Chapter 10: The Queen's Gambit
The morning light through the frosted window was a liar. It promised clean starts, clarity. Delaney leaned hard on the sink’s cold porcelain rim, her knuckles white. She could still feel the press of him against her mouth, the shocking solidity of his chest under her fists. She’d kissed a cliff edge and felt it lean back.
She turned the tap on, cupped icy water, and scrubbed at her face. The water dripped from her chin, spotting the neckline of her sleep tank. She looked up into the mirror. Her doe eyes were wide, the pupils still dark with spent adrenaline. Her milky brown waves were a tangled halo from a night of fractured sleep. She looked exactly like what she was: a girl in way over her head, trying to wash off a feeling that had seeped into her skin.
She needed aspirin. The throb behind her eyes was a low, insistent drum.
She yanked open the medicine cabinet. The little mirrored door swung wide, reflecting the chipped tile behind her. On the top shelf, nestled between a half-empty bottle of ibuprofen and a container of floss, was a playing card.
It wasn’t hers.
Her breath hitched, a sharp pull in her chest. The air in the small bathroom vanished.
It was the queen of hearts. The stylized face, serene and knowing, stared blankly past her. But it was the card’s surface that locked her joints. A dark, rust-brown stain smeared across the queen’s elaborate gown. And scrawled across the white border in what looked like the same substance, in a familiar, controlled script, were the words:
I always collect my winnings.
The world narrowed to the card, the stain, the words. The metallic scent from the bar—Greg’s blood—seemed to rise from the paper itself and mix with the faint, clean ghost of Colson’s cologne still in the steam. He’d been here. In her apartment. In her bathroom. While she slept. The lock on her door was a joke. The space she called her own was just a place he could enter whenever he chose.
A violent shudder racked her frame. She slammed the cabinet shut, the card still inside. The mirror rattled.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. A strange, cold calm descended, the kind that comes when the worst thing you imagined is real and now sitting in your medicine cabinet. She got dressed on autopilot, jeans, a sweater, her hands steady but her mind racing loops. He was here. He left a message. In blood? Is it blood?
She couldn’t leave it there. But touching it felt like sealing a pact.
Using the edge of her sweater sleeve, she plucked the card from the shelf. She held it away from her body, carried it to the kitchen, and dropped it into a ziplock bag she used for paints. She sealed it. The queen smiled through the plastic, the stain a Rorschach blot of violation. She shoved the bag into the very back of a junk drawer, behind takeout menus and dead batteries.
Every shadow in her apartment had weight. Every creak of the old building was a footfall. She moved from window to window, peering through the blinds, searching for the black SUV. The street was normal. Sunny. Empty.
School was a gauntlet.
She walked with her head on a swivel, her backpack clutched tight to her chest like a shield. In the sculpture yard, the shriek of a angle grinder made her jump, her heart clawing at her ribs. She kept seeing flashes of black leather in her peripheral vision, but it was never him. Just jackets, backpacks, the exhausted costume of art students.
She was pulling a book from her locker between classes when a voice cut through the hallway din.
“Rough night?”
Delaney jumped, smacking her elbow on the metal door. Detective Mallory Hayes leaned against the lockers opposite, arms crossed. She was in casual clothes—dark jeans, a leather jacket—but she still looked like a cop. Her short dark hair was sharp, her brown eyes missing nothing.
“Detective,” Delaney said, rubbing her elbow. “What are you doing here?”
“Following up. You look jumpy.” Mal’s gaze was a physical touch, scanning Delaney’s face. “More jumpy than last time. Heard there was an incident at The Lock-Up last night. A broken nose. Sounds familiar.”
Delaney’s mouth went dry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cut the shit, Delaney. My job is to listen to the city’s noise. That bar’s bouncer called it in as a ‘disturbance,’ but the security footage shows your friend Colson. Shows him handing over a stack of cash thicker than my fist. Shows him leaving with you.” Mal pushed off the lockers, stepped closer. Her voice dropped. “The kid with the nose won’t press charges. Says he fell. Funny how that works.”
“He was bothering me. Colson… intervened.”
“Intervened.” Mal let the word hang. “That’s a nice word for it. Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do. Or you will soon.” Mal’s expression softened, not with pity, but with a grim pragmatism. “Listen to me. The remains in Red Canyon? That wasn’t an accident. That was a message. And the man who did it isn’t a boyfriend. He’s a predator. You’re not special to him. You’re convenient. You’re pretty, you’re nearby, and you’re playing along. That makes you part of the landscape. And when the landscape becomes a problem, you know what happens?”
Delaney couldn’t speak. The queen of hearts seemed to burn in the back of the junk drawer, miles away.
“It gets excavated,” Mal said, her voice flat. “I can’t protect you if you keep running toward the danger. The next time he ‘intervenes,’ it might be for you. And there won’t be a bouncer to pay off.”
The warning hung in the air between them. The bell rang, a harsh electronic screech, and students began to flood the hallway, a current of bodies pushing them apart.
Mal didn’t move. She held Delaney’s gaze, then slipped a card from her jacket. Not a playing card. A business card. She tucked it into the spine of the textbook in Delaney’s hands. “Call me. Before you can’t.”
She melted into the crowd.
Delaney stood frozen, the textbook heavy in her hands. The entire day passed in a smear of anxious color and sound. She heard none of the lectures. She made no notes. Her sculpture professor asked her twice if she was feeling ill.
By late afternoon, the fading light stretching long shadows across the campus green, the feeling of being watched was a crawling thing on her neck. She decided to walk home a different way, cutting through the older, tree-lined streets north of campus instead of the main drag.
The houses here were quiet, lawns tidy. It felt safer. She took a deep breath, the first one that felt halfway full all day.
A low, familiar engine purr rolled up beside her.
She didn’t have to look. Her blood knew.
The black SUV kept pace with her slow walk. The passenger window slid down, silent and electric.
Colson drove, one wrist resting casually on the steering wheel. He didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead, as if they were simply sharing the road. The setting sun glinted off the dark lenses of his sunglasses.
“Get in,” he said, his voice barely audible over the idle of the engine.
She kept walking. Her legs were lead.
“It wasn’t a request, Delaney.”
“The card,” she blurted out, stopping finally. Her voice trembled. “You were in my home.”
He turned his head then. Even with the sunglasses, she felt the full weight of his attention. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It wasn’t warm. “You kissed me first. That’s a raise. I was just calling.”
He reached across the empty passenger seat and pushed the door open. The interior waited, a dark leather mouth.
“We need to talk about the game,” he said. “The stakes have changed.”
Across the street, an old man watered his rose bushes, blissfully unaware. A normal evening. A choice.
Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The detective’s warning echoed. You’re part of the landscape.
She looked at the open car door, then at his shaded profile. The queen of hearts. The stain. The word winnings.
She took a step toward the car.