The thought of having Jared come into my apartment didn’t sit well, so I headed for the door and slipped my sneakers back on.

When I stepped out into the cool night air, I inhaled deeply.  I mumbled to myself that things would be okay, and the truth would find its way to the light.  I didn’t believe myself for a second.

Across the lot stood Jared in his signature leather jacket and jeans.  He leaned against the back door of his Charger as he watched me come out.  I kept my left hand over my phone and my right one on my keys, hidden safely in my pockets.

“What is it?” I asked, stopping a few feet away from him.  He observed the space between us unhappily.

“In the car,” he said and he opened the passenger door for me.  I didn’t move.

“No,” I said.  This must have worked for him in the past, and I worried how often he had done it.  Did people really just get into a car with him, knowing he had a gun?  Jared gripped the door, grimacing.

“Get in, or I throw you in,” he threatened.  This, at least, I was prepared for.  I pulled my car keys out of my pocket and set my thumb over the panic button.

“Not happening,” I said with a wave of my hand.  It was small neighbourhood, so when car alarms went off, people came outside, and they came fast.   Thinking about it more though, I realized the fatal flaw; Jared could haul me into the car and drive off before anyone even peeked out the window.   I had expected Jared to groan in frustration, or at least shut the door, but instead he took a step towards me, smiling.

I didn’t move, trying to appear more confident than I felt on sore feet.  Jared advanced forward till he was only a foot away, calling my bluff.  His arm shot out and grabbed my wrist; by reaction I hit the panic button.  Nothing happened.

“What?” I said aloud, more to myself than him.  I struggled backwards but he wrapped his other arm around my waist and easily lifted my feet off the ground.  Within seconds I tossed into his car, the door slamming shut beside me.  Caught off guard, I continued to press the panic button, pointing it towards my car as if that would help.  Jared climbed in and started the engine, quickly driving us away from home.  I pressed the button again, this time Jared swatted the keys from my hand.

“Give it up already,” he told me, “I disabled your alarm.” 

I picked my keys from the car floor.

“You knew I would bring it,” I said, surprised he would think that far ahead.  I’d never felt so dumbstruck in my life.  His engine roared as we drove towards downtown Ellengale.

“Of course I did.”  He smiled to himself.  “You’re not as smart as you think you are.  But you are pretty crafty, I’ll give you that.”       

“What do you mean?”  I didn’t think I had ever asked that question in my life.  It felt thick across my tongue and I hoped I would never have to ask it again.

“You broke into the Stafoff crime scene,” he said, “and you took some pictures.” 

I decided that the best thing to do now was play stupid.  “What are you talking about?”

I chose to look out the window rather than analyze him—my stomach fluttered knowing he was analyzing me, too.  He didn’t answer my question and kept driving.  It was only a few minutes until we were downtown, but it felt like a century had passed.  I’d counted his breaths, as well as my own, questioned what each shift of his hand on the wheel meant, all while wondering why his car smelled like myrrh.  I really disliked that I didn’t dislike it.

Jared stopped the car in front of the local diner and got out.  My older brother had always taken me here when I was little and despite my comfort at seeing the pink neon sign that merely read “DINER”, I knew this wasn’t going to be another happy memory to join the others.   Jared walked around to the passenger side and opened my door, hauling me out of the seat by my elbow.  Keeping one hand on me he walked me into the diner and sat me down at a booth by the window.

“What are you doing?”  I squinted at him beneath the fluorescent lights.

“Let’s just call it insurance,” he said, signalling the waitress for two coffees. 

Insurance for what?  I wondered.  Wasn’t I the one that would want reassurance in the form of others around me?  It didn’t make me feel better.  There was a chance Jared would pull his gun here as he had in the bathroom. 

The elderly woman that owned the diner, Agatha, brought us the coffees and left when we said we didn’t want to order anything else.  She never was one for small talk.

“What do you want?” I asked, wrapping my hands around the cup.  He eyed my hands, one brow quirked, already seeing my plan.  I looked down, annoyed that he saw through me as easily as Luke could.  No throwing coffee in his face today while trying to escape, I supposed.

“I need to know what you saw,”—he took a sip of the coffee—“earlier, with the dead girl in the bathroom.”

“Why?”  I was getting annoyed with his secrecy.  Why should I share with him when I only knew his name?  A name which was most likely fake.

“Listen,” he said leaning back in the booth, “I’m trying to find whoever did these people in, so why not try and help?”

“Then tell me who you are, if you really want me to help.”  I looked up at him as he ran a hand through his hair.

“You already know my name, I put it in your phone.”  Jared kept his eyes on the few people around us.  A couple of girls I recognized from school, their table coated with thick textbooks and too many coffee cups—a study session with only two left behind.  A man at the bar trying to chat with Agatha but she just nodded and grunted in response.  A woman on the opposite side of the bar, a book in hand, the cover of two crows and a woman with four eyes.

“You know what I mean,” I replied.  Hopefully it hadn’t been too long since I started looking around.

“I’m a bounty hunter,” he admitted, as if that were a normal, everyday job.  “I’ve been hired to catch Rosa Navarro’s killer.  So, tell me what you saw.”

“Why should I believe you?”  I had to admit, he did have that Hollywood bounty hunter vibe to him—leather jacket, black boots, untameable hair.  It would explain him being around so much, but I wasn’t about to believe him.  “Do you have any proof?”

“I have a gun.”  He took a drink of coffee, the white cup seeming extra small in his large hands.

“That isn’t proof.”  It was my turn to sip my coffee.  Somewhere inside me I knew he wasn’t lying, but he had caused me to lose a lot of sleep and something about him just…bothered me.  Maybe it was because he reminded me of a bully, the kind of person who applied pressure until you did what they wanted.  The corner of his lip twitched, resisting a smile.  I had to admit, this back and forth was a little fun; I had never had such a worthy opponent, especially one that looked like him.

I went on, “Aren’t you a little young to be a bounty hunter?  You’re, what, twenty?”

Jared grimaced.  While he did look young, he wasn’t quite that young.  It was nice to know I’d hit a sore spot—sore spots meant getting emotional, and getting emotional meant making mistakes.

“I’m 23,” he responded, leaning his forearms on the table.  “But I assure you I’m very good at what I do.  Do you want me to help or not?”

He must’ve not had people resist him like this, because he wasn’t very good at convincing me to help.  As if seeing the thoughts cross my mind, he add, “’Cause as I see it, you’re boyfriend is guilty.  So why don’t you just drop the tough girl act and tell me what happened.”

I was acting like a “tough girl”?  I watched him a moment, considering my options.  Was he testing me?  Squinting at him, I couldn’t tell what he wanted me to say.  The truth?  That I had seen Luke go into the bathroom and then a minute later a girl was dead?

“I saw the smoke,” I told him instead, “but it disappeared like before.”

“It didn’t attack you like last time?”  I thought back to Charlie’s apartment, the smoke coming towards me.  It had just dissipated this time, leaving me alone, but I’d seen something else in it.  Recognition.

“No,” I said, “it just left.”

 Jared rubbed over his mouth, contemplating my words.

I didn’t like the silence that fell on us, even with the chatter from the man at the bar.  I was compelled to ask, “Do you know what’s doing it?”

 I stared down at the liquid in my cup and remembered the feel of Charlie’s skin.  We had never been close, but she was a good person; she didn’t deserve to die.  She didn’t deserve to be murdered.  Jared must have picked up on my thoughts because when I raised my eyes to meet his, he’d softened.  So some part of him did have feelings.

“Look,” he told me, “whatever is doing this isn’t human.  So tell me what you saw at the crime scenes.”

“Well,” I began, wondering why he used the plural, “at Charlie’s there was smoke, same with the bathroom.  There wasn’t any blood like at Alice’s.”

“What was at the Stafoff place?” Jared asked.  “I couldn’t get into that one.”  He shot me a displeased grimace, and I felt like I had won some kind of battle.  It was short lived as I thought of how often I’d seen the Charger and hadn’t stopped what I was doing.  I felt a little stupid remembering what I had done and realized that things could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t just Jared that had spotted me.

“Blood,” I said, “a lot of it.  I think it was just Alex’s though, the room they found Alice in was clean except…”

“Except…” he prodded, waving his hand in a circular motion.

“Well there were some books,”—I turned the cup around in my hands, knowing how stupid I was about to sound—“they were on the floor by the bookshelf.  All of them were opened to the same pages.”

“What books?” I couldn’t hear anything in his voice, other than curiosity.  It made me feel slightly better.

“I don’t know; they were all different.  The only thing they had in common was that they were opened to pages four and five.”

“Anything else?” Jared asked, dismissing the books.  It irked me, but I moved on and told him about the stone jammed between the cushions.  He stared at me.  “So what you’re telling me is, you found some open books and a necklace in a house and you think they mean something?”

Well, when he put it like that…

I shrugged.  “I suppose.”