Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Carrson
The first clue something’s wrong is the silence.
Not quiet, just empty.
The steady pulse of Laurel’s tracker has been in my ear all night. A low, rhythmic beat, background noise I’ve learned to rely on without realizing it.
Until it cuts out.
I sit bolt upright. The bonfire crackles at my back, its warmth suddenly meaningless. Drunken laughter rings out from the field, where students jostle in line for the hayride, blissfully unaware that something’s just gone very, very wrong.
I yank the monitor from my pocket. A small, battered square, almost like an old flip phone. The screen glows faintly, but the sound is dead. No pulse. No signal. The blinking green dot that should show me Laurel’s location is just…gone.
I shake the damn thing, smack the side of it, hard. Once. Twice. Nothing.
“No, no, no,” I mutter, already moving.
I shove past the drunk idiot blocking my way, ignore his slurred protest, and start running toward the maze. Leaves crunch beneath my boots. My heartbeat drowns out everything.
I pull the comm microphone to my mouth. “Eyes on Laurel?” I bark. “Anyone have eyes on Laurel?” There’s a second of static that echoes in my earpiece, but no response. “Sam? Thomson? Where the fuck is she?”
The silence stretches too long. Too loud. It curls tightening around my throat like a noose.
Finally, Thomson’s voice crackles in. “My unit’s not registering her. Yours?”
Samantha joins the conversation. She sounds short of breath, like she’s already running. “I’ve got nothing here. I was staring right at it when it suddenly went blank. Last ping from her was in the dead center of the maze. I’m entering from the west side now.”
“I’ve got east side,” says Thomson, activating the emergency plan we mapped out for a situation like this.
“I’ll take north,” I snap.
When I had the farmer come to make the corn maze this year, he’d been surprised. Instead of the pattern the fraternity has always used, I’d had strict instructions. “I only want three openings for people to enter and exit. Three. No more.”
“You sure about that?” He’d looked at me with a perplexed frown. “We usually do six entrances, sometimes more. Easier for the kids to come and go. Won’t three make it harder for people to find their way out?”
“Exactly,” I said and nodded, knowing that control of the exit points was crucial to make sure my plan worked. I’d tried to think of everything, every possible scenario to keep Laurel safe. Fewer ways in meant fewer ways for Jackson to slip past me.
Now I realize that I’d built a cage for a monster…and trapped Laurel inside with him.
Alone.
Something primal surges up inside me. Not panic, not yet.
Something darker. Meaner. Crueler.
Because she’s mine. Laurel’s burrowed under my skin so deep, carved herself into the bones of me, that her sudden absence feels like someone reached inside and ripped out a vital organ, like I’m standing here with a hole in my chest where she used to be.
I reach the edge of the maze, and my body surges forward without hesitation. I barrel into the twisting rows. Corn slaps my shoulders, dry husked stalks slice my skin, and sharp branches claw at my shirt like hands that try to hold me back.
“Laurel!”
No answer. I pivot left, then right, disoriented. The rows all look the same. Same stalks. Same moonlight overhead. Same gnawing absence.
Breathe. Focus.
I force myself to slow, to listen. To look.
She’s here. She was here. I just need to find her.
I can do it. After all, who better for this task than me? My father made sure I was prepared for this, gave me the unique education required. Trained me to act without hesitation, to find clarity in chaos, to stay sharp when others crumbled.
I think back to when I told Laurel about how I was brought up and trained. About how my favorite skill was tracking. Yes. That’s what I need to do.
I call back those skills and drop low, searching the ground, looking for secrets hidden in the dirt.
Notes written by the drag of a shoe, the careless flailing of a hand, but it’s impossible.
Too many feet have trod this narrow path, too many overlapping shoeprints, too many broken corn stalks.
Drunken college kids stumbling through my crime scene, muddying every trail Laurel might’ve left behind.
I whirl around, searching desperately for any sign of her.
“I’m almost to the other side of the maze, but besides empty beer cans I’m not finding anything,” says Sam in my ear. “How about you guys?”
“Same.” Thomson joins in, his voice tense. “I’ve got nothing.”
“I’m still looking,” I tell them as I jog along, alternating between searching the ground for clues and looking ahead so I don’t run into anything unexpected. The entire time I move, I worry, what if I’m too late? What if he got her? What if he’s hurting her right now?
No. I will not think that.
I give up any attempt to track, just break into a full-out run.
My blood ignites, fury and fear mixing like gasoline and a struck match.
I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. If he’s touched her, if he’s laid one fucking finger on her, I swear I’ll rip him apart with my bare hands.
I’ll skin him alive, dig out his eyeballs with a spoon, and torture him for hours and hours.
I want him to hear him scream. To beg. To call out for a mother he’s never met.
“South quadrant checked. No sign of her,” Thomson’s voice crackles in my ear.
“Circling the perimeter,” says Sam. “Still not seeing anything.”
I sprint, swerve. Another corner. Another dead end.
Where is she? Where the fuck is she?
I whirl and double back, lungs heaving.
Then I see it.
A single white feather, left by an angel, and next to it a boot print. Small. Pressed deep and leaving a groove in the earth behind like someone was dragged.
My chest caves in.
“Laurel!” I shout as loud as I can. The sound echoes, repeating her name back to me in a mocking fading tone.
Laurel. Laurel. Laurel.
Silence, broken only by the wind rattling dry leaves, and suddenly I know. She’s gone.
I don’t know where she is. I can’t find her. May never find her.
My knees nearly buckle under the weight of that thought.
Thomson’s voice is in my ear, high with alarm. “Carrson. We have serious trouble here.”
I raise my hand and press the earpiece closer. “What?”
“A limo just pulled up.” In a strangled voice, he says, “Oh my god, Carrson.”
I’ve known Thomson since we were kids. We’ve bled beside each other. Buried bodies together. I’ve seen him stare down armed men twice our size without blinking.
I’ve never heard him sound like this.
Terrified.
Something is wrong. Monumentally. Earth shatteringly, wrong.
“What is it?” I demand. My heart claws its way into my throat.
I’m desperate for his answer, worried it’s something about Laurel.
I picture him telling me he found her and she’s dead.
Her beautiful brown eyes lifeless, her body that I’ve held so many times now grown cold.
That fire in her spirit, irrevocably snuffed out.
It nearly breaks me to think I’d never get to love her again, because that’s how I feel.
I love her.
It hits me how I love her with everything in me, in a way I didn’t think I was capable of, in a way I sure as hell don’t deserve.
I love Laurel Turner like a sinner clings to salvation, and if she’s gone there won’t be a soul left in me to save.
“We’re so fucked,” he says in a strained whisper.
“Thomson,” I bark. “Tell me? What’s happening?”
Silence.
A single, shaky breath on the other end.
“Your father. He’s here.”