How did Micah do it? How did he drink our beer and do flips off our dock and pose for pictures with his arm around Paul’s shoulders and a smile that said everything was just fine?

“What kind of monster are you?”

It’s probably stupid to say it out loud, but I’ve already tipped irreversibly off course here, soared well past the point of no return. If Micah has gone to all this trouble to conceal being in the car with Bobby, he’s not going to let me go. These truths, the worst ones, die here with me tonight.

There’s only one way for this to end.

I blink, and he’s yanking me up off the couch by my bicep, sloshing tea all over his designer mohair couch. I struggle to break free, but he’s like a brick wall, his grip hard and unyielding.

“Charlotte, stop. I’m not going to hurt you.”

But I already know Micah Hunt is a liar.

One chance, that’s all I get.

I use the only weapon I have. I swing back an arm, send the mug thunking hard against his temple. The impact vibrates up my arm, douses us both in hot tea, but it was a direct hit. Micah growls in pain, in anger.

The backhand to my jaw is both shocking and disorienting. The world goes upside down and I go flying. My foot catches on a leg of Micah’s coffee table, and I hurtle over it and crash to the floor, rolling across the carpet in a messy heap. My mouth fills with a warm gush of blood, and some of it trickles out of me and onto the carpet, bright red liquid soaking into his custom Berber carpet. Evidence, I think, right before my head connects with a wall. If nothing else, they’ll get him for me.

And then...

Nothing.

35

I come to on the floor, and for a moment I do nothing. I just lie there, trying to get my bearings, waiting until my head stops throbbing. The air is cool, and so is the ground under me, a smooth, hard concrete. I fill my lungs, catch a whiff of rain and petroleum.

A garage. I’m in Micah’s garage.

I crack an eye and there he is, gathering up equipment at a far wall of the garage. A mask, his flippers, a tank.

I lurch to a sit, scooting backward on my ass across the concrete. I’m not fast. I’m nightmarishly slow, but there’s nowhere for me to go anyway, not in a room with four solid walls and Micah standing between me and the button to lift the garage door. My back hits a cold wall and that’s it, that’s as much air as I can put between us.