Amelia
I crawl on my hands and knees toward the sofa, worried I might spook the figure draped across the couch. Is she alive? She looks awfully still. I move slower, afraid I’m inching toward a corpse.
The carpet is sharp under my body, like it hasn’t been cleaned recently.
The room around me is midsized, matching the living room, sporting unfinished wood-plank walls and thoughtlessly strewn furniture, creating the sad illusion of a second living room.
No bed, no bathroom. Then I notice an orange bucket in the far corner, a square of cardboard balanced over its mouth like a makeshift lid.
A toilet?
My stomach turns.
This isn’t a room. It’s a cell. Parker Lane’s dungeon.
My mind sends out a useless telepathic report to Wes, as if he could somehow hear me from his apartment in Seattle, somehow know what is happening to me. I do the same for Imogen next door.
I reach the sofa and hover over the still figure, seeing the delicate rise and fall of her chest.
She’s alive.
I lightly tug at her forearm, and her eyes snap open, a strangling gasp escaping her throat. A silent desperation crosses her face as she flounders backward in fear.
I was right. The woman is Madison Tory.
“It’s okay, it’s okay! I’m not going to hurt you,” I whisper speedily. “I’m Amelia. Are you Madison Tory?”
I already know the answer, but I need more.
“How do you know my name? What are you doing here?”
“We went to school together. You’ve been missing for a year.” I swallow. “Everybody knows your name.”
Madison swipes a finger under each eye and looks at me with a look of delight and confusion. “Amelia Bly? What are you doing here? Am I being saved?” She scans the room with hope.
My face drops. “No. Not yet. Parker brought me down here. It’s a long story.” I shake my head. “Are you okay? How did you get here?”
Sitting up on the sofa, she sighs. “That’s an even longer story… I… I don’t understand. How do you know Parker?”
I sigh heavily, pinching the bridge of my nose.
Where do I begin…
But she continues. “Wait… are people still looking for me? Where are we?”
We both have too many questions that need immediate answers.
“You’re back in Blair,” I tell her. “And yes—everyone. The police, your family, your friends.” I falter, realizing I don’t know all the details of her investigation, only scraps of what Phoebe told me, and what I’ve seen on the news.
“I met your sister last week. She misses you so much. Bodhi’s in the third-grade class I teach. ”
Madison’s fingertips meet her lips as she begins to cry. “Oh my god. Parker told me we were down in Tacoma.”
I can’t believe their mom was right about someone on Lake Blair being responsible. And the Torys don’t even know it.
“Do you remember what happened to you? How did you get here?” I ask.
I sit cross-legged on the floor while Madison shrugs a blanket tight around her shoulders and unravels the whole story.
How she was walking home when Parker, her ex-boyfriend, coaxed her into his car.
How he made up a story about his mother dying to gain her sympathy.
And when she caught on to his lies, he abducted her.
“The next thing I knew, I was tied up in his bedroom—back in Seattle. He kept me in there for… I don’t even know how long.
Maybe months. It was kind of like this,” she says, gesturing to the room.
“Except I was always tied up. He would only untie me when his mom and her boyfriend weren’t home.
But I’m sure she knew I was there. She’s complicit in all this,” she huffs.
“He brought me all my meals, made me go to the bathroom in a bucket. Still does.” She glances at the bucket.
“He acted like we were still in a relationship. Like I wasn’t his… hostage.”
I shake my head in silent horror. She’s been alive this entire time, pleading for rescue.
Taken by none other than Parker Lane.
“How did you get here?” I ask. “When did you get here?”
She swallows, wiping tears from her chin with the edge of the blanket. “I’ve been trying to keep track of the days based on the meals I get, and when Parker says ‘good night.’ My guess would be… two months. Three?”
“I wonder why he came back to the lake,” I murmur, more to myself than to Madison.
“What do you mean back?”
I sigh. “Did he not tell you when you dated that he lived here, in Blair?” I ask, and her perplexed expression tells me he didn’t. “He and his mom lived across town as a kid. Just for a short time. I never visited, but my mom told me.”
I give her a clipped version of what happened with Imogen when we were seven. I leave out most of the ugliness, but even the sparse details are enough to make Madison’s face harden.
I always wondered what happened to Parker. If he moved away, if he got in trouble. Now I know… nothing happened. He simply moved to a neighboring county. No punishment, no real hitch in his story.
“I want to say I’m surprised,” Madison mutters.
“But after all this, I’m not. He’s deranged.
Seriously deranged. He told me he grew up in Tacoma.
But now that I think of it, he was weirdly curious about Blair when I talked about it.
He never once mentioned living here.” She shakes her head in a rageful squirm.
“God, I hate him!” she shouts, her voice echoing off the unfinished wood.
She must know he can’t hear her. Or she doesn’t care.
All I can do is nod as she pushes on.
“He is pure evil… One day, back in the old house, he was at work. I was tied to his bedpost as usual, with just enough length on the rope so I could move around a little or go to the bathroom. This was when he would tie my hands in the front—so I wasn’t completely useless.
” She rolls her eyes. “I heard someone walking by his bedroom, which I rarely did because his room was at the opposite side of the house from the others. I figured it was his mom but decided to scream anyway. I started yelling for help and asking who was there. And that’s when his mom’s boyfriend walked in. ”
“Was his name Cale?” I ask, trying to connect the puzzle pieces.
“Yes,” she says, surprised I know it. “I’d only met him once before—but he remembered me.
He couldn’t believe I was tied up. He walked away at first because I think he was confused.
I think I scared him. But I begged him to come back and untie me, and he did.
But before he could finish, Meredith came in and saw us.
She came up with some excuse that I wasn’t well and to leave me alone.
I don’t know why, but he listened to her.
And they left the room. I… I never saw him again after that. ”
“What the fuck,” I breathe.
“They killed him, Amelia. I’ll never forget Parker coming into the room later that night and saying, ‘He’s dead, and it’s all your fault.
’” Her mouth quivers as more teardrops escape, streaming down her face.
“It’s so messed up. Because then he practically thanked me for Cale’s death.
He hated Cale. I think he felt like Cale had similarities to his abusive dead father.
He even told me that he has been using Cale’s identity here so that police can’t track him. ”
I close my eyes and think of Cale’s daughter’s post I read on the drive over here. She was right in thinking he was dead. And now I just wish I could confirm her suspicions and tell her where to look. But I can’t do anything in here.
“What do you mean he’s using Cale’s identity?” I ask.
“All I know is they hid his body really well. Parker bragged about it, how they made sure there’d be no reason for police to think he was missing.
That way he could steal Cale’s identity and stay invisible.
I mean, people do that all the time,” she mutters bitterly.
“But if someone’s death or disappearance actually gets reported to the Social Security Administration, you’re screwed.
” She actually starts laughing. “Do you hear me? I didn’t know shit about any of this before Parker.
He tells me everything. He’s terrified of Cale’s death being reported.
He talks about it constantly. He wants to stay off the radar, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing. ”
“But why go through all that?” I press. “Can’t police find him anyway if people report seeing him here?”
“I’m not sure. But I doubt anyone here knows him or is looking for him.
All I know is he needed to get a job. He told me he works at the neighbor’s grocery store—which he hates.
But he’s never been a career person. And I’m sure the neighbor didn’t do a background check.
It was probably his best chance at getting a job. Even with his stolen identity.”
“For your case… I guess it makes sense. So he can hide here in plain sight,” I say. “It seems kind of silly, though. At that point, leave the state.”
“Yeah, well, that’s Parker for you. He thinks he’s a genius, but he’s actually a dumbass. He makes a lot of mistakes.”
Considering how easily I found him…
“Not enough to lead police here,” I grumble. “They questioned him about your disappearance. But according to Phoebe… they’re not doing much at all. They don’t have enough evidence. Most people think you’re dead.”
I purse my lips in apology.
She sniffs, thinking. “I remember when they interviewed him. He was… scared that day. I heard him talking to his mom about it. He said the only reason he hadn’t killed me yet is because he was afraid police would find my body and it would lead them straight to him.”
A chill ripples through me. “Jesus… Has he ever… hurt you? Or threatened you?”
“He’s into psychological torment… He’s mostly treated me like he did in our relationship.
He’ll love-bomb me, then ridicule me. He blames me for everything.
He blames me for being in this place. Like I said…
he’s delusional.” She takes a deep breath.
“But everything changed when we got here. He told me that I was on my way out because he found someone new. Every day… I’m scared he’ll kill me. ”
“Someone new?” I ask. “Has he said who?”
“Now I assume that’s you… if you’re down here.”
I shake my head, knowing that’s not it.
“I can’t be. I never knew Parker. I came here myself after talking to Phoebe today.
She told me that your mom is suspicious of him.
She’s been suspicious that he’s here in Blair.
So I tracked him down because of what he did to Imogen years ago.
I wanted to make sure he wasn’t here. Right next door.
” As I say the words, I realize why he must have come back.
“I think that ‘someone new’… is my sister.”