7. Mackenzie
I’ve beenon the road most of the day, and I’m exhausted.
I pray Mom’s car won’t break down anywhere. If that happens, I’ll be completely screwed. I might still be able to sleep in it, but I won’t be able to go anywhere, and right now my plan is to get as far away from Verona Falls as I can. The car is old, but so far it’s been reliable, so I’m praying at least this part will go my way.
I deserve some luck.
Doing this is so wrong. I’m not supposed to drive unless I’ve been seizure free for a certain period of time, but damn, I need to get away. If I get a warning sign, I’ll have more than enough of a chance to pull over if the worst happens. I wouldn’t put other people in danger, but I know if I get caught, I could get arrested. I am being careful, and I pull into a rest stop after my first two hours of driving to take a nap and rest. I want to avoid my symptoms at all costs.
The thought terrifies me, so I stick to the speed limit and keep my eyes peeled for any cop cars. It’s not as though Mom will report the car stolen—she’d never risk having that kind of attention put on me—but something else might catch their eye.
As I drive, I torment myself with memories of the Devils’ kisses and their touch, how I’d felt worshipped when I’d been with them. They’d made me feel like a stronger person when I’d been around them, as though I was someone special because they’d chosen me. Now I cringe at the thought. I bet everyone else in college was grimacing and shaking their heads at me as I passed, pitying me, thinking I was just another little victim in their game.
My thoughts go to Verity. She’d done me wrong—had put my life in danger—but had she deserved the humiliation at their hands? I think how frightened she must have been when they pinned her down, the three of them, so big and strong. She wouldn’t have known what they planned to do to her. She’d have been terrified. Perhaps she’s the one person I shouldn’t be feeling any empathy toward, but she was one of their victims, too. She loved Dom, despite how fucked up he was, and he’d thrown it in her face.
I need to hear a friendly voice. Camile has been a good friend to me, but she knows too much, and she’s a part of their world, or at least her family is. Plus, she’s got the fact that she warned me about the Devils to hold over me, and I hate that she was right. I made out like I could protect myself, protect my heart, but I’d been lying, perhaps to myself as much as her.
I decide I’m going to buy myself a burner phone. I’ve got my old cell phone with me, but I dare not use it. Then I’ll find somewhere to stay for the night. Once I’m settled in the room, I’m going to call Lola. I know it’s incredibly risky, but I won’t tell her where I am or anything that could give away my exact whereabouts. I just really need someone to speak with. I feel like I’m losing my mind. As if I’m screaming inside my head at every moment. I can’t do this alone, I just can’t.
I’ve got enough money to refill the tank a couple of times. I hope it’ll get me far enough. I’m telling myself the ache in my heart will lessen with distance. I’m probably lying to myself, but I’ll take whatever solace I can right now.
After another ninety minutes of driving, with a detour for snacks and a phone, I spot a small motel hidden away on the corner of a half derelict looking block. It’s the kind of place I’d usually shy away from because it looks as shady as hell. Shady as hell is what I need right now, though. Plus, the rain that started an hour back is getting heavier, and I don’t want to be driving through it. I pull into the parking lot and slot the car in an empty space outside a worn and weatherbeaten door. I don’t even know what town I’m in right now. Behind me are the bright lights of the reception area. Grabbing my purse, I climb out of the car and jog over, not wanting to get wet. The air is biting tonight, and I pull my coat around me as if I can shield myself from the chill deep inside me as well as a chill in the air.
I push open the heavy door and step into reception. There’s a woman behind the desk, with faded red hair and kohl-rimmed eyes. She’s chewing gum, and she looks at me as she blows a bubble, popping it loudly and pulling it back into her mouth.
“Can I help you?” she asks with a drawl.
“Do you have any rooms?”
She lets out a rough laugh that turns into a choking cackle. “Darling, the one thing we always have here is rooms. Take your pick. Do you want to be on the upper echelons of this fine establishment, or will you take the ground floor?”
I glance out at the rapidly darkening parking lot again and a shiver runs down my spine. “Is there someone here all night?” I ask.
“Me, sweetheart. I’m here tonight. There’s always someone on duty.”
“Can I take the room nearest to reception please?” I suddenly feel tiny. As if I’m only six years old again and scared of the big bad world. I just want a grownup to take me under their wing and tell me everything will be okay.
Her face softens as she looks at me. “Sure, you can, darlin’. The one just to the right when you go out of this door is very close. The walls are paper thin in this place. If you holler loud enough, I’ll probably be able to hear you.”
I shoot her a grateful smile and shuffle up to the desk.
“One night or two?” she asks.
“Just the one, please.”
She rings up an amount on the old-fashioned register and holds her hand out. “That will be fifty dollars, darlin’.”
I count out some bills and hand them over to her. She takes them, slots them in the cash drawer, snaps it shut, and then hands me a large key.
It’s one of those old school keys with a big wooden tab on the end of it. I reach out to take it, but she doesn’t let go just yet.
“Look, I don’t want to give you the fear, but lock your door from the inside, okay?” She smiles softly at me. “No need to worry unnecessarily, because I’m here. It can just get a little rough round here at nights, is all.”
She releases the key to my care.
Great. I’m really beginning to regret my recklessness in the way I ran away. But then I think back to the claustrophobic halls of that big old gothic building, stalked by three men who both terrorize and adore me. It’s as if I’m their fallen goddess. Someone they want to worship, but torment. I can’t deal with being that.
I’m not a figurehead for them to work out their angst on. I’m barely functioning myself.
It had been worth staying previously for my mother, of course, but now I can’t trust her either. I literally have no one in the world. The loneliness almost rips my stomach to shreds.
I haven’t eaten much, but I have very little appetite. I do need to make sure I don’t let my blood sugar level get too low. After such a serious seizure, I can’t risk another one so soon. Tick that off as number two on the list of reasons it was crazy for me to run.
“Thank you.” I wave the key at the woman behind the counter, and she gives me a little wiggle of her painted nails in return.
I dash to the car and grab my bigger bag. Then I lock the vehicle and race back across the forecourt to open my room door and slip inside. I turn the lights on, needing to banish the darkness and the shadows that lurk within it. I lock the door carefully and check it twice. Satisfied that I’m secure in my tiny hovel, I haul my bigger bag to the bed and throw it down on the top of the mattress.
I unzip it and rifle through the contents. There are some yoga pants I can sleep in tonight, and a t-shirt, and a few bottles of water and snacks. I take those out, and make myself eat something, even though my stomach is churning, and then swallow my meds.
I really don’t feel well, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m only just out of the hospital after one of the worst seizures I’ve had in years, or if it’s the unbelievable amount of stress that is zapping around my body. Surely, stress levels this high could kill a person. If I die, I will come back from the grave and sue Dom, Tino, and Kirill for their part in my death. Or perhaps I’ll just haunt them instead.
I’ll certainly haunt my mother and Nataniele. I spend a pleasant few minutes letting myself indulge in a fantasy of haunting the stuffy dean of the college as he strolls about the long, dark corridors. Perhaps I’ll run around in front of him so all he can hear is the quiet pitter-patter of my feet. Or maybe I will make my face slowly appear from one of the portraits, a ghoulish reminder of the girl whose life he helped ruin. I bet in a lot of ways it’s fun to be a ghost.
I bet in a lot of ways it’s fun to be able to disappear. Slowly fading away until there’s nothing left, no more worries, no more pain, just nice, empty nothing.
I shake myself. This isn’t me, and I will not give in to an epic pity party. Instead, I will call my friend. Right now, there is nothing I need more than a friendly voice. Using the burner phone, I dial the number I know by heart and wait nervously for her answer.
“Hello?”
She sounds cautious, probably expecting a spam call since she won’t recognize this number. The familiarity of her voice hits me deep in my soul. For a moment, I struggle to speak.
“Lola, it’s me.”
There’s a long pause, and then a scream so loud I have to hold the phone away from my ear.
“Mackenzie, is that really you?”
I laughed in relief, but it turns into a sob at the end. I try to bite back the pathetic sound, embarrassed I’m suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. It’s so incredible to speak to a familiar, uncomplicated, and friendly voice.
“Are you okay?” Lola asks. “What the hell happened? Where are you?”
She pauses, and I am still struggling to speak.
Thankfully, Lola is not one to let a quiet space go unfilled. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
I find my voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Well, you have.”
I hear the pout in her tone.
“You didn’t even reply to my message about the professor going missing.”
I blink. It’s so strange hearing him brought up again. It’s like he’s a part of a whole different life. I guess he is, in a way. It’s strange how I’ve barely even thought about him over these past few days.
“Missing,” I manage to echo. “Yeah, sure, that’s odd.”
What’s really odd is that his missing person’s case hasn’t become a murder investigation.
“I’ve got an update, though,” she continues. “Police broke into his apartment.”
I brace myself and wait for her to tell me the dreadful news about how my professor has been found dead. Paxton Kassell, a handsome, hot as fuck professor, dying like that? Huge gossip. A tragedy, too, of course … if you don’t know he’s a rapey piece of shit. I do, so I won’t cry crocodile tears for him.
I freeze. “They did?”
“Yeah. He’d packed a bag and gone, apparently. Taken his passport, too. It’s so weird,” she says. “First you disappear, and then he disappears. He just vanished. Some people said you guys must have run off together because you went almost at the same time, but I was like, don’t be ridiculous. Although, I have to say, as time went on, I became less sure of anything because I can’t believe you never called.” She huffs out an annoyed breath. “So, come on, babe, where are you? I can’t believe it’s been this long. I’ve been worried sick. Seriously, I’ve been really concerned about you.”
My brain is stuck a couple of sentences back. “Wait a minute,” I say. “You mean the cops still think he’s missing?”
“Yep, Professor Mc-Loves-Himself just poofed into thin air.”
My mouth has run dry. “The police didn’t…find anything in his apartment?”
“Like what?” She sounds puzzled by my sudden line of questioning.
“I-I don’t know.”
I don’t know why I’d thought they’d find his body inside. This must be down to Nataniele. He would have had a cleanup team go into the apartment and get rid of the body. They probably packed a bag with his clothes, and maybe his passport, too, and made it look as though Paxton had decided to take a last-minute vacation.
I chew on the inside of my lip. This is good news, right? If the police don’t suspect murder, then I’m free and clear. But something about it doesn’t feel right.
If that was the case, why have I been needing to hide out at Verona Falls? Nataniele would have known the cops weren’t looking for me, or Mom either. Has he manipulated this so we believed we were in trouble with the police so we’d have to stay at Verona Falls, so Mom would marry him, and we’d get new names?
I can’t fully explain it to myself—call it a gut instinct—but it niggles at me.
Everywhere I turn, it’s as though I’m being manipulated.
“So,” Lola says insistently, “come on. Spill. Where are you? It was strange how you and your mom just up and went. Everybody has been talking about it, and we’ve all been worried.”
“We’re all right.” I’m speaking on autopilot now.
I realize Lola is rambling on, and I’ve paid no heed to what she’s saying. She could have told me the world is about to end. I have no idea how to respond to her. In the end, I make a noncommittal noise in the back of my throat.
“Can I come and see you, then?” she asks. “Come on, Mackenzie, spill the beans. Where are you?”
“I’m not allowed to say,” I answer truthfully. “Mom kind of got into some trouble. She— well, really, it was my dad— owes money. Listen, Lola, I can’t say too much because it’s not safe. It’s not safe for me, and it’s most certainly not safe for you. We’re not in immediate danger, but we’re hiding out.”
“Give me a clue at least to what part of the country you’re in. You’re not somewhere dreadful, like Florida, are you?”
I don’t know what it is that Lola has against Florida, but she loathes the state. Personally, I love it. White beaches, ocean the color of the most perfect turquoise, and sunny weather. What’s not to like?
I laugh a little at her words. “I can reassure you it’s nowhere like Florida. We’re not too far from home.” I don’t think that’s giving too much away, and so I let her have that little snippet. After all, not too far from home could mean anywhere within hundreds and hundreds of miles’ radius.
“Can’t you come home for a weekend, at least?” she whines. “Why don’t you put on a disguise, wear a wig?”
“Gosh, why didn’t I think of that? I could go the whole way and get some of those crazy glasses like on the Mr. Potato Head toys.”
I can practically see her eye roll down the phone.
She sighs. “You could come and see me. There is no way that if you booked a ticket using cash, and disguised yourself, that anyone would be any the wiser as to you being here. We could stay in the house the whole time and just binge watch movies, eat popcorn, and get drunk.”
My heart tugs wistfully at the image she paints. It would be a wonderful idea to go and just spend some time with Lola right now. I can almost feel the rough texture of her family’s couch underneath my fingertips, and smell that familiar, slightly sweet scent of their house. I never really knew why their home always smelled like a gingerbread house, until I stayed one weekend and found out her mother was an incessant baker. The goodies were delicious too, and their home was fragranced with them for days after.
“Lola, trust me when I say you don’t want to get mixed up in this.”
She replies with a dramatic groan. “So, am I never going to see you again? One minute we’re besties, and the next minute you’re on the lam with your crazy mom.”
“Don’t call my mom crazy.” It seems Mom isn’t my favorite person, but I don’t want her talked about that way.
There’s a long moment of tense silence. I let out an uncomfortable laugh, and she eventually joins in.
Tension resolved, I know I can’t let her go without first asking more questions about the professor. That itch that’s telling me everything is not all right refuses to leave me alone. My heart beats too fast, and my palms are clammy.
“What other juicy gossip can you tell me about the professor?” There’s a tremor in my voice, and I hope she doesn’t pick up on it.
“Like I said, he just disappeared. Never turned up for work, and at first the college thought he was maybe missing—you know, as in disappeared, maybe murdered or something dreadful.”
My stomach forms a knot, but she is carrying on.
“The police—and I only know this because Shelley—well, her dad—is best friends with a guy who’s on the police force investigating it.”
I bite back a smile and feel tears of nostalgia pricking the corners of my eyes as I listen to Lola tell a story the way only she can.
“When they went to his house to see if they could find anything, they had to kick the door down. Inside, the whole place was spotless. It’s like he went on a vacation and never came back and never told anybody. There were clothes missing from his wardrobe, and he’d taken his watch, apparently. Shelley says they interviewed his girlfriend, and she says it’s always on his nightstand.”
Girlfriend? He had a girlfriend? How the hell did I not know about that? God, what a bastard. She’s right, though; his watch is always in a tray on the nightstand.
“His watch is gone, some clothes, and his wallet, even his passport. I mean, why would he need to leave the country? The whole thing is very weird. At first, people thought it might have been a mob hit or something, but then word is he’s been using his credit card and calls have been made on his cellphone, so the cops aren’t looking into it any further. He’s a grown man. He’s allowed to up and leave if he chooses to. There’s no law against that.”
“Right,” I manage to murmur, but her words have rung alarm bells in me.
My mind is spinning. Just because someone has used his credit card and cell phone doesn’t mean it’s him doing it. One of Nataniele’s men could easily have used the card and phone in a different location to make it look like Paxton was still using them. It’s smart of them—put the police off the scent.
But Lola hasn’t finished. “And then it gets even more interesting because he went to the college.”
My heart practically stops. “What?”
She makes a humming noise. “Yep. He went to the college in the middle of the night. He ran in through the front doors. Security saw him. Then on the CCTV it shows he went all the way up to the office—not his rooms, but the main office. He was in there for about fifteen minutes. Students saw him. He walked back out with something under his arm, like a brown file or something, and got back in his car and drove off. And the way he drove away, apparently, is crazy, like I don’t know, they said it was as if he was possessed or something. I think he’s having an affair,” she whispers. “With a student. That’s why he took the file.”
Oh, he was having an affair with a student, all right. The affair, however, ended abruptly.
Violently.
Oh, my God.
My heart starts to pound erratically. I glance at the door as if expecting the professor to burst in at any moment. This cannot be happening.
He’s dead.
He must be. I saw the blood spurting out of him. There’s no way he survived that.
But dead people don’t walk into buildings.
What if the professor was never dead? What if he just left? What if he’s after me?
Did Nataniele ever send in a cleanup team? If so, they’d have discovered the body, right? If it had been gone, wouldn’t he have told Mom and me? Unless he hadn’t wanted to because he knew that if we knew the professor wasn’t dead, and had left already, that we might consider returning to our old lives.
My mind is racing, and I don’t know what to do with this information.
Is Paxton still alive…?
This puts me leaving Verona Falls in a whole new light. A stupid light. A crazy, badly planned, and not very well thought out light.
I might have questioned my mother’s motives. It will take me a long time to forgive her for what she’s done. Now, though, I’m here alone in a motel room, knowing a monster might be out there. It makes me realize what she said was true all along. My mom has always been about protecting me. I might not ever be able to come to terms with what she did, but keeping me safe has been her entire life’s work.
It wasn’t made easy by dad either, because he was always getting us into financial trouble, which put my health care in jeopardy. I feel a tug on my heartstrings as I think about my mom and everything she has been through for me. How did I repay her? I’d berated her, and insulted her, and then I left. She must be worried sick right now.
A thought hits me.
Does she know?
Is my mother aware the professor is alive? Is that why she’s so determined to stay hiding out in that hellhole with that horrible man no matter what?
No, I tell myself. That can’t be the case. We wouldn’t be on the run from the police if he was alive. Although in effect, it makes no difference because we’d still be on the run, but this time we’d be running from Paxton. I’ve no doubt if he caught up with me, he would do terrible things to me.
How is he alive? I can’t quite grasp this.
I chew on my fingernail as I consider all this information. Why would he go back to the college?
Maybe that file was mine. He never picked me up from home, and as far as I can recall, I never gave him my address. It’s not as though I ever wanted him to come to my house in case my mom saw him. The college would have it, though. They’d also have information about my mom and extended family.
He could be on my trail right now.
Bright light illuminates the window, blinding me for a second, and I freeze. A car has just pulled into the parking lot.
“Listen, Lola,” I say urgently. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get in touch. I promise I will again soon. Thing is that right now, I’ve got to go.”
I hang up before she can object and creep to the window, hiding from the glass as I peek out and try to figure out what I can see. A tall, broad figure strides across the parking lot. I can’t make out his features, as he’s wearing a hood and his head is down, toward the ground. It doesn’t look like the professor, but what if it is? Worse, what if he sent a hitman after me?
If someone had told me six months ago that such a thing was possible, I’d have laughed in their face, but my entire world has changed. The chance of this being a hitman feels very real.
The figure cuts across the asphalt and heads straight for my door. No. No. No. This cannot be happening. Where can I hide?
I run toward the bathroom and shut and lock the door behind me. Without any real plan as to what I’ll do next, I climb into the bath. I curl up in a ball and hug my knees to my chest. The tears flow now. This must be what it is like to face the end of everything. I know the man is here for me.
I’m sure he’s here to deal out death.