Chapter Twenty-Eight
ABBIE
I feel nauseous, and my head is throbbing with one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had.
Slowly, I blink open my eyes and am so disoriented, I can’t comprehend anything I’m seeing for several long moments.
Slowly, my brain catches up to my eyes and I realize I’m in some sort of barn.
It’s old and drafty, with rusty and broken tools and farm equipment scattered around me. It smells of chicken detritus.
What the hell? How did I get here, and why…?
Why can’t I move my arms?
I jerk them, then wince as pain shoots up my arms, my wrists burning as they’re rubbed raw by rough rope. I’m tied to a chair, my hands bound behind me.
It all comes back to me at that moment.
Holy shit.
He had told me to drive. I did as I was told, driving until I didn’t know where we were anymore.
Well outside of Ivy Glen, but in my terror, I lost all sense of time and direction.
I don’t even know how long I drove for. We reached a farmhouse, and when I pulled up in the driveway and put the car in park, a musty rag appeared in front of me and covered my mouth.
Then, nothing.
Until now.
Panic seizes me and I look around desperately, trying to make sense of any of this. I can see through the broken windows that it’s still dark outside, so I can’t have been here long. Did Sophie call the police when I didn’t show up for our night out?
Does anyone even know I’m missing yet?
My coat is gone and I’m freezing cold in this drafty barn as the frigid night air seeps in through the cracks and separated boards along the walls, but I hardly notice as I begin hyperventilating.
Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Did he just get me? Did he follow me from Dad’s house? Does he know where Lilah is?
I never texted Jake back. By the time he gets home, I could be dead, and he’ll never know what happened to me.
I’ll never see him or Lilah again. My stomach twists and I struggle not to vomit as tears stream down my cheeks.
“Hello?” I call out, my voice raw and raspy. My words catch in my throat and I have to cough to find them again. “Is anyone there?”
No response. The only sound is my panting breaths and the wind whistling through the cracks in the barn.
Swallowing. I try again.
“Whoever you are… please! Please just let me go! I won’t say anything to the police...”
More silence, which makes my desperation grow. I choke on a sob.
“Please don’t hurt me. I have a daughter!”
What if I can’t get back to her? What if I never see Lilah again?
Oh, God, I’m going to die here, and I never got to tell Jake how I feel about him.
I also didn’t tell him about Lilah, and he’ll learn he’s her father from Sophie or Vivianne.
I won’t be there to explain everything to him, and he’ll feel so betrayed finding out that I lied to him.
And Lilah? My sweet, sweet Lilah. She’s going to grow up without a mom, just like I did… and I can’t…
No! No, it can’t end like this! There’s too much I have to do. I can’t leave them!
“Please!” I shout, my voice cracking on a sob. “I’m begging you! I need to go home to my daughter. She needs me!”
I hear heavy breathing in the shadows behind me.
“Oh yeah?” the horrible voice says. “You should have thought about that before you taunted me.”
I nearly scream at the sound. But then, something hits — I know that voice. I recognize it. It’s a male voice. Where do I know it from?
“Stuart?” I whisper.
There’s no response, but whoever is at my back slowly begins to walk around to the front of me.
My heart is hammering so hard that I almost wonder if they can hear it.
If they might take some sick satisfaction in knowing how terrified I am at this moment.
The figure moves around me and some details begin to become clear — it’s a man, tall and lanky — and when he comes to a stop in front of me, I feel like the whole world has been flipped upside down.
I stare up at the all-too familiar face, certain for a moment that I’m hallucinating. This can’t be real. This isn’t happening.
It can’t be him.
“Dr. Westbrook?” I gasp.
He glares down at me, a crazy gleam in his eye. I’ve never seen him look so… unhinged. I barely recognize him.
Realization dawns on me. All this time, he’s been right under my nose and I never realized it.
How? How could I have let this happen? I’ve known him for three years, much longer than then anything started with the stalker.
I can only stare up at him in shock as my mind races and I think back to all our interactions together.
Any time I thought his actions were a bit odd or out of place, I just made excuses and shrugged them away.
“It’s you,” I whisper.
He glares at me with reddened eyes.
It all makes sense now. Him moving to Ivy Glen. Taking the job at the clinic. When he appeared in the parking lot when I was talking to Stuart, I thought he was just being protective… then there’s that time he dropped those clipboards and snapped at me. I just thought he was having a bad day.
Now, though, I’m seeing those moments through a darker lens. Seeing how obsessive, invading, and inappropriate he truly is.
“Hello, Abbie,” he says in a low, sinister voice that sends a horrible shiver down my spine. “I’d apologize for the accommodations, but … well, desperate times, you know.”
It’s then that I see he’s holding a large butcher knife. What the fuck?
“You’ve been the one stalking me this whole time.”
He smiles from the corner of his lip. The kind, charismatic Dr. Westbrook, the unassuming guy with the kind smile — he doesn’t exist. That was just a mask for whoever this lunatic is. He lets out a long breath through his nostrils and taps the flat side of the knife against his thigh.
“I wasn’t planning on revealing myself so soon,” he replies in a tone similar to a parent scolding a child. “I heard you talking to your friend in the breakroom yesterday and realized I was on the verge of getting found out, so I decided it was time to collect on what I’ve been promised.”
“Promised?” I blink and shake my head, completely lost and petrified. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” he hisses, tilting his head to the side, his eyes narrowing into dark slits.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.
I saw the way you looked at me when we first met in Harrisburg.
” The rage burning in his eyes is horrifying.
He’s practically in tears. “You’d always tease me with glances and flirt with me.
I could tell you wanted me… that you still want me. ”
I stare at him, stunned. What the fuck is he talking about? He’s watching me, regarding me like I’m a treat he can’t wait to sink his teeth into. His smile is lascivious as he drags his eyes up and down my body, and when he grabs his crotch and adjusts himself, I nearly gag.
“I never did any of that.” I exhale, as my heart pounds faster and faster. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t you fucking lie to me!” he screams, totally exploding.
He backhands me across the face so hard that my chair nearly topples over.
Pain radiates from my cheek and lights flash behind my eyes as my ears ring.
Shaking my head to try to combat the disorientation, I try to keep Westbrook in my line of sight.
He starts pacing in front of me again, waving that knife around.
“Vandalizing that bastard’s car was a messier job than I normally would do,” he growls.
“But you knew I was watching and you let him touch you! Kiss you! LIKE A FUCKING WHORE! How fucking dare you! You’re MINE!
” Spit flies out of his mouth as he gets right into my face, screaming at the top of his lungs.
I feel my entire body shivering with dread as I try to stay strong and let him keep ranting.
Anything to buy myself some time. If I can just figure out how to untie these ropes, or pray that Sophie realizes something is wrong, then I may have a chance.
I don’t even know how long it’s been since I texted her.
Westbrook keeps going, not noticing how I frantically try to pull at the ropes. “ I had no idea there were cameras in that parking lot. Tactical error on my part. That’s why I have to move up my timeline.”
I don’t know what he means. The pain is so distracting, but I know I have to focus. It’ll only make him angrier if he thinks I’m not paying attention.
“You betrayed me.” He stops and turns to glare at me again. “You fucked that brainless oaf of a hockey player, and since you won’t make things right, I’ll have to do it myself.”
Tears steam down my face as I shake my head. “What do you mean? Please! I don’t understand…”
He grabs my chair and jerks me around in a circle, kicking up dirt from the filthy cement floor. I’m suddenly gazing inside an old horsestall that’s missing its gate, and I feel a wave of nausea when I see the entire back wall is covered in images of me.
Oh my God.
He’s basically put together some sick, twisted shrine to me.
There are photos of me in random places, just going around town, none the wiser that I’m being watched.
A few photos show me leaving my apartment.
Another shows me walking into my Dad’s house.
That’s not all, though. There are pictures of me in a coffee shop I used to go to on the weekends in Harrisburg with Lilah.
Photos of the two of us at the playground near our apartment in the city.
Some of the pictures go back months and months, to well before I received his first text six months ago.
I nearly vomit when I spot a pair of my dirty underwear pinned to the wall, as well as a set of cherry-red scrubs I thought I’d lost.
“You a sick fuck,” I whisper in horror.
“I’m sick?” he bellows, yanking me back around to face him. “You’re the one who doesn’t appreciate me. It’s all your fault for making me obsessed with you! I was just living my life, I was happy, and then you came around…”