Her arms and legs were bound with ropes and she was still wearing the clothes she had worn to basketball practice. With my heart almost leaping out of my chest, I ran up to her as Seth made quick work of untying her, holding onto her waist to steady her, but before I could reach them, Jasper let out a yell.

I turned around to a man I didn’t know charging towards us, practically flying across the empty car park, eyes blazing with fury.

Seth was done untying her the second Kyle reached them.

He shoved Seth out of the way with enough force to make him fall to the ground before he grabbed Noelle and tried to get her back inside the car. I was almost by their side, but Noelle reacted before I could even do anything: with one of her hands balled to a fist, she swung and hit Kyle right in the nose.

He let go of her, stumbling back with one hand pressed to his face, just as Jasper reached them. He jumped onto Kyle, holding him to the ground with his entire weight while one of his hands held the knife above Kyle’s chest.

Noelle stared down at them in shock, shaking her right hand.

“Elle!” I shouted.

Her head whipped around immediately. A second later, I was crashing into her, holding her tight enough to feel her heart racing, the same frantic rhythm that was drumming in my chest.

“That punch was terrible,” I choked out, muffled against her shoulder. “What did I tell you about your thumb?”

Noelle chuckled tearfully. “I’m sorry, Coach, it won’t happen ag—”

An agonized scream cut through the silence before she could finish.

All the air was knocked out of my lungs, my smile crumbling when I let go of Noelle and saw what was happening. Suddenly, Jasper was the one on the ground, pinned down by Kyle, who was crouching over him. But the scream hadn’t been his. It was Seth’s, his eyes wide in horror as he stared at the knife, now in Kyle’s hand and pressed against Jasper’s throat.

24

Seth

Just for a few seconds, time seemed to stop.

My eyes darted around, taking in the details of the freeze-frame before me. Jasper, on his back, his hands pressed against the ground, his skin as white as the snow beneath him. The light of the streetlamp reflecting off the knife that dug into his skin just below his Adam’s apple, not hard enough to draw blood, but surely enough for him to feel it. His wide eyes staring up at the man holding him down, neither a stormy sea nor a quiet pond, but a bottomless black as the pupils swallowed his irises.

This was what it felt like then. The climax in all those stories I had read, the big showdown between the detective and the killer when just for a brief moment all hope seemed lost.

The difference was that while reading, I always knew that things were going to be all right in the end, that the resolution was right around the corner, could count the pages left.