The Evolution of Mara Dyer

But as I stared right into Jude’s—u

“You aren’t alone in this.”

Noah’s words, spoken to me just hours before. Noah found Joseph when he’d been taken—by Jude, I knew now—when my brother was drugged and in danger. He felt an echo of what Joseph felt, and knew where Jude had taken him because Noah saw it through Jude’s eyes.

Noah heard me when I was hurt and trapped in the asylum. I trapped myself, so he saw what I saw through my eyes.

If I hurt myself now, he might see through them again.

He wasn’t in Miami, so he couldn’t save me. But I could make sure he knew the truth.

I bit down on my tongue so hard that I moaned. See me, I wished.

“Are you going to do this,” Jude breathed into my ear, “or am I?”

Blood filled my mouth and silent sobs wracked my chest. Water stretched out in front of us, black and endless. We were at the end of a dock. I turned my head to try and find anything that would give me a clue as to where I was—a sign, something—but my vision swam. From the pain? From tears?

Yes, from tears. When they cleared a little, I saw that the dock veered off to our right in a narrow path toward a grouping of blurry, faraway boats.

But no people. No one.

Jude gripped my head hard in one of his hands, palming it like a basketball. He looked down into my eyes. “You’re not motivated enough.”

I had no idea if Noah could see this. I remembered that it wasn’t just pain that made him see; there was something else. But we never figured out what.

As I spat blood out onto the dock, Jude smacked me. Not hard enough to leave a bruise, but hard enough to sting. “Do not. Do not fuck everything up. You will kill your family, Mara.” He leaned down. “Look at me and tell me I’m lying.”

See me, I begged silently. Help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me.

“Okay,” I said out loud. “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll do what you want.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“If you try to run, don’t forget I have the key to your house.”

“I won’t,” I whispered.

“And I could always cut the brakes on Daniel’s car. Or your parents’.”

I couldn’t breathe. A sob escaped from my throat. I was beyond terrified for them. Beyond reason.

“You control whether they get hurt, you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. He gripped my head harder. “Yes,” I moaned.

I could do anything for them, as long as they would be okay. Even this. “I’ll do it.”

Jude sliced the duct tape from my feet and my wrists. He held me by the waistband of my jeans, just the way he used to.

“Give me your hand.”

My thoughts were a roar. I could barely stand. His blade touched the inside of my wrists, tracing a vein. Then it bit into my skin. I cried out.

“Quiet.”

The blood welled and flowed and the coppery scent made my stomach roil. He drew a horizontal line of blood along my wrist, not deep. Then handed me the blade.

“Cut deeper, exactly where I cut. Then your other hand. Don’t forget what I’ll do to Joseph.”

But the line was horizontal.

Not vertical.

Not fatal.

My heart soared for all of a second.

Until I looked back at Jude and realized—

He knew.

53

JUDE DIDN’T WANT TO KILL ME. HE WANTED something else.

Something I couldn’t imagine as I freed the blood from my body, the metallic smell mingling with the salt of the water beneath us, around us, in front of us. Jude stood in front of me, holding my forearms steady as I cut, holding me up. I could not look away from the deepening gashes on my wrists. I was shaking and weak and I let out a low whimper.

“Hello?”

My head snapped up at the same time as Jude’s. My vision blurred—from dizziness, now, not tears—but a lighter shape approached us.

I tried to scream but nothing came out. I was weak and scared and I could barely see and I couldn’t even cry out for help.

Jude let go of one arm and took my face in one large hand. “Don’t even think about it.” He took the blade from me, hid it, and shifted himself so that he stood between me and the voice.

“What’s going on over here?”

The man’s voice was getting louder. Closer. I heard rushed footsteps clap on the wood to my right.

“Everything’s fine,” Jude said calmly.

Clap clap. “Do you need—”

A pause. A gasp. “Oh my God,” the stranger said.

“Everything’s under control,” Jude said, turning on the full force of his charm. He was transformed—I could hear it. If I didn’t know about the rot inside, it would have reminded me why I was attracted to him in the first place.

The man’s voice changed—imbued with authority.

“Did you call an ambulance?”

I tried to speak, to form words, but I had no voice.

“They’re on their way,” Jude said.

My vision cleared a bit as more tears fell. The man reached for something at his hip. “I can have them here in minutes. Cop,” he said.

And then something shifted beneath Jude’s expression. He withdrew the box cutter and my mind roared with terror. The cop had just turned on his radio when Jude flicked the blade open.

The man’s eyes widened. “What are you—”

Jude was going to filet him open. He twisted the box cutter in his hand just as the cop lunged for it.

And then Jude stabbed himself in the side.

I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

Neither could the cop. He wrested the box cutter from Jude’s hand.

“What in the hell—what’s wrong with you?”

Jude fell to his knees, wincing. The cop turned on the radio. “Dispatch, send backup to—”

But the man dropped the radio before he could finish his sentence. An expression of exquisite pain swallowed his confusion. Then he dropped Jude’s box cutter.

Just a few feet away.

I slumped down and crawled toward it because I was too weak or too scared to stand. Pain chewed through my nerves. My vision was edged in black and red. I crawled anyway.

“Don’t . . . bother,” Jude wheezed. He just knelt there, half bent, staring down, his head heavy and his arms limp.

I moved toward him even though everything in me was utterly repelled. I wanted to stop. I kept going. There was groaning—but it wasn’t mine or Jude’s. It was the man, the cop. I couldn’t see him or hear what he was saying or see what was happening. I had one thing on my mind and that was the blade. I reached for it but my muscles weren’t under my control; they shook and I was weak and when my fingers nudged the plastic handle, it fell through the slats of the dock.

It was over.

I was done. My legs and shoulders collapsed and I couldn’t move myself up or anywhere. My eyes were open still and I was still conscious but there was so much pain I wished I wasn’t.

I felt the vibration of a body hitting the dock. It was the cop; I could see him out of my peripheral vision. His eyes were open. Glassy. His breathing was shallow. I heard a ti

But then I noticed shapes down there. The shapes, the things, were slapping wetly against the pylons. It wasn’t just the waves.

In a burst of focus before I lost consciousness, I realized that the water wasn’t empty.

It was filled with hundreds of dead and dying fish.

54