Chapter 13 – MINE
Clara’s Pov
POV: Clara Hayes
For a long time, I couldn’t move. I just stood at the window staring down at the red letters across the windshield, watching the rainwater smear the word into streaks that looked disturbingly like blood. Renee came up behind me, blinking sleep from her eyes.
“What is it?” she whispered.
I stepped aside. Her gasp told me everything—she saw it too.
“Oh my God.”
Neither of us spoke after that. The silence in the room grew thick, almost suffocating, hanging heavier than the humid air. Every survival instinct in me screamed run. But where? He’d proven over and over that there was no such thing as distance from him.
“We have to go,” Renee said finally, her hands trembling as she reached for her bag. “Clara, grab your stuff. Right now.”
I turned from the window, but my legs felt rooted to the floor. My brain couldn’t catch up to what my eyes had just seen. If Adrian had killed two police officers without hesitation, what would he do to us?
“Clara!” Renee’s voice was sharp enough to slice through my fog. I forced myself to move. We threw our bags together again—this had become our pattern, flight after flight, never staying long enough to breathe. By the time we shoved through the hotel room door, my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
The hallway was empty, but my spine crawled anyway. The carpet muffled our footsteps as we rushed toward the elevator. Renee jabbed the button repeatedly until the doors opened, and we practically dove inside.
As we descended, the lights flickered. A hum filled the cramped space, the kind that made my skin prickle. The air felt heavy, static, like the calm before lightning.
“What if he’s still down there?” I asked quietly.
Renee didn’t look up. “Then we keep walking until someone helps us. There have to be people around somewhere.”
When the doors opened on the ground floor, the lobby was half lit, the soft glow of the front desk lamp casting long shadows over the check-in counter. No sign of the clerk. No sign of anyone.
“Hello?” Renee called out. No answer.
The silence howled in my ears. Something about the emptiness of the space—the stillness—felt wrong. I spotted the front doors and grabbed her arm. “Come on.”
We slipped outside into the rain-soaked air. The police cars were still there below the awning, blue and red lights flashing faintly, painting the puddles in blurred color. But there were no officers now. The cruiser I’d seen from above sat just as before: both figure still slumped forward, motionless.
I had to look closer; my mind refused to accept it. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, tiny drops tapping against the hood of the car. I stepped closer until I could make out their faces through the windshield.
“Clara, don’t—” Renee started, but it was too late.
There was no blood. No sign of violence. Just two mannequins dressed in police uniforms, their stiff plastic hands gripping the steering wheel.
Cold terror ran through me, harsher than before. He’d planted them there. A message. A sick joke.
“He’s watching,” I said, barely recognizing my own voice. “He’s always watching.”
Renee grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward the street. “Then stop giving him a show. We’re leaving.”
We ran again, feet splashing through puddles as we headed in the direction of the train station we’d passed earlier. The world around us looked too still, too clean. Even the sound of rain seemed faint, like background noise in someone else’s dream.
By the time we reached the small depot, the streetlights were flickering back to life. A few cars rolled by in the distance, their drivers blissfully unaware of the nightmare circling just beneath the surface of this city.
Renee checked the schedule board. “First train leaves in twenty minutes. Doesn’t matter where it’s going—we’re getting on.”
I nodded and sank onto a bench, clutching my bag close. The station was nearly empty. A teenager dozing against a vending machine. A couple whispering over coffee near the far door. Normal people. People untouched by the chaos that had become my reality.
I looked down at my reflection in the puddles on the floor. Hollow eyes. Damp hair sticking to my skin. I looked like someone I didn’t recognize.
Renee sat beside me, arms around her knees. “If we can make it out of the city, that detective will have to believe us. Maybe then—”
Her words cut off when my phone vibrated again. We stared at it together. The screen displayed a new notification: a photo.
I opened it before I could think.
The shot was angled from behind the two of us, clearly taken inside the station. I could see my damp hair, Renee’s hunched back, the cracked tile floor around our feet.
It was taken from only a few feet away.
He was here.
Renee leapt up, spinning around, scanning the station. The couple near the door were gone. The teenager was gone. The benches on the far side empty.
“Clara,” she whispered, “we need to go now.”
I nodded, adrenaline slicing through the fog in my brain. We sprinted toward the platform, ignoring the startled look from the lone attendant behind the ticket counter. Wind rushed in as a train screeched into view, headlights cutting through the rain.
As it slowed, we jumped aboard, ducking into an empty car near the back. The doors hissed shut behind us, and for a moment, I let myself believe we might have escaped. The train lurched forward, rain buzzing against the windows, the lights inside flickering slightly with each bend.
Renee collapsed into a seat, panting. “We made it,” she said, half laughing, half crying. “We actually—”
Then my phone buzzed again.
One line of text this time.
Turn around.
I froze. Renee looked up at me, confusion turning to dread.
Slowly, I did what the message said.
At the far end of the aisle, a man sat alone. His head was bowed, the brim of a baseball cap shadowing his face, hands folded neatly in his lap. As the train lights flashed over him, I saw the glint of something silver at his wrist—Evelyn’s bracelet.
I didn’t even need to see his face. My heart already knew.
Adrian lifted his head and smiled.
Then the train plunged into darkness.