Chapter Five
Iwas running.
Twigs snapped under my bare feet, opening cuts and stealing my blood. It hardly registered.
Noise spread through the forest. Ruckus Royale was beginning. Half the town surging on Westchester Drumlins, and bringing their drunkenness, libido, and the potential word of dozens of eyewitnesses with them.
I almost didn’t make it out of there before the first group of people arrived.
The party that started at the university would’ve carried throughout the square, sweeping through town and collecting revelers as they went. In the morning, there’d be messes to clean up and apologies to make. I wondered who I’d give mine to.
Leaping over a fallen branch, I ran faster than I knew I could. The farm was only a couple of miles away, but I was racing against a clock I couldn’t see. Was there an hour left, or had my time already run out?
A familiar oak tree lit in the starlight. Our tree. Ivy and I climbed and fell off this tree more times than I remembered. I was on the edge of the property line. I was close.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I flicked down for a second and glanced up. The towering shadow gave a shout.
“Hey!”
I smashed into it with all my weight, lifting us both off our feet. We crumpled in a tangle of limbs—both groaning.
“What the fuck?”
Hands grabbed and picked me up.
“Where you going so fast, darling? The party’s that way.”
Shapes came into focus. Four— No, five of them counting the one I flattened into the dirt. Cursing, he shoved up, smacking away a hand stuck out to help him.
Slowly, I backed away. The five of them came together, standing shoulder to shoulder as if they knew the impact they had in one large dose.
Various heights, shapes, sizes, hair colors, and builds, they shared two things in common: a black shape on their necks I couldn’t make out, but safely assumed was a tattoo. And an air of wicked danger that every man who knew he was handsome possessed.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, stepping back as they moved forward. “This is private property.”
“Taking a shortcut,” one said.
“And, to be accurate, it’s not private property,” said the guy I ran into. He tousled his hair, catching the dark green locks in the light. “No one owns that broken-down farm or the patch of grass it sits on.”
“Wrong,” I hissed. “I do. This is my home, so find yourself a new fucking shortcut.”
“Oooh.” Their jeers rippled hackles down my back. “She’s tough.”
“She’d have to be,” Green Hair agreed. “Everyone in this town will.”
They filed past me, brushing so close their lapels tickled my cheek and fingers skated over mine.
“Hope we run into each other again, darling,” he tossed over his shoulder. “We’ll have a chat about who owns what.”
They were out of mind as soon as they were out of sight.
I sprinted the last mile to the farm, bursting out of the trees to come up beside the barn. A heavy-duty lock secured the doors. Twice as big as the last one I broke into. I blew past it and rounded the corner, passing the barren pigpen for the awning that connected them.
Dropping to my knees, I pushed apart the loose wooden slats and squeezed inside. Harder to do when you’re twenty-one instead of eleven. My hips caught between the wood. I left skin behind, forcing myself through.
Clambering to my feet, I looked over a part of the home that would always be mine.
Farm equipment quietly rusted in every corner. Ever breathe in the scent of old hay? Musty and pungent, it carried the essence of the animals that came to graze and sleep, or the children that came to play. That was what became of my home—the one place I was happy.
It was now old hay, stinking of rotting memories.
Throat tight, I pushed down tears and turned my head to the loft. It should still be up there—shut away behind a lock even better than the one that tried to keep me out.
My phone went off again, the chime following me up the stairs. I answered.
“Rainey? Rainey!” Music poured out of the speakers. “Where are you, girl? You are not missing this party if I have to drag you out of that geek cave myself!”
I spun the dial, feeling the faint click resound within me.
“No need, Paris.”
Light peeked through the slats, shining on the gleaming curves of my bow.
“I wouldn’t miss Ruckus Royale for anything.”
ARSENIO
Ruckus was in full swing. Dante would be impressed.
Actually, I could tell he was. Dancing with a group of painted naked ladies, he howled as they stripped his clothes and ran their hands all over, turning him into a Jackson Pollock painting. He’d owed us a thank-you for correcting his mistake and naming the Bedlam Boys the Kings of Ruckus. I’d collect if I cared about such things.
What good were pleases and thank-yous? Those were for people who still believed this was a world where asking nicely got you what you wanted.
The five of us spread out on the porch, surveying the party.
“Did you get it?” I demanded.
“Nah,” Roan replied. “She changed the password, and the security.”
“Why the fuck would she do that?”
“Punishment. She says we’re getting sloppy.”
“She’s getting soft,” I corrected. “It’s not sloppy if we clean up the mess.”
“But we didn’t quite clean this mess up.” Legend slouched against the rail, taking no notice of Roan running a hand up his crotch. “Did we?”
“We’ll have to deal with it later. After Ruckus.” I fished my lighter from my pocket, indulging the faint click, flickering heat as I flipped it open and shut.
The porch door banged open.
“Arsenio, baby.” Hands circled me from behind. “I haven’t sucked your cock in three whole days.” She stuck her hand down my pants. “Feed me.”
I tugged her out. Holding on to Quinn’s wrist, I made her face me till those wide eyes swallowed mine. “You don’t ask. I give.”
“Then, give it to me.”
“Not interested.” I foisted her off on Jacques. “I’m getting bored with your sex tricks. Past time we got a new one.”
“You’re such a bastard!” She tossed her beer on my back. “You guys wouldn’t dare break up with me. Trust me, there’s no woman on this planet willing to give you what you need.”
Quinn flounced off. Good. I stopped listening after “you’re.”
“What’s the deal with them?” I asked, jerking a chin at the sacrifices. I didn’t get involved with the Ruckus planning till that day. Someone had to deal with... the mess.
“Most of them haven’t paid. Two are suffering from disrespect,” Jacques answered. “One Cairo lost.”
“I didn’t lose her,” Cairo drawled. “She’ll be back. If not, there isn’t anywhere she can hide from us in our town.”
“She?” I scanned the faces of the sacrifices and finally noticed the one we picked up with Cavendish was missing. “Who is she?”
“Some girl. Not important,” he said. “How do we handle the problem if we can’t get into the computer?”
“I said we didn’t have the password,” Roan said. “I didn’t say we couldn’t get into the computer.”
We let that comment hang in the air and dissipate.
It’s all well and good to say we’re getting sloppy when you’re not the one getting your hands dirty.
“Speaking of,” I said. “Three didn’t pay and two were disrespectful. They clearly wanted our attention, let’s not keep them waiting.”
“Should we do a sweep?” Legend asked. “Take all the phones.”
“No,” Cairo said. “They can keep their phones. Let everyone watch them burn.”
I flicked my lighter closed. “Couldn’t agree more.”
RAINEY
I circled the tree line, observing the party.
If every Ruckus Royale was like this, I couldn’t help but see the appeal. Carnival, Mardi Gras, and Burning Man all rolled into one. The speakers blasted everyone in the circle deaf. Seriously, we were a few miles outside the main town center, and I had no doubt they were singing along to “Looking For Me” in the police station.
When I saw the paint buckets and guns, I assumed people would be chasing each other down like four-year-olds at the water park. My mistake for not seeing their obvious use.
Girls stripped off their clothes—spinning, dancing, and giggling as they were painted head to toe in their new glow-in-the-dark skinsuits. Amy and Zara were next to step off the line, their clothes already discarded somewhere.
They ground up on each other, wining and making out while hooting guys struggled with either spraying them with the paint or their cum.
The rainbow pill bowls glowed from many hands. The stacks on stacks of beer tubs ended up half full in the short time I’d been away, and among the celebration, five captives hung from their posts—blindfolds gone. Four of them screamed for help from uncaring ears.
I didn’t see Paris, though I knew she was somewhere in there—looking for me. I typed out my text.
Me: It’s so packed, I can’t see you. Meet me by Professor Valdez. (The guy in tweed.)
I didn’t expect her to get to me right away. I wasn’t worried if she did.
Sticking to the shadows, I skirted the party—gaze fixed on Cavendish. He was the only one not screaming. Cavendish didn’t thrash or beg. You could almost believe he was kicking back, enjoying the party same as everyone else. He certainly didn’t look like he wanted to be somewhere else.
Arriving at the front of the house, I weaved through the cars, keeping low. A woman walking around carting a bow and arrow was something people remembered.
The porch creaked under my feet. The splintered wood’s better days were over a hundred years ago. I pushed on the handle-less door and stepped inside, pressing the bow tight behind my back.
A long, dim hallway opened up before me, the only thing approaching light was the glowing footprints leading around the corner and disappearing.
I tiptoed in their wake. Rounding the curve, I stuck my head in the living room.
A chandelier tangled in cobwebs hung over the room. Someone draped it in fairy lights to illuminate two busted, tipped-over chairs, and an ancient sofa currently occupied by glowing blue aliens.
The girl impaled herself on his cock, cries rivaling the noise from outside.
I recognized her even in the paint. She was one of the girls helping Cairo get the honey off his dick. Public sex must’ve been her thing. She had no problem with the half a dozen people in the room recording them on their phones.
But I did mind.
I snapped back, heart jumping out of my chest. All it would take is one person capturing video of that farm girl, Rainey, strutting around with a bow.
A shuddering breath blew from my hiccupping lips. What was I doing? Why the hell did I think I could do this?
“Tick, ticking, tock,” Cavendish whispered in my ear. “Time’s running out, Rain-ey.”
Peeling my eyes open, I backed away from their fun, searching for another way upstairs. Old homes like this tended to have them.
My search paid off in the kitchen. I passed more couples in various states of undress, going at it like this was an end of the world party. These guys were so wrapped up in each other, they didn’t notice me slip past, and they didn’t have cameras.
Two doors in the run-down kitchen—one led outside, the other revealed the back staircase. I went up, searching for the window I noticed when I stood down below with Cavendish.
Three down on the right, I found the room. Whose room, I couldn’t help but think. Was this empty, desolate space where Mayam once stood with her husband? Holding each other while they watched their children play on the lawn.
I stepped around a gaping hole in the floor, picturing it covered with a rug. Seeing a dresser against the wall. A bed covered in downy sheets, and a family just like all the rest, surviving in a town ruled by evil.
Cavendish turned his head up to the stairs again and saw me. But of course, he couldn’t have known I was there. It was pitch black in the room. Even so, our gazes locked across the divide.
Fixed on him as I was, I didn’t notice the only person who could steal my attention until he was in front of him. Amid the partying, debauchery, chaos, Cairo raised a fist and the music shut off.
“Bedlamites, is this not the best Ruckus Royale in history?!”
The crowd went wild, hooting, hollering, and shooting paint in the air.
“We promised you a party no one would forget, and we haven’t,” he said. “We haven’t forgotten the people who soaked this ground red so Bedlam could rise from the ashes. This is our town!”
“Yeah!”
“This is our home!”
“Yeah!”
“What do we do to people who fuck with our freedoms?”
“Sac-ri-fice! Sac-ri-fice! Sac-ri-fice!”
The chant spread through the forest, rippling over the eastern seaboard, and twisting my stomach. If I never heard that damn word again, it’d be too soon.
Someone brought out a drum and lit a fire inside. One by one, painted disciples—I couldn’t think of another word for them—handed Arsenio, Cairo, Jacques, Legend, and Roan a torch. They dipped each one inside, and spread out, brandishing their flaming torches to howls that bordered on inhuman, from captives and audience alike.
“Professor Valdez.” Cairo pointed out the thrashing man with a torch held too close to his rumpled clothes. “Organized the protest against us. Ordered Nana Grace and her sewing circle to photograph us in the streets. Take our names. Report us to the police.”
The boos blew the man’s ears back.
“What do we have to say to that?”
What else were they going to say?
Sacrifice.
“Kimball Joe over here,” he said. “He’s been coming up short in his monthly payments. Now, everyone knows the community fee we collect is for the good of the town. Who fronted the Dubecheks the cash when they defaulted on their loans and the bank threatened to take their house and land away?”
“Bedlam Boys,” they chorused.
“Who replaced that old, busted-up generator that died three days before Hurricane Hannah rolled through town? For two weeks, the only place with power, heat, and food that wasn’t rotting in the back of the fridge was the high school, thanks to...”
“The Bedlam Boys.”
“We look out for this town and all of you. All we ask is a measly seven percent cut. Tell me, what kind of low-life piece of shit–covered toilet paper can’t give up seven percent to the town that’s given them more in return?”
“Boo!”
“Greedy pigs!”
“Assholes!”
I rested my head on the frame, slightly stunned with awe. No, unease.
Actually, both.
Gran sheltered us from so much. Protecting us from a world where a twenty-one-year-old and his friends can admit to extortion and have his victims rail against the ones who dared to say no.
Did Gran pay the community fee? The Bedlam Boys were younger then. Maybe too young to face down a sixty-year-old woman who kept a shotgun in the umbrella stand.
“—those against the community, are out of the community,” Cairo bellowed.
I straightened, tensing as Cairo converged on Cavendish.
This is it. It’s now.
Raising the bow, my arms were rigid sticks. I couldn’t bend my elbow to pull back. Couldn’t stop trembling to do the single thing I perfected at eleven years old.
Take aim.
You can do this, Rainey. You have to do this.
Mayam did what she had to do against the Men of Honor. Surely I could summon half as much courage to save an innocent girl who needed me. A girl made helpless by a soulless man who cared only about what he could take, even if it was more than she could give.
If anyone knew what it was to be a girl like that, it was me.
I notched the arrow, tears dripping down my face.
No one saved me, but I can save Jennifer.
Cairo and his torch closed the distance. I steadied my aim between his eyes, took a breath, and let go.
The arrow clattered on the rotting floor, and me beside it.
I cried great, heaving sobs as wherever she was, Jennifer suffered alone and afraid in the dark.
“I c-can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s Bedlam now! It’s Bedlam forever!” Cairo shouted below.
“I’m so sorry.”
CAIRO
“It’s Bedlam now. It’s Bedlam forever. And if you don’t get on-fucking-board, it’s—”
“Fucking hell, you can go on.”
I fell silent. The voice ripped through the Drumlins estate, silencing everyone.
Lowering my torch, its light fell on a tall guy with hair that glinted emerald green. He stood apart from everyone for the simple fact he sported a cawing raven on his neck, and the clothes. Long dark coat, spiked boots, pants, and silk shirt such a dark blue, they appeared black.
The guy broke from the crowd, microphone in hand, and parted the way for more of them to pour out. All dressed like Van Helsing’s idiot brother, Dan.
“We came all this way to join the infamous Ruckus Royale. See the even more notorious Bedlam Boys in action, and this is all you got?” He laughed uproariously. “Tie them to a bunch of posts while the naked hicks holler and call them mwean names? Boo hoo.”
Roan, Legend, Arsenio, and Jacques moved slow, falling in around me. I felt the air shift as it did right before I did something I wouldn’t regret.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, voice calm.
“We’ll get to that soon enough.” He circled Valdez, and the edge of the well. “Stories of you five have reached the other towns. Warnings not to cross you. Warnings not to cross the line into Bedlam at all. This fuckhole is crazy, and the inmates hold the key to the city.
“Unsurprisingly, it’s all a load of bullshit.” He spat in the well to punctuate his point. “If we were in charge, none of these bitches would get a light show for daring to threaten me, or coming up short!”
He punched Valdez in the crotch. The professor”s jaw cracked in a silent scream.
“The Bedlam Boys are going soft! You need a lesson on how to handle disrespect!”
The shout was a call to action. The other vampire hunters ran at the sacrifices—shaking their posts, pummeling them, snatching a paint gun and spraying Kimball in his open, screaming mouth. One of them pounced on the still and silent Cavendish and ripped a knife from his coat. He buried the blade in his thigh.
“Argh!” Agony contorted his features. “Filthy, worthless cunt! I’ll kill you,” he roared, showering him with spittle. “I’ll kill you!”
Screaming, gasping, pleas, shouts of horrors, and my new green-haired friend rose above it all, laughing himself sick.
I observed the scene, and Cavendish, eyes narrowing. Neither one of us made a move.
“When we run this town,” Dan said, stalking toward me. “No one will fucking dare stand against us. Least of all y—”
I punched him dead in the throat, popping his eyes out of his skull. Hands flying to his neck, he dropped, wheezing and gurgling to amuse me. Or because he couldn’t breathe.
It was funny either way.
“Stupid fuck!” The vampire band rushed us.
We whipped out our torches, skidding them to a halt. Wide eyes glared through the flames.
“Drop your sticks and fight us,” one shouted.
“Mmm, nope,” I sang. “I’d much rather see you burn.”
I jabbed, catching the torch on his chest. He howled and staggered away, arms flailing and ripping the singed coat off. The guy tripped into the arms of Fonsie—bleating as his hands were wrenched behind his back.
“Hold them,” Arsenio said. A dozen guys leaped on the intruders, hauled up the one choking in the dirt, and dragged them out of our way. “After, we’re gonna have a chat about his delusions of running this town and exactly where they came from. But first!”
“Sac-ri-fice! Sac-ri-fice!” The chant began anew.
We spread out, brandishing our torches over the wells we dug around each post and filled with gasoline. Around and under each sacrifice was a mound of sand that prevented the fire from spreading and turning their deaths from metaphorical to literal. The worst they’d get out of that was uncomfortably warm. The real lesson would’ve come from the tubs of rotted fruit waiting inside the Drumlins, and a couple riding crops. Roan had a thing for the latter.
A little pelting, some light beating, coupled with the kidnapping, fear, public humiliation, and threats of worse if they caused us more problems, was enough to get the point across.
A point I was now eager to make, get it over with, and let them limp on home. I felt something approaching sorry for the poor bastards weeping and bleeding on their stakes. Not even I went for the crotch. I fought as dirty as the next reprehensible thug, as I’ve been affectionately called, but there were standards.
“Bedlam now!” I roared.
“Bedlam forever!”
I dropped the torch. A ring of fire erupted around Cavendish, blowing me off my feet. I laughed.
It was Roan’s idea to have a burning. I should tune him out less often. The guy has a good idea every now and—
Something shot across my vision. In the millisecond the information traveled from my eyes and sent the alert in my brain, a faint pop rose above the flames, and was engulfed in the inferno.
The fire surged out of control, grasping for Cavendish’s legs and clinging tight. Hungry. Greedy. Desperate. It crawled up his body—consuming in seconds.
“Ahh!” Screams tore from him— No, that wasn’t the word. The gates of hell opened beneath his feet, and the noise that came from him as Satan himself dragged him under couldn’t be described with as small a word as scream.
Revelers ran. Shoving and trampling over each other, they took off in every direction, fleeing for no damn reason. There wasn’t far enough they could run to shake loose the sight of a human being burned alive. This would haunt them in their dreams till they died.
“Holy shit!” Dan Helsing was free—the guys on him somewhere fleeing through the forest. He seized my shoulders. “I take back everything I said. You guys are ruthless,” he laughed. “Inhuman! I’ll remember that when we come for you.”
He sprinted off, knocking me aside and spinning me toward the house. I think part of me meant to look that way. Gaze rising to the second floor to see that face in the window.
“Cairo! Why are you standing there?” Roan got in the way. “Get a fire extinguisher. Now!”
I beat it to the pill table, grabbing one of the half dozen we stashed there and joining Arsenio and Jacques, hosing the now silent sacrifice down.
The revelers emptied out the field. The other sacrifices bellowed their heads off to be freed, and promising we’d pay for this as damp soaked their pants. And the face in the window—
I looked back up to my Rain.
She was gone.
RAINEY
I burst out of the house and spotted a familiar back of the head almost immediately.
Paris ran, clutching Amy’s and Zara’s hands. I raced up behind them.
“Oh no, it was awful!”
Her head snapped around. “Rainey,” she cried. “I was looking everywhere for you.” She hugged me tight. “Did you see? Oh my gosh, that poor man.”
“I saw.” A heavy, crushing weight bore down on my chest. I couldn’t take in a deep breath, and at the same time, couldn’t stop gasping for one. “We need to get out of here.”
“That’s what we’re doing.” Amy grabbed my hand and yanked me along.
I chanced a glance upstairs where I left my bow in the floorboards’ gaping hole. It’d have to stay there till I came back for it.
Our group raced to the top of the road, finding Paris’s car parked on the side, and sporting a new dent in the bumper.
“Shit!”
“Someone must’ve sideswiped you getting the hell out of here,” Amy said. “They’re assholes and we will get them later, but we have to go. We cannot be here when the sheriff finds the man the Bedlam Boys burned alive!”
“Cairo didn’t do this!” she shot back even as we piled in the car. “It was an accident— Something happened. I don’t know, but he did not kill that man.”
“That’s not how it looks,” Zara said. “When are you going to wake the hell up, Paris?”
Paris spun on her. “It looks like you danced naked in a field, chanting and begging for the sacrifice to burn. That video is probably already up on YouTube, and your ass will be screaming innocent expecting everyone to believe you. There’s plenty of doubt to go around, Zara, so shut the fuck up!”
The whole car shut the fuck up. No one said a word as she peeled from the bank and tore off. It was quiet in her little convertible, but not in my mind.
The scene played on repeat.
Me dropping the arrow and turning to leave.
Green Hair’s voice bringing me back to the window.
Watching the pissing contest play out. Then the moment the knife pierced his thigh, and Cavendish’s true self tore the smiling, cheerful act to shreds.
His face as he threatened him—contorted with hate, and something else.
Cavendish wanted to kill him. Wanted it more than getting off that post or even staying alive.
The desire to extract his death on a knifepoint of sharpened pain rang clear across the field, and then I saw him. Standing over Jennifer with that look on his face and it being the last one she’d ever see.
The next thing I knew, the arrow was notched and the string bit into my finger.
“I’m sorry, Paris,” I croaked.
“Sorry? What—”
I stuck my head out of the window and vomited.
“Fucking hell, Rainey,” Amy cried. My stomach’s contents splattered her window. “Keep it together.”
“Leave her alone.” Zara rubbed my back soothingly. “We just saw a man freaking burned alive. His screams... I almost vomited too.”
Coughing and wheezing, I let Zara tow me back in. She stroked my cheek, smearing it with tears and paint. The paint hers. The tears mine.
I did it. I killed a man. Planned, plotted, and executed the brutal end of a life, and it was all for nothing.
Trust me, he said. Kill him and I’d find Jennifer. I’d be able to save her, but how could that happen?
Was Cavendish supposed to shout her location as he burned? Well, that did not happen.
I was trapped. We were trapped—Jennifer and I.
My palm dug in my aching chest, feeling the weight growing heavier and heavier.
And we were both dying.
I closed my eyes. On and on the loop went, ending just as the arrow struck home.
My phone chimed.
The sound dragged me back. I fished it out and cast a surface glance at Unknown Number.
555-9428: 18 North Westham
Another message came through before the first one sunk in.
555-9428: Better hurry.
“Paris.” I tried to keep my voice even. I didn’t go too far into what this meant. For all I knew, it was another trick. Another test. I’d breathe when Jennifer was safe. “Can you drop me off first? At the corner of North Westham and Brick, please. I feel awful. I just need to get home.”
“That’s fine.” Paris swerved a pair of brake lights. She was determined to get as far away from Westchester Drumlins as possible, and she wasn’t letting the speed limit stop her.
I’m almost there, Jennifer,I thought. Hang on.
“Where were you?”
I blinked, jarring out of the never-ending loop. “What?”
“Where were you?” Paris repeated. “You said you were by the professor guy. I looked everywhere and didn’t see you.”
“I looked everywhere for you too. There was so much noise, shoving, and glow-in-the-dark aliens, we must’ve kept passing each other.”
“Yeah.” She slid back to the road. “Must have.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the drive. Paris dropped me off at Westham and Brick, as promised. I fell out of the car, tossing a hasty bye over my shoulder.
They honked off, leaving me on the dark, quiet street.
No lights bleeding through the curtains. No sounds of happy families watching television or eating dinner on the other side.
Westham Street was a row of empty homes, and the wrecking ball towering at the end of the street told of what was to become of them.
Cavendish brought Jennifer here?
Where no one would have a reason to look,another voice said, till it was too late.
Chest tight, I stepped off the sidewalk, crossing to number eighteen.
The two-story home rose from a small lot well-tended by its former owner. Rosebushes, magnolia trees, and a ring of flower beds decorated the garden, circling the home. I thought as I pushed the creaking white fence open that this must’ve been a beautiful place—when the flowers weren’t wilting on their branches.
I climbed the sagging porch steps and closed on the door handle. It turned without resistance, beckoning me inside.
“Jennifer?” I called.
The door tipped me out into the living room. There was an old charm to the paisley upholstered couches and the doily draped over the television. This was the home of a grandmother. Other grandmothers. Mine decked her place out with signed band posters from her days as a roadie, and an ammo collection above the fireplace.
A familiar pang went through my chest, but it was only partly for the memories of Abigail de Souza. The other part—the bigger part—was for the grandmother who left this home behind, and didn’t take anything with her.
A chill skittered up my spine, rippling goose bumps on my arms. What happened to her? Why would someone who tended her garden so lovingly, showing the care she had for her home, not bring any of it with her when she left?
I passed into the dining room and bit hard on my lip at the plate and utensils on the place setting, and chair drawn out for someone to sit. I wanted out of here.
Now.
“Jennifer?” I raised my voice. “Jennifer, it’s okay. You’re safe. I’m here to help you. Please, if you can hear me, say something.”
Saloon doors led into the kitchen, and another swinging pair led the way out. I stepped into a hallway and my gaze followed the incline upstairs, then it dropped down to the door directly in front of me.
Basement.
Where would Jennifer be? What would a cold, smirking sociopath like Scott Cavendish do to coax out every drop of fear? Every ounce of helplessness?
I went into the basement.
“Jennifer?”
Feeling the wall, I searched for a light switch, brushed against something, and flipped it up. Nothing.
“Of course there’s nothing,” I muttered. “No one lives here. They cut off the power.”
I flicked my phone flashlight on instead, directing it into the gloom. The staircase ended at the bottom of a concrete floor. I felt the temperature dropping with each step I took. It was dark and freezing down here.
A washer and dryer came into sight. Beside them, a tipped-over laundry basket. This was a regular, run-of-the-mill basement like the normal home upstairs. Where was Jennifer supposed to be among this?
Climbing off the last step, I landed on the freezer placed unnaturally in the middle of the room. Secured with a padlock.
“Jennifer!” I sprang into action, yanking and pounding on the lock. “Jennifer, can you hear me?” The stubborn metal refused to give way.
Spinning around, I searched for something, anything, to break the lock. A wall of cabinets lined the back of the room.
“Hold on!”
I ripped the doors open and met with shelves of yarn, fabric, and craft supplies. Come on, come on, come on! There have to be tools. Every homeowner keeps a set of—
I burst into the second cabinet. A toolbox sat on its own on the second shelf as if waiting for me.
Grabbing it, I paused, snapping my head toward the ceiling. I listened hard.
For a second, I thought I heard a thump. Movement above.
Nothing. No sounds or bumps from above, or from the freezer.
I lifted the toolbox overhead and threw it on the floor. Tools skittered out, the hammer going flying, and I snatched it up without a skip in step. Wildly, I went at the lock.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A mangled heap of metal fell between my feet. I threw the freezer open and gasped—hands flying to my mouth.
A woman lay curled on a bed of fish sticks and peas, so peaceful she could be sleeping. A zip tie bound her wrists. Duct tape covered her mouth and stuck strands of hair to her face. Dark ebony lines on pale cheeks.
“Dog Day Afternoon,” I whispered.
I didn’t recognize the name. I wasn’t really listening while we did our little greeting warm-up. This was the girl who guessed my favorite movie. Who sat across from me eating and laughing while he watched.
“Jennifer?” I gently peeled the tape from her mouth. “Please, wake up. I’m sorry. I’m so s-sorry I was late.”
Crying, I bent to lift her. The least I could do was get her out of this disgusting hole of rotting food. She deserved so much more than this, and I didn’t tell her. Of all the women I’ve complimented and thanked over the weeks, I never made it to her. All the things I’d done that night, and that fact broke something deep inside me that’d never heal.
“He didn’t get away with it,” I whispered. “I hope that brings you peace—”
“Hmm.”
I choked, the rest of my farewell fading on my tongue.
Jennifer’s fingers twitched, then her legs. Stirring, her eyelids fluttered.
“Oh my goodness, you’re okay.” Something half laugh, half sob escaped me. “It’s okay. You’re safe—”
Thump.
I whipped around. That noise I heard clearly, and it came from in the room. I fixed on the stairs, and a pair of polished black loafers appeared on the landing.
“Hey!”
The shoes turned tail and raced off, disappearing through the doors.
I didn’t think, I ran.
Tearing up the stairs, I skidded into the hallway, slamming into the opposite wall. Pain zinged up my arm. The briefest flash of a black sole vanished around the corner into the kitchen.
“Hello?” a thin voice called from the basement. “Is someone there?”
It killed me to leave her behind, but Jennifer was alive and this person who— Who what? Sent me the text? Helped Cavendish? Stumbled into an unlocked house and ran out when someone shouted at them? Whoever the hell they were, they were getting away.
I ran through the kitchen and into the living room, on the trail of those thundering footsteps. I hurried onto the porch and tripped.
“Ahh!” Pitching forward, I crashed on the steps, sliding off and collapsing on the gravel path.
Everything hurt. Dazed and pained, I lay there, listening to the footfalls fade, then disappear.
I don’t know how long it took me to push myself up and see the flowerpot rolling on the welcome mat where it was placed to trip me.
I don’t know how long it was till Jennifer’s voice grew louder, signaling her freedom from the basement.
Getting my knees under me, I pushed up onto my feet, spared one more glance at the lonely, forgotten house, and left.