Hunter's Edge

Chapter Ten

A Fairy Tale

The alarm blared into the silence, the hard, driving sounds of classic Aerosmith blaring from the speakers. Rolling onto her side, Angel Pierson smacked at the snooze button and she ended up knocking her iPod off the docking station.

"Shit." Eyes gritty with fatigue, her entire body aching from head to toe, she rolled upright.

The iPod lay face down on the hardwood floor, numerous little dings and scratches on the shiny silver back attesting to just how often she subjected it to such treatment.

Angel was not a morning person.

There'd been a time when she'd loved mornings and sunrises, but it was so long ago, it was almost like another life.

Hell, it was another life.

A life with Kel. The way her life was supposed to be. Like a mirage, she saw the memory of old visions flicker before her eyes. A happy life. One where she married the man she loved, the only man she ever would love.

That life was a fairy tale now, something that would never happen. She didn't want another man. She didn't want to fall in love, even if she could. She'd spent her life alone and she was just fine with that. Even if it meant growing old alone, because nothing was worth risking the agony she'd experienced when Kel disappeared. Nothing.

Besides, deep inside, in a place that went even deeper than what she felt in her heart, she knew that she was only meant to fall in love with one man. Trying to make any sort of relationship with another when Kel was all she could think about, how fair was that?

For years, she'd deluded herself into believing that maybe one day, Kel would come back to her. But that had been just another fairy tale.

He'd been officially declared dead five years ago and his case remained unsolved. The few clues had been worthless to the police, a blood trail that police dogs had followed into the woods a good five miles from Angel's childhood home, and then the trail went cold. The dogs had searched the woods for a good twenty-four hours trying to find a trail, but there was nothing.

Inside her house, there'd been plenty of physical evidence that had given the cops hope, but most of the blood had come from her or Kel. She'd learned later, months later, that there had been trace evidence, most likely from the intruder, but somehow every last bit of it had disappeared from the lab, leaving the cops empty-handed.

No eyewitnesses—not even Angel, because she couldn't remember much of anything from that night. Neither had her step-siblings or the girl who'd spent the night with Lindsey. The three kids had slept through the entire attack, waking in the morning with no memory of anything.

Angel's own memories were so vague, so unclear, they hadn't been any help. Memories of fear. Memories of pain. Then Kel's face. Waking in the morning and feeling...something. It wasn't that he had felt gone, exactly, but she couldn't feel him the way she'd always been able to, either.

It had been that feeling that had lulled her into believing Kel would come back to her, that he'd show up someplace, hurt...but alive. But the first week passed, then the second...by the third, she'd fallen into a fit of depression so severe, she'd ended up hospitalized over it.

The night Jake had found her, he had no idea how close she'd come, no idea that when he knocked on her door, she'd been standing in the kitchen, holding a knife and admiring the way it glinted under the light, wondering how it would look if she pressed it to her wrist and slashed.

Blood... It called to her and she'd been obsessed with seeing how it would look trickling down her skin, how it would smell, how it would feel.

When she wasn't thinking about blood or fighting a deep inner rage, she was caught up thinking about Kel. Thinking about him hurt so much, she'd been willing to turn to anything, just to get away.