No Rep (Madd CrossFit #1) - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,50

to the effect.

At first, I didn’t realize what I was seeing.

Not until Mavis got close enough for me to read the headlines.

I felt my stomach bottom out at the fear that started to overtake me.

It was back.

The gnawing, clawing, living, twisting thing inside of me.

I’d felt this feeling before.

It was my old friend, fear.

I read the headlines, then the article in the paper again, feeling my insides start to scream.

One witness has come forward on the grisly murders of twelve women over the Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana tristate areas. Francine Pope, thirty years old, of Paris, Texas. She is a registered nurse, as well as a critical pillar in the community.

I stopped reading, praying and hoping that more didn’t come of the words that I read.

Hoping beyond hope that they didn’t find what I tried so hard to keep buried—a victim of another serial killer.

What was I, a serial killer magnet?

What were the freakin’ odds that I would become a victim of not one, but two serial killers?

I wasn’t fooling myself. I knew damn well and good that shit was going to happen from this. I knew that the killer of these women was going to read this article, and think that I’d actually been a part of witnessing these murders when, in fact, I hadn’t.

Now I had a rather large target painted on my back.

Now, I was scared to death, and I would have to tell Taos why.

I wasn’t ready.

That’s when another thought occurred to me.

Taos.

He would know about this and…

The doorbell rang, and I knew without a doubt that the person on the other side of that door was him.

He knew.

I wasn’t ready for him to see me as a broken person. I wasn’t ready for him to treat me like a porcelain figurine. I wasn’t freakin’ ready to lose him!

And I knew I would.

Sure, he would be sympathetic. He now realized who I was to him. How he knew me.

I knew before my sister moved a muscle that he wouldn’t look at me the same anymore. That’d been why I’d been avoiding him, after all.

But this? This was definitely going to change everything.

He would think, oh, that’s sad. Then he’d go about protecting me, smothering me like every other person in my life who knew about the almost-rape and assault that I’d endured at the hands of a madman.

He wouldn’t be able to see past it.

“What’s wrong, doll?” Mavis whispered.

I swallowed hard and twisted the paper around in her hands and showed her the article, feeling a sinking sensation in my heart.

“Oh, shit,” she rasped after scanning the headline.

Vlad, who was in her arms eating, shrieked with protest when neither one of us moved to feed him the rest of his breakfast.

“Sorry, bud,” she whispered, sounding hoarse.

I felt her pain.

I was fucked.

“He’s going to come after you,” she breathed.

I felt fear course through me again at her concurring with my previous thoughts.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“No.” She sounded fucking shattered. “We just got over him.”

Him being Jackson Norris, a thirty-four-year-old investment banker that should’ve been an upstanding pillar of society.

On the outside, he was. On the inside, he was a monster bigger than anyone I’d ever experienced in my whole life.

Once the depth of his depravity—his satisfaction and enthusiasm in murdering women that turned him down for dates—came to light in that courtroom, it was horrifying.

He’d murdered over a dozen women in a year and a half. All of the women, according to him, had turned him down for a date. Every single one of them but me had met the same fate.

Every one of them but me.

But I’d been able to fight back. And Taos had been close enough to save the day.

Though he didn’t know just how many ways in which he’d saved me.

“You’re going to have to tell him,” she whispered, echoing my thoughts.

I cleared my throat, wanting to make sure it came out sounding sturdy.

It wouldn’t do to have her thinking I was a mess.

Even though I was.

“I have a feeling he already knows.” I sounded remarkably unaffected.

Her eyes sharpened. “You’re okay with this?”

The doorbell rang again. Again, we both ignored it.

I wasn’t. How could I be?

“No,” I admitted. “I’m fucking pissed as hell. I mean, who does this woman that wrote this article think she is? Where did she even get her sources?” I paused. “Does it mention it in there?”

She knew what ‘it’ was without me even having to explain.

“No,” she admitted. “She’s either very new to the city and the area, or