Page 31 of Above All Else
I scrolled to my page and typed in the date, the image of my tattered dress, causing my eyes to burn. “I was an eighteen-year-old brat who thought they were encroaching on my newfound freedom.”
“Amber died at four-forty.” Turning the screen toward him, I pointed tofour-fifty-one A.M.in bold lettering. “I wasn’t there in those clothes, and I certainly wasn’t covered in blood.”
A heaviness left my chest, and I sucked in a full breath of air. “There’s no way I could have gotten to her, returned to the hotel, which was twenty-five minutes away, scrubbed up and changed so I could take this picture.”
“You could have taken it before you posted.”
“Dammit, Carter.” A weary tear dribbled down my cheek as I dropped to the ground, sitting on my haunches. “Your brain will do anything to validate the truth you think you know. But I’m telling you, that isn’t me, and I didn’t do it.”
I cupped my face—the pine needles poking into the soles ofmy bare feet and sobbed.
There’s no getting through to him.
He’s going to kill me, and the last memory I’ll have of him is him terrorizing me to the end.
“This doesn’t make any sense. Then what about the pictures and video of you doing it?”
My hands fell from my face, and I sniffled. “I don’t have an answer for that.”
He ran his hand through the shadow of a beard, scratching at his cheek with a slight growl.
“Come on.” He snagged my ties and hauled me to my feet, picking up his mask once again.
“Where are we going?”
I stumbled after him, the trees whizzing by until we stepped onto the dirt road just shy of the man lying on the ground with his car door ajar.
“Back to the cabin.”
My stomach twisted in knots as the dead bodies hanging from the ceiling flashing through my mind. “Wait. Carter.” I dragged my feet behind him, kicking up dust, my toes scraping against small pebbles. “I thought—“
“I need to think.”
“Think in the car.” I tugged on my restraints, his hand jerking behind him as he placed his mask over his face. “I can’t go back in there.”
He spun on me, his hand wrapping around my throat and tightening, my weight settling on my toes. “I said, I need tothink.”
“They’ll kill me.”
“No one will harm you.” His mask moved side to side. “Because you’re mine.”
A swarm of butterflies hit my belly and fluttered, erasing the rational side of my mind.
I always wanted to be Carter Morgan’s.
His hand slipped away from my throat as I nodded, then dragged me around the gate, up the stone driveway, and to the porch, where a man scanned his neck.
Do they all have microchips in their necks?
Why?
We zigged and zagged through people, my stomach turning on end as he pulled me toward a doorway with a small group of people lounging on an expensive sofa and loveseat, their masks in place.
Carter sighed as he stopped near the entrance of the room. “Paul.” He waved two fingers toward a man in a hyena mask.
The man stood from his seat beside a pink-haired flamingo, tapping her on her bare thigh. “Showing her a good time, it seems.” The man glanced up and down my body, his beady eyes in place of the hyenas.
I took a step behind Carter, hiding my exposed flesh from the onlooker.