Lotus Effect

I’ve stepped into my dream.

“I’m here.”

She doesn’t move. As I study her profile, my brows knit together. This woman is taller than Chelsea, and something seems…off.

She removes a hand from her pocket and tugs off her hair. The blond wig drops to the wooden planks.

My heart seizes inside my chest cavity. Before the realization is confirmed, the cruel veracity is already hitting.

And when they turn around, the world shifts.

“You.”

29

Body of Water

Lakin: Now and Then

Andrew Abbot was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

He was intelligent. Refined. Passionate.

He was a teacher of the mind, but also my first lesson in life and love.

And he saw me.

When he looked at me that first day in his lecture hall, all the world and its melancholy fell away, and I was seen.

Drew stands at the end of the pier now, so altered from the man that was the sun I used to orbit around. What I see is the truth that my young and vulnerable self couldn’t discern back then. The selfish, narcissistic manipulator that used people for his own g

ratification as he maneuvered them like puppets.

He removes the coat. Drops it next to the wig. “Was she followed?”

My brows draw together in confusion, my mouth parting to ask a question, until I’m silenced by the cold touch of a blade to my back.

“No,” Torrance says. I recognize his deep voice. I hold still as his large hands skim my body, patting me down. He chuckles at the bandage wrapping my hand for self-defense, then removes my phone from my back pocket. My eyes seal closed.

I hear the phone hit the dock, and the resounding crunch as Torrance smashes it beneath his foot. Making me untraceable. “And she won’t be,” he confirms.

Torrance nudges my shoulders roughly, forcing me to walk up the dock.

So many theories… I had so many on my murder board. But never, not once, did this scenario present. “How?” I ask this of Drew, gaze trained hard on him. “The both of you?”

Drew crosses his arms over his broad chest. “I want to be here just about as much as you do,” he answers me.

Torrance tugs me to a stop. “Oh, come on now. Life is all about the memories. Reliving our most important experiences. This was a defining one right here. For the both of you.”

I shake my head, clutch the coin roll bound in my hand. I whip around to face Torrance. “Did you kill me, or save me?” I demand. “Did you pull me from the lake for some kind of twisted game? I want answers!”

“Save you?” Torrance tilts his head, his eyes too open, too intense. I back up a step. “Tell her what she wants to know, Andrew. Every victim should have a final request.”

A shiver slithers over my skin, and I sneak a glance at the car. Then out over the lake. At the white lotuses bathed in moonlight. The water too still. That grave of tangled stalks waiting, beckoning me home.

No.

Fight.