Chapter 17
Strangely, not knowing where Timothy is sets me more on edge than him lurking somewhere inside.
As Kai and I follow the trail of footprints to the opposite end of the cabin—toward where Timothy and Kai had been working on getting the lights turned back on—I keep scanning the edge of the woods.
Searching for shapes in the dark with sharp teeth and wandering hands.
A few times I swear I see something shift, running between the trees for cover, but Kai doesn’t so much as flinch as he stomps back toward the side of the cabin.
The dark is making me see things.
I regret following after Kai as I struggle to avoid putting my bandaged foot down on the paved path.
Small pebbles and twigs pierce the tender skin of my uninjured foot.
It’s hard enough to stay on the path with barely any light to guide me, let alone on one foot.
Still, I try to stay as close to Kai as I possibly can—a tougher task than I anticipated thanks to the extra four or so inches he has on me.
“Timothy?” Kai shouts again as we turn a corner. He flashes the light from my phone all across the edge of the cabin and along the driveway where we first arrived.
The footsteps we’d been following end abruptly, becoming farther and farther apart before disappearing altogether into the trees. As if Timothy started leaping like a frog, only to jump straight into the woods. It wouldn’t be a smart move to go wandering into those woods even in broad daylight.
Then again, Timothy Gibson is anything but smart.
“Son of a bitch,” Kai mutters to himself.
He stops in front of a metal box attached to the exterior wall of the cabin. The fuse box, if I had to guess. There’s a small collection of tools gathered at the base of the box—some duct tape, a hammer, and a bolt cutter—along with several sets of prints in the mud below it.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Timothy fucked everything up,” Kai mutters, pulling the box open fully so I can see the damage.
All the wires have been pulled free, as if someone reached in, grabbed whatever they could, and yanked.
If there’s any way to salvage the wires, it won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. Several have been snapped entirely, their remains dangling off the edge of the box or scattered in the mud. I don’t know much about electrical wiring but it doesn’t take an engineering degree to see we’re screwed.
Kai groans, slamming the lid of the metal box closed so roughly it bounces back open, squeaking eerily on rusted hinges.
“Now we’re stuck without power,” he mutters bitterly, looking down at my phone.
“With twenty percent battery left and no way to charge it.” He sighs before handing the phone back to me. “Sorry.”
I swallow hard at the thought of spending the rest of the night in the dark.
With how remote the cabin is, surrounded by trees on all sides, there’s no guarantee that there’ll be decent natural light even if the clouds clear up tonight.
There’s always morning, but without any power our phones probably won’t make it until then.
The thought of my phone dying makes me jolt, suddenly remembering why I was looking for Kai in the first place. Mikey’s voicemail makes this whole thing seem even more suspicious. Could this be a part of what “they” have planned?
“My brother left me a weird voicemail earlier,” I say in a whisper. Kai’s the only person I trust here, but even so, I’m not spilling the entire truth.
Kai’s brow furrows as he pries his attention away from the fuse box to look at me. “Everything okay?”
I bite my tongue and weigh out how to respond.
What if Mikey was trying to warn me about Timothy?
That he was the type to act without permission—that maybe I’d been a target of his all along.
How Mikey would’ve managed to learn that in a matter of minutes since I left is a total mystery, but how he was able to figure out anything from so far away is just as confusing.
Either way, that doesn’t change the suspicion still lingering in the pit of my stomach.
“I think so,” I finally reply, my response just the right amount of vague that Kai doesn’t question me. “Is there somewhere we can go to find service? So I can call him back?”
He sighs and runs a hand along his neck.
“Mom’ll kill me if we leave the cabin like this.
” He pauses, looking intently at the wires like it’s a puzzle he can solve with telekinesis like a character from one of his comics, before finally giving in with a groan.
“But we should probably head home anyway.”
I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Sneaking back into the house without Mami noticing will be a pain, but at least I can let down my guard sooner rather than later.
My muscles relax as Kai closes up the fuse box and starts heading back toward the cabin.
Yet instead of following him, I find myself lingering in place.
Staring at the snapped wires sticking out of the edge of the metal box.
“Why would Timothy do this?” I ask, the torn wires still not making any sense to me.
Timothy clearly isn’t the smartest, and he has no issues violating other people’s space, but what does he gain from leaving all of us—himself included—in the dark?
Does he think it’s payback for me rejecting him and Kai calling him out?
He’s not a good person, that I know without a doubt.
But is he really so reckless that he’d destroy the one thing that would’ve helped us all out?
“Because he’s a dickhead who thinks fucking with people is funny,” Kai scoffs without a moment of hesitation, his brow still knotted with what’s either stress or anger, or, most likely, both.
Biting my lip, I look back toward where the footprints disappeared into the woods. “You really think it was him?”
His annoyance softens, his shoulders dropping slightly as he stops massaging his temples to look over at me. “Who else could it be?”
I shrug to buy myself some time, but my eyes stray to the tree line.
Something in my gut tells me to hold there, that there’s something, or someone, lingering just past what I can see.
But there’s no distant snapping of twigs or feet clomping through the damp leaves.
No matter how hard I crane my neck and squint my eyes, we’re alone.
“You’re right,” I say a beat too late. Kai seems puzzled when I rush to join him but decides not to question it.
He jogs toward me and offers up his arm to help me hobble back to the cabin.
But even after we get back inside and lock the sliding door behind us, I can’t shake the feeling that something was watching us from the dark.