The click to my door opening is met with the screech of wheels from someone on the street below and I glance up to see the security guard has already walked away and is standing at attention in front of the elevator. He stands with his back to it and I know that means he’s waiting until I drive down to leave.
My engine turns over and I put the car into drive before I can secure my seatbelt. I want to get the hell out of here.
I don’t expect Steve to step forward as my car rolls by him. With a racing heart, I slow and again I’m surprised when he offers me a folded piece of lined paper on my way down. My window’s rolled up and he didn’t block my way.
A part of me knows I don’t have to stop. I could keep going. If I wasn’t curious or I didn’t want to get a better look at the man, I would have done just that. I would have kept going and gone on my way guilt free.
I don’t put the car in park, but I do stop and roll down my window. I’m very much aware of the gun in my glove compartment.
“Delilah.” He calls me by my first name and a pang in my chest alerts me to it. “If you need me,” he says, slipping the paper through my window. With my fingers wrapped around it, he doesn’t let go. His eyes are sharp with slight wrinkles around them, showing his age. Mid-forties maybe. There’s a darkness that lies in the depths of his irises, and a severity in the way he looks at me. That’s not what has me sucking in a sharp breath; it’s the heat of his fingers as they press against mine until he lets go of the paper.
The contact is so hot, so unexpected, that I rip my gaze away from his to glance at the note in my hand. By the time I look back up, his back is to me and he takes his spot again at the elevator, not giving me a chance to respond.
Lifting my foot off the brake, I continue down to the ground floor of the garage and I don’t stop until I get to the exit. My head is a whirlwind and I’m so messed up right now, that by the time I reach for my pass to slip into the meter, I’ve convinced myself I’m making things up in my head. The note scared me more than I’d ever admit to anyone and I just wish the man were Cody. I miss him… worse… I feel like I need him.
The arm to the gate lifts and my eyes shift from the gate to the lined paper hurriedly tossed in an empty cup holder.
Taylor nods for me to leave but I don’t. I reach for the note and it crinkles as I unwrap it to read a phone number and then a name. A name that drains the blood from my face.
The biting frost drenches me from head to toe as I read: Sincerely, Marcus.
Slamming the car into park and listening to the ping, ping, ping as I grab my gun, leaving the glove compartment open, I then leave the driver door wide open too. I run to Taylor, screaming for him to call backup. At the sight of my gun, panic flashes in his eyes.
“Backup,” he says into the radio on his chest as he reaches for his gun, turning in all directions, searching for whatever’s spooked me.
With my breathing coming in hard, I position myself with my back to the wall and alternate looking between the elevator and the paved road that would lead Marcus down to us.
I’m all too aware that he could escape down a stairwell on the other side of the garage. He could already be gone and more than likely is. Hiding, stalking… he’s probably watching me right at this very moment.
My heart pounds as Taylor screams at me, his gun now pointed at the stairwell next to the elevator, very much catching on that someone’s here.
Sirens wail in the background and I know we’ll be surrounded soon.
And the man I’ve heard called a ghost, the grim reaper… the angel of death… he’ll be long gone but he’ll know my reaction.
With my throat tightening and my lungs screeching to a halt like the tires outside, I can barely breathe.
This is what true terror feels like.
Marcus is here.
He touched me.
Taylor relays the events through his walkie-talkie and several cop cars make their way past us, not stopping and heading to the next floor, searching the darkened place with flashlights.
“How well do you know that man?” I question.
“Who? Steve?”
“Yes!” I say, practically screaming like a crazy woman and feeling a burn at the back of my eyes. “Steve is a wanted suspect. He’s a murderer.”