Page 12 of Bird on a Blade

I breathe out, long and slow, and pull the door open. Every single nerve is burning.

No one’s there.

I blink out at the dirt-covered driveway, the boarded-up cabins. The woods beyond them, shrouded in silvery darkness. But IsworeI heard knocking?—

Then I glance down.

Then I see it.

Blood on the cement porch, dark in the moonlight. And a severed head, the face twisted in a perpetual scream, the eyes wide with fear?—

Staring right at me.

CHAPTER SIX

EDIE

My first thought, as panicky as a rabbit, is that the head looks so realistic. My second thought is that it looks realistic because it’s real.

Then I react. I leap over the head and race across the packed dirt, my heart feeling like it’s going to pound out of my chest. For a moment, I’ve fallen back in time fifteen years. I’m eighteen years old and I’m racing across the balmy August night to see if Blake was able to call the police.

Then I slam into my car. No. This is a joke, a cruel and vicious joke. Maybe the headisn’treal. But someone put it there. Someone who wants me frightened.

I have to get out of here.

I fumble in my purse for my keys, fingers slipping over every stupid thing I’ve ever put in there—a tube of chapstick, a bottle of hand lotion. Did I leave them in the cabin? No, I feel them buried at the bottom and wrench them out, slamming my thumb frantically down on the unlock button. The car headlights flash, and I grab the handle and?—

A gloved hand wraps neatly around my mouth.

I scream, legs flailing, as my attacker pulls me away from mycar. My purse crashes to the ground, spilling tampons and lotion bottles everywhere.

My keys gleam in the dirt.

“Don’t scream,” says a soft masculine voice.

I fight back against him, digging my arms into his thin arm. But the muscles there flex against me with a hidden strength. He drags me up against him, my back pressed against a firm, solid chest. Then he walks backward, pulling me step by step away from the car.

I scream into his glove again, tears blurring my vision.

“Shhh,” he says, his mouth close to my ear, his breath warm. “Don’t be afraid.”

Lightning bolts through me.

I’m eighteen again, but I’m not running. I’m standing in front of Sawyer Caldwell, clutching a flimsy steak knife, and he tells meDon’t be afraidfrom behind his filthy, bloodstained mask.

The world seems to pull apart, and I’m not sure that Scott is responsible for this.

“Who are you?” I ask, although he presses my mouth so tightly it comes out as inarticulate muffles. The question tastes like the leather of his gloves.

He doesn’t answer except to pull me up to the front porch. I twist away from the head.

It’s real. I’m certain of it now.

“He deserved it,” the man says calmly. God, he even has the same accent as Sawyer Caldwell, that faint Virginia drawl. “What he said about you.”

My nerves light up again.

Don’t be scared. They can’t hurt you anymore. I won’t let them hurt you ever again.