Property Of A Monster

The Chase

Chapter 6

Mary spun around so fast the half-zipped dress pulled tight across her ribs, and there he was, filling the narrow space of the fitting room like he owned the air in it too.

"I didn't call you." Her voice came out steadier than she felt, though her pulse was doing something violent behind her ribs.

Lorenzo didn't answer right away. He stepped closer instead, close enough that she could smell cedar and something darker underneath it, and reached around her without a word. His fingers found the stuck zipper at the base of her spine, cool and unhurried, working the metal free from the snagged thread with a patience that made her skin prickle everywhere his knuckles brushed against it.

The zipper slid the rest of the way up her back in one slow glide. Mary held perfectly still, breath caught somewhere she couldn't locate, painfully aware of how close his mouth was to the back of her neck.

"There." His voice was low, almost amused. "Fixed."

"Thank you." The word came out clipped, too fast, betraying exactly how rattled she was.

His eyes met hers in the mirror, grey and knowing, like he could read every thought she was working so hard to hide. Mary looked away first.

"It's okay." She smoothed her hands down the front of the dress, forcing her voice into something light, something bored, anything but the panic clawing up her throat. "Stop fretting. I just need to use the toilet."

Something flickered across his face, not quite suspicion, more like the lazy interest of a cat watching something small consider running. "Go on." He stepped back, giving her the narrow gap of space to slip past him. "The longer I wait, the more interesting this gets."

She didn't trust herself to answer that. She grabbed her bag off the bench and walked, not too fast, every muscle screaming at her to run, until she was through the curtain and past the racks of silk and out into the corridor toward the restrooms. Behind her, low and unbothered, she heard him laugh.

The sound followed her all the way down the hall.

Mary shoved into the restroom and threw the lock, chest heaving, hands shaking so hard she nearly dropped her phone twice pulling it from her bag. She dialed with fumbling thumbs, pressed it to her ear, and prayed.

"Mark, pick up, please, please pick up, "

"Mary?" His voice, familiar and warm and so achingly normal, nearly broke something loose in her chest. "Hey, where have you been, I've called like fifteen, "

"I don't have time to explain. I need you to come get me right now." She kept her voice low, urgent, glancing at the door like it might splinter open any second. "Please, Mark. Right now."

Something in her tone must have landed, because his easy confusion sharpened instantly into focus. "Where are you?"

She gave him the address in a rush, hardly recognizing her own voice, then hung up before he could ask anything else. She pressed her back to the cool tile wall and counted her breaths until her phone buzzed. *Outside. Hurry.*

She eased the restroom door open, checked the corridor, and when it was clear she moved, fast, quiet, every nerve in her body screaming that she was one wrong turn away from him stepping out of some doorway to block her path. She didn't see him. She didn't stop to wonder why that felt more unsettling than reassuring.

The evening air hit her like a slap when she burst through the side entrance, and there was Mark's car at the curb, engine already running, his face pale and worried through the windshield. Mary yanked the door open and dropped into the seat, breathless.

"Go. Go now."

"What's, "

"Mark, please, just drive!"

He didn't argue again. The car pulled from the curb hard enough that Mary's shoulder hit the door, and for one long, ragged breath she let herself believe she'd actually gotten away.

Then the headlights bloomed in the side mirror.

Two of them, then a third, cutting out of the boutique's private lot and swinging onto the road behind them with a speed that had nothing to do with normal traffic. Mary's stomach dropped straight through the floor of the car.

"Mark." Her voice had gone thin. "Faster. Please, faster."

"Mary, what is going on, who is, "

"Just drive!"

The first car closed the gap fast, headlights flooding the interior of Mark's sedan in harsh white light, and Mary twisted around in her seat to see three more sets of headlights peeling out behind the first, a whole convoy now, closing in from both lanes like a net drawing shut.

Mark's knuckles had gone white on the wheel, his easy, ordinary face twisted into something Mary had never seen on him before, pure fear.

"Mary, they're gaining on us, "

The nearest car surged forward, close enough now that Mary could make out the shape of a man leaning out the passenger window, something dark and metal glinting in his hand, and the last thing she heard before the world narrowed to a single point of terror was the sharp, unmistakable c***k of a gunshot splitting behind them.