Follow Her Down by Holly Ryan

Author:Holly Ryan [Holly Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2025-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

13

Sera

Rick has been watching me all shift.

Not the usual lazy, leering stares. This is sharper, hungrier. Even though he’s “working,” he smells like whiskey, the scent clinging to him like a second skin. He’s been nursing a bottle in the back office, the amber liquid glowing under his desk lamp whenever he cracks the door open.

I’ve counted the intervals when he slips back there, and it’s every forty-five minutes. Liquid courage for whatever he’s planning.

He steps into the back room where I’m restocking sodas. I feel him before I see him, the shift in the air, the sudden, oppressive weight of his stare. I keep my back to him, pretending to rearrange cans. My fingers brush the cool metal of a Coke can, and I imagine driving it into his temple.

“If both of us are back here, customers might rob the place,” I say with a glance over my shoulder to gauge his distance.

“You don’t talk like other girls.” He leans against the doorway, blocking my path, and his smile is a greasy smear on his face. “Makes me wonder how else you’re different.”

I turn slowly, keeping my expression flat. “You really want to find out?”

He chuckles low. “Yeah, I think I do.”

He moves like he’s done this before—luring someone into a trap. His voice drops, soft and coaxing, like the menace of him is something that should feel like comfort.

Predators learn to disguise their teeth. They learn to mimic the sounds of safety.

“Relax, sweetheart,” he murmurs, stepping closer. The toxic smell of him intensifies. “I just wanna talk.”

His fingers slide to my waist. His thumb traces the hem of my shirt, dipping beneath the fabric to scrape against the skin of my hip.

My stomach clenches, not with fear, but with fury.

I don’t freeze. I calcify. My muscles lock. My heartbeat doesn’t pound in my chest; it climbs into my throat, thick and hot, trying to choke its way out of my mouth.

I scan the room, and to my left is the cooler door made of heavy steel. On my right, metal shelves are stacked with cardboard boxes, and behind me, nothing but a wall. I have no clear exits.

I drift my fingers toward the top of my boot, where my knife is. My gun created too much of an obvious bulge in my pants pocket, so it’s in my locker, but all I have to do is aim my knife for the soft spots, like the throat, belly, or inner thigh. If I go for the latter, I can try to sever the femoral artery and make him bleed out fast.

Pull it. Do it now.

But my hand trembles. Not with fear, but with a rage so white-hot that it vibrates in my bones. Fury that my body remembers a scene too similar to this. Fury that my muscles recall how to fold, how to flinch, how to submit, when what I want is to rend and tear. Fury that he taught my body this language.

The language of prey.

Rick’s hand slides higher up my shirt, skimming my rib cage, his touch a sick mimic of affection.

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