It was all over campus the next day that Judd Grant, a sophomore in the fraternity house, was dead. He’d died of a heart attack. Unusual for someone so young, yes. Not impossible.
The mystery had been the hole in his bedroom wall.
Rose’s hands shook at the memory. She’d told herself over and over for years that his death was not at her hands. Adrenaline had bolstered her strength that night. The heart attack was, however, just nature. A defect lying in wait.
And she wouldn’t feel guilty about it.
The boy was a would-be rapist.
What if he’d already raped other girls?
The trauma he’d possibly inflicted or intended to inflict was surely a factor in negating her guilt. All Rose had done was protect herself.
Now that feeling … that feeling of being hunted was back.
Turning, Rose searched the crowd around the bar. Faces blurred into faces, none of them standing out.
You’re being ridiculous.
Her eyes locked with a stranger’s, and her disquiet intensified.
The dark-haired stranger’s gaze sharpened on her. A smirk curled the upper corner of his mouth.
And then he just slipped away from the bar.
Disappearing into the crowd.
The crawling sensation abated but not the awful feeling in her gut.
Yes, it was definitely time to leave Zagreb.
Rose shook herself, willing her heart to calm, as she returned to mixing the cocktail. There wasn’t much of her savings left. Enough to get her to the next place and then she was out of funds unless she got a great-paying job. Maybe she should put that degree in marketing to good use and find a job that would allow her to save cash for the next time she wanted to move on.
The problem was any employer would look at her résumé and see someone who couldn’t settle down in one place for too long, and that was not an attractive quality in an employee.
Finally, the deejay announced the last track of the night and once it was over, Rose saw Ivan and two other security guards ushering the clubbers out. Ivan didn’t look her way at all.
He hadn’t all night.
When she’d passed him to take her break in the staff room, he’d given her a nod but invited no more interaction. Rose didn’t care. It was just an awkward reminder of why she slept with guys the night before she left town so she wouldn’t have to deal with them trying to ghost her.
Or vice versa.
And Rose was definitely ghosting Ivan.
Having slept with all kinds of men—short, tall, stocky, lean, athletic, nonathletic, plain, good-looking, and something in between—Rose had drawn some conclusions. The better-looking the guy in a traditional sense, the more selfish the lover. She imagined these guys thought they didn’t have to work for it. She’d even gotten the sense from one or two that they thought she should be grateful for their attention.
More and more, Rose had found herself drawn to guys who were attractive in a nontraditional way. Masculine, rugged, charming.
Ivan was all three.
She’d expected the comfort she’d been looking for last night. To be taken care of in bed before taking care of him in return.
Unfortunately, Ivan had slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am’ed her and didn’t seem to care if she reached satisfaction or not.
She hadn’t.
It was probably time to take a sabbatical from men. What had been fun, casual sex was becoming depressing. The encounters were growing increasingly disappointing and empty.
Rose looked up from the glasses she was cleaning to see Josip and Kali, her two colleagues for the evening, disappearing behind the Staff Only door.
Seeing the dirty glasses they’d left, she cursed them under her breath and set to cleaning up. Twenty minutes later, Rose was alone in the cavernous club, the bar cleaned and ready for use the next night.
Usually she’d be pissed at getting left to deal with the cleanup herself, but Rose was feeling relieved that it was her last night in the bar. She’d leave a note for her boss, Marko, whom she rarely saw anyway, to let him know she’d moved on.
Yet, where to go, where to go?
Wherever it was, the time was now. The empty club was feeling like a great place for someone to stage an attack.
Rose huffed, chastising herself for acting like a scaredy-cat, but it didn’t stop her from moving quickly. Once she’d collected her stuff and left a note on an old envelope in Marko’s office, Rose said good night to Noa, the security guard who was locking up.