Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Harry's kind parting words did nothing to ease my nerves for the rest of the night and my anxiety carried well into the following morning, despite Meatloaf laying on my chest in an attempt to calm me down.

I must have done something bad in my past life to deserve this. There was no other way around it, no other reason why a terrifying, weirdly obsessive tattoo artist was following me around under the pretence that it was to make sure I didn't get killed.

Me. River Madden. The girl whose biggest worry last week was whether I was going to be able to get the instant noodle stain out of my white sweatshirt.

Now, as I got ready for work and puttered around my small apartment, I was no longer worrying about 99 cent ramen bowls but instead whether someone was going to break down the flimsy lock on my front door and put a bullet through my skull. I mean, realistically, what the fuck would I do? I'd have to just stand here like an idiot and let them do it.

"I know, Meatloaf," I cooed, squatting down to give her a scratch behind her ears before placing a pathetic looking bowl of food in front of her. "I promise that if Mr. Scary Harry doesn't kidnap me for too long tonight, I will buy you some more food, okay? The good kind. We're treating ourselves after this week, little homie."

A glance at my fridge had me rolling my eyes. I could have sworn I wrote down a grocery list, but it seemed I'd been too frazzled to even do that. Though knowing that I needed to stock up on everything wouldn't make shopping too hard, if I could just get a few minutes on my own to actually go.

Harry's wonderful threat about him coming back today was annoying enough on its own. Not because of the whole "if you aren't already dead" thing, but because the bastard hadn't even specified a time and I had no way to contact him. Was he thinking in the afternoon? Early evening? I thought serial killers were punctual and I had half a mind to tell Harry that, when he wasn't terrorizing me, I actually had a life to live.

A life that, despite everything, I was ready to get back to.

Olivia texted in our group chat on my way down to the back parking lot of my apartment building reminding all of us of our weekly lunch plans that we were due to have today. The message alone was enough to make me breathe out a sigh of relief at the normalcy that came along with it.

"I... can't... wait," I spoke slowly into the speaker of my phone, where it so precariously dangled from my fingers atop the art easels and canvases that I was struggling to drag to my car. The small words typed themselves out onto my screen and I leaned down, pressing send with the tip of my nose.

My art class had been cancelled yesterday so I hadn't bothered bringing them into the studio, knowing they'd sit around unused, but I figured that today was a good day to drag them in for next week considering it would help to take my mind off things.

Plus, a blank canvas for me to pour the raging antics of my mind onto could do me some good as well.

Fishing my keys from my pocket, Moira's trunk popped open with a small groan and I lifted in my items, placing them gently down inside. I slammed the trunk shut, digging through my purse in an attempt to see if I had remembered to bring my lip-gloss when something out of the corner of my eye made me pause.

My apartment building was small. I'm talking, like, six units small. And of those six tenants, only myself and an old lady named Martha had cars parked in the back lot. Martha's car hadn't been used in months meaning that normally I was the only one out here.

Except for today, as I slowly spun on my heel to face the brick-walled building entrance a few hundred feet away, there was someone else. A black SUV was parked directly in line with Moira, tinted windows preventing me from catching a glimpse of the driver.