Almost Ordinary (The Song Wreckers Book 2) by Crystal Firsdon

and we both sat again.
    “He was there the whole time, Princess.”
    “Did you have any hunches about where Adam hid while you talked to her?”
    He ran his hands through his hair, grabbed and held it for a few seconds, then let his hands fall to his lap. “I had a strong hunch he’d been in contact with her, and that she might know where he was. But I also thought if he was in there, she would’ve given us some sign; a look in her eyes, a secret point with her finger, something. Since no one at 3D saw him coming or going I believed he picked somewhere else to hide.”
    “So your gut didn’t tell you that he was in there?”
    He thought for a minute. “I guess not. Still.”
    “Still nothing. You had no idea. He was that sneaky.” My fingers played with the edges of the newspaper. Part of me wanted to chuck the paper in the recycling bin like he did last Sunday’s paper. There was also the part of me, the morbid part, which wanted to keep the whole sick article as a reminder of how lucky I was. Lucky to be alive. Lucky, because despite what he did to me, I wasn’t a broken mess. Sure I was for a while, but I came out of it.
    And did I really want to reread the disgusting details? Adam left the airport. He drove his car into a garage of an abandoned house less than a mile away from Belinda’s, and stashed it there. He snuck behind buildings and through neighborhoods to her apartment.
    She was home when broke in, so he’d used his favorite knife to put the fear of God into her. First he cut Belinda a few times on her arms to scare her, and let her know he meant business with his threat to kill her if she told the police he was there.
    Adam hadn’t cut anyone in a while. He’d missed it.
    He’d had the audacity to brag to the reporter about his actions, the sick bastard.
    He then went on to brag how Belinda fell under his complete control. Even when she wasn’t with him, like when she went for groceries. He’d cut her, and beat her when he had to, all to ensure she’d be too afraid to save herself.
    That wasn’t the most disturbing, though. All the cutting and beating and threatening tore me up inside, but the more terrifying part enraged me.
    Adam believed what he did turned Belinda on sexually, so he “gave her what she wanted.” God, knowing that he’d raped her on top of everything else made me sick to my stomach. If I was being honest with myself, deep down I knew that already. That had to be why my gut’s been churning ever since I learned he was found at her apartment.
    He’d abused her—physically, sexually, mentally. He had her believing he’d kill her or her family if she alerted the police. He’d even forced her to buy him a black market gun knowing he’d be visited by the police.
    If the beginning and middle of the article made me sick, the ending infuriated me. The psycho fuck had the nerve to tell the reporter he killed Belinda Nord and shot Cooper in self-defense. They would’ve killed him, he’d insisted, had he not shot them.
    There was another lengthy section in the newspaper dedicated to the psychiatry of Adam and others with mental health issues. Personality disorders were given names. Horrible actions had reasons behind them. How scary to think thousands of untreated assholes like Adam lurked out there, possibly making someone’s life a living hell.
    “Somehow, he thinks he’s not going to be in prison all that long,” I told Caleb. “It’s like he’s convinced that he’s going to circumvent the system somehow. And if you think about it, it makes sense for him to think that. He never stayed in jail very long. He got away with what he did to me. I bet his whole life’s been like that. He finds a way to wiggle free and does what he wants.”
    Caleb’s jaw clenched, which wasn’t unusual these days, and a vein popped from his neck. His eyes held that manic look that I’d seen in the hospital after my attack.
    “You have no idea,” he said, “how close I am to