Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“You have to wake up, Reece.”
I blinked my eyes open to find Charlie standing in front of me, his hands gently cupping my face.
I smiled at him. “You came back.”
Something was wrong, though. He didn’t return my smile, and he looked… Sad? No, that wasn’t right. Angry, maybe? Determined?
He shook my shoulders. “You have to go back. I’ll do what I can to help them find you, but you need to hold on for just a little while longer.”
“I don’t understand. What’s wrong? Why are you so upset?” I looked around.
We weren’t in danger. In fact, we were back in the lookout, tucked away high above the forest. Except, all the color and life we’d brought to it was gone. Instead, everything was cast in deep shadow.
Diminished.
Charlie’s twinkle lights didn’t glow, and the stove was cold.
But nothing hurt in this place, and we were together. What else was there to want?
“You shouldn’t be here. Not yet. Wake up, now. Please,” he implored, pushing me backwards toward the door.
An echo of pain, distant and muted, made my whole body throb. I took one of his hands in mine, shaking my head no. “I don’t think I want to go back there, though. It hurts a lot, and you’re not there.”
Tears ran down his face. “I know, baby. I’m so sorry. But you need to try.”
“Will you come with me?”
He sobbed. “I can’t. I need to help them find you.”
My brow furrowed. “But I’ll see you again after that, right? You promised.”
“Reece,” he said, frantic. “We’re out of time. You need to wake up.”
“But—”
“WAKE UP!” he shouted and shoved me out.
The world tilted and rocked beneath me.
I blinked, and it hurt. So did breathing. I whipped my head to the side just in time to vomit without choking, and gasped as pain bolted up the side of my skull, searing and sharp.
Coughing, I tried and failed to wipe my mouth, unable to lift my hands. Why were they stuck behind my back?
I tugged again, and the world rocked more fiercely. Wait. They weren’t stuck; they were tied. Blinking some more, I groaned and struggled against the bindings.
“Stop moving,” a voice growled from above.
A heavy boot connected with my leg, and I gasped in pain, ears ringing as stars danced behind my eyelids.
Gotcha.
My heart raced as memories flooded back. Charlie’s pained cry just before he left me echoed along with the ringing. With horrific clarity, I now understood just how terrible that had been to relive.
The shed, wide open and inviting. Luring.
The bear traps.
That haunting, raspy voice. Gotcha.
It didn’t sound like Dad, but he’d said so little, I honestly wasn’t sure if my mind merely protected me from a truth that would destroy me.
I tried to peer down at my ankle, certain I’d only find a bloody stump remaining where my foot used to be. Only, I couldn’t see anything at all.
Oh, no, no, no!
After everything that’d happened in the last twenty-four hours, I hadn’t thought about my MS once. I’d only worried over Charlie, and Bobby, and Dad…
I blinked again, eyes darting back and forth, and caught a dim flash of light, almost as if—
Scratchy fabric pulled at the hairs on the back of my head, matted and clumped together.
I was blindfolded.
For once, being able to explain my lack of vision wasn’t reassuring.
My ears quit ringing. In its place, I heard loud, steady sloshing noises, and the ground rocked and tilted in time with each swoosh.
Suddenly, the sound stopped, and ambient noise crept in all around. Insects hummed, frogs croaked, and water lapped at the hard surface beneath me.
Am I in a boat?
Ever so faintly, I heard a fast, low, thrum, thrum, thrum, like distant drumming.
The man cursed under his breath before what I assumed was paddling picked up again, almost frantic.
I could still hear that rhythmic sound, though. It burrowed into my ears and rooted deep in my soul. It was so familiar, its origin on the tip of my tongue, playing hide and seek in my broken and bruised peripheral thoughts, yet I couldn’t place it among the night song all around.
Still, if I could hear whatever it was, maybe it could hear me. “Help!” I shouted over the splashing of the oars. Or tried to, anyway, with my wrecked and hoarse voice. “Help me!”
The boot connected with my stomach, this time. “Shut up.”
Wheezing, I gasped for breath and tipped onto my stomach, landing in the puddle of my own sick. I retched, rolling again so I was on my back, and inhaled a few shallow breaths.
The thrumming metronome grew louder.
“Impossible,” the monster muttered lowly. “They’ll sweep the roads first. There’s time. There’s time.” Then, his voice switched to something disturbingly neutral, as if he were simply teaching me how to tie a knot. “Alright, far enough. Up and over you go.”
And that was when I finally recognized it.
The reason his voice sounded like someone instructing me on how to tie a knot was because he had taught me how to tie knots. He’d also helped me set up my first tent, locate the best kindling to start a fire, and navigate through the forest without a compass.
I’d slept in his house countless nights as a child when Dad had to work, blissfully unaware of the predator that lurked down the hall.
In my brief moments of clarity between pain and unconsciousness, I’d ignored how familiar his voice was, unwilling to even consider my Dad could also be the man trying to murder me.
But as the real killer’s nonchalant words washed over me, I understood with sharp clarity who the true monster was, and just how far he was willing to go to hide in the shadows—even sacrificing the ones closest to him in the process.
Rough hands grabbed my shoulder and yanked me upright. Every functioning survival skill I possessed kicked in, and only one thought raced through my mind.
Up and over.
We were in a boat because I was being dumped, and if I didn’t act right now, it would be too late.
If it wasn’t already.
I used the momentum to throw myself forward, knocking him back with a heavy grunt. Still unable to see through the blindfold, I rammed my shoulder out indiscriminately, connecting with a soft, fleshy part of him. My thigh landed hard on something bony.
I screamed when he stumbled away, stomping on my injured leg in the process. In a blink, I was flat on my back again after what could’ve only been an elbow hit me in the cheek.
Stars circled around and around and around.
Except this time, it wasn’t just stars. There were trees, too, and the moon, far, far, away, beaming down like a distant spotlight onto the forest below.
Dazedly, I noted my blindfold must’ve fallen off in the scuffle, unless I was hallucinating.
But… No. I couldn’t be, because even in my worst nightmares, I wouldn’t conjure something so evil.
Leonard struggled to his feet, his face dimly lit by the glow of a headlamp and twisted in a grimace. He gingerly prodded at his bloody knee, which he must’ve landed on hard for it to be soaked through the tan material of his pants.
Unless he’d already been injured, and our tussle had only reopened the wound. Maybe by falling down the stairs, fleeing the lookout last night?
“Fuck,” he growled, limping and readjusting the light strapped across his forehead.
I couldn’t stand. With my hands still tied behind my back, I barely had enough strength to inhale, let alone fight him, but I tried anyway, kicking out with my one good leg.
He caught it in both hands, his eyes empty, hollow sockets of shadow cast by the harsh headlamp he wore.
“Let go of me,” I snarled, trying and failing to kick him off balance.
He chuckled, placed one heavy boot on my shattered leg, and pressed.
My vision blacked out again. If I screamed, I couldn’t hear it.
“You have to hold on, Reece.”
“Charlie?”
“Just a little longer, now. Please. Just a little longer.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can.” The force of his words rumbled through my murky thoughts like thunder. “We’re coming for you. We’ll find you. Hold on.”
Was it really him? Was he with me, somehow? Still latched onto the life force I’d so freely share with him, if he’d let me? Or was I only imagining he was there, so I wouldn’t die alone?
If I could choose the face death wore as it lulled me into that peaceful goodnight, it would be his.
“No!” he snarled. “Hold on!”
I came to as I was heaved up by the shoulder into a sitting position. Leonard grunted from the strain of lifting me with his injured leg and propped me sideways against the edge of the boat.
Even though I didn’t have the strength to look up and read his expression, I knew he drank in the sight of me so close to death, vulnerable to his every whim.
It was the most disturbing thing I’d ever experienced.
“Why?” I croaked before coughing up bloody spittle all over my shirt. Charlie’s words echoed through my mind.
Hold on, hold on, hold on!
Leonard knelt in front of me so I could finally see him. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find in his face, but I had expected something.
Instead, it was like staring into a void. He didn’t sneer or grow defensive. He merely cocked his head and furrowed his brow, those dead shark eyes giving away nothing.
“Because I wanted to.”
Then he reached behind him and pulled a gun from the waistband of his pants and shoved the barrel right underneath my chin. “Now, get in the water.”
The boat had drifted while we fought, and the moon hung over his shoulder now, even closer and brighter than before. I could feel the chop chop chop of that strange thrumming in my chest.
That’s not the moon.
Moonlight didn’t zig-zag across the tree tops, as if guided by a—
“Helicopter,” I breathed. They’re searching for me.
Leonard did snarl, then, briefly looking over his shoulder before turning back. “Hurry up. In, before they come this way.”
“I need to help them find you,” Charlie had said. Or was that a dream? “We’re coming for you.”
Not fast enough, though.