Keep Me Safe (Slow Burn 1)

“I can’t be in here. Sorry,” she whispered.

She turned and fled from the room. There was an invisible hand clutching at her neck, choking her, preventing her from getting oxygen into her lungs. The oppressive weight of evil was so heavy on her chest that it felt like she was being crushed.

She stumbled into the downstairs bathroom and hastily turned on the cold water in the sink. She splashed water on her cheeks and then leaned on the countertop with her elbows, hands covering her face as the water still ran full blast.

Her hand clutched her neck in an effort to remove the invisible grip. But it was as bruising as if she were really being choked.

“Ramie? Are you all right? What the hell is going on?” Caleb demanded.

He reached around her and turned off the water and then he grasped her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. She held up her hand to halt him, straining to find the words around the strangling sensation in her neck.

“I have to learn to beat him,” she bit out. “I have to close myself off to him. I have to be better about knowing when he’s there and I have to be able to shut him out. Or maybe he’s simply there all the time. I don’t know. Why don’t I know?”

“Is he . . . ?there . . . ?right now?” Caleb asked as he stared holes through her.

It was as if he were looking for her stalker in her. Her eyes, or expression or like she’d developed a split personality and one half of her thought she was a sick monster who preyed on women. Or maybe he thought she was demonically possessed. It wasn’t as though she’d given him any other explanation.

She couldn’t bear the disgust—or the worry—in his eyes.

“You do think I’m crazy,” she whispered. “Maybe I am crazy.”

“Goddamn it, no, I don’t think you’re crazy,” Caleb said in a frustrated voice. “I just want to know who the hell I’m talking to and if it’s you or the ass**le who’s trying to kill you.”

“He’s just a passive observer,” Ramie explained. Or rather she tried to explain. Because how did one explain the inexplicable? “It’s like he has a porthole into my brain. He can see what I see, hear what I hear. Be aware of what I’m aware of. It’s why he told me last night that I wasn’t safe here. That all your security wouldn’t keep him from me. He knows everything.”

“How does this happen?” Caleb asked. “Has it ever happened before? Can you block him?”

“Oh God, don’t you think I’ve tried? That I don’t want him in my mind all the time? That I’m vulnerable every hour of every day because he sees everything that I see?”

“Of course,” Caleb soothed. “But there has to be a way of blocking him. We need to work on you schooling your thoughts. Of making your mind go completely blank. It’s a therapy that Tori used when she was younger. One of the many things we tried in an effort to make the visions go away. But somehow I think it’s more applicable to your situation than it ever was to Tori’s.”

Her pulse beat painfully at her temples. It felt as though her head would explode at any minute. Her blood pressure had to be sky-high.

She rubbed absently at her forehead as she tried to collect her scattered thoughts. His explanation was logical. But how to put it into practice? She wasn’t prepared to fight off a mental invasion. She’d never thought herself susceptible to such a thing. She was always the one intruding, thrown into others’ minds. But she still had no control over how long the connection stayed intact.

Perhaps that’s what her stalker was merely doing. It wasn’t that he could slip in and out of her mind at will. He’d found a way to prevent the link from being severed. Whereas before, after a period of hours or sometimes days, her connection to victim and attacker was broken and mental silence ensued, this one hadn’t been cut. It had remained. It was like the story of Hansel and Gretel and their trail of breadcrumbs. She’d left a proverbial trail behind her everywhere she’d gone since first establishing the link a year and a half ago.

“Ramie?”

Startled, Ramie’s head came up to see Eliza standing in the door.

Eliza glanced up at Caleb. “Can I have a moment with Ramie?”

Caleb frowned and sent a questioning stare in Ramie’s direction. Ramie nodded and Caleb backed from the room.

“I’ll be right outside,” Caleb said quietly.

Ramie swallowed hard when Caleb disappeared from view. She hated how dependent she already was on him. And the fact that she felt safe only when he was in her sight.

“You have to help us bring this guy down,” Eliza said firmly.

Ramie shook her head. “You don’t understand. I’m endangering you. All of you. Caleb, his family. Tori.”

Eliza pinned her with her steady gaze. “What I understand is that there is a monster out there preying on women and you are the only person who can take him down.”

Ramie closed her eyes, shutting Eliza out. Shutting everything out while she tried to blanket her mind to nothing. A big yawning black hole. That was what she had to become.

“He’s taken another woman,” Eliza said quietly.

Ramie’s eyes flew open. “What?”

“We think he has,” Eliza amended. “Evidence points to that. Either that or an eerily good copycat.”

Ramie’s pulse pounded, a deafening roar in her ears. No. God, no.

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until the sound of her tortured voice filled her ears. She lifted her gaze to Eliza’s, knowing she had only one choice.