up to her chin.

She closed her eyes, shutting the world out, shutting her thoughts out. When she opened them again, gray light was flooding through her window and tomorrow became today. The day that her stalker had announced that she would meet her fate.

A terrible, rancid taste lurked in the back of her throat. She brushed her teeth like a zombie, staring dully at her reflection. The shadows beneath her eyes seemed to have become more pronounced over the last few days. She looked sick. Maybe she was.

Val supposed it really didn’t matter.

Part of her was tempted to call in sick again but the idea of stumbling around her apartment by herself, just waiting, seemed like a special kind of hell. Besides, she knew deep down that she couldn’t do that to Martin. Today she had the split shift that she’d agreed to take over from Desiree. He’d have enough problems to deal with when she was dead and ended up even more short-staffed than he already was.

Val ignored Meredith and Jackie on her way out the door for work. Meredith was grinding coffee and Jackie was doing something to an avocado. She could feel their eyes on her, a sticky gaze that lingered, wanting to say something but not quite daring.

It was something in her face. Val knew the look; it scared her, too. It was the look of someone who had given up all hope and no longer cared about anything.

She worked in a fugue, only half-aware of what was said to her. The smell of food she was carrying made her feel ill. She didn’t take advantage of her usual free meal and walked home with her hands plunged deep in her coat pockets as the morning fog burned off around her under the subdued blaze of the autumn sun. She had avoided Martin, slinking out the door with her purse clutched to her chest. All she wanted to do was get through the day. Would someone stop her, grab her, on the way home to her apartment? Was her stalker here, on this very street?

Just in case, Val splurged on the train, jumping at every shadow stretching long over the crooked pavement.

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