Chapter 37 Greer
SOMETHING FLICKERS in the distance.
The fog’s much thicker along the coast, but as I draw closer, I can make out the bridge’s railings bordering either side.
Even now, the sight of it churns up something deep in my belly.
When Tom picked me up, I was only twelve hours away from my final destination.
If it had been anyone else—a long-haul trucker, a retiree on vacation—I’d be dead.
The river crashes against the rocks below, and while I can’t see the current from here, the smells of mud and algae drift up on the breeze. If not for Tom, my bones would be down there right now, scattered among those rocks, crabs poking their pincers through the eye sockets of my skull.
The thought sends a shudder through me. It’s a lot.
There’s no sign of Audrey, but I can’t see anything past the first few balusters. Tightening my grip around the axe handle, I start making my way across. A blue glow appears, diffused by the haze. As I step nearer, the glow shrinks and tightens into a circle; that’s when I realize what it is.
A blue light bulb.
Installed above a phone.
I freeze. Nic was right: This has to be a trap.
That light bulb was not here when we crossed the bridge at the beginning of this weekend.
I didn’t fall into Tom’s trap back then, and I’m not going to fall into this one now.
I’m about to turn around when a sound echoes through the gorge, high and tinny:
Brrrng.
It bounces off the rocky cliffs and gets swallowed by the water below.
The pine trees seem to vibrate, their needles stiff with tension.
I should keep going—back to the shack, back to Nic—but something pins me to the cement.
I drop my head back, stare at the sky as the phone rings again.
Can I really turn my back on her a second time? After everything she’s been through?
Another ring.
“Fuck me.” I stride to where the phone’s secured to the railing. CRISIS COUNSELING, reads the sign above it. THE CONSEQUENCES OF JUMPING FROM THIS brIDGE ARE FATAL AND TRAGIC. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. MAKE THE CALL.
I crouch down to search the pavement for any hidden snares. It looks clean, but there’s no way to know for sure. Just as the phone starts to ring again, I unhook the receiver and press it to my cheek. “Hello, Audrey.”
“Hello, Steffani.”
I scan the road, the cliffs, anywhere she might be hiding, but the fog has settled, thick as a wool blanket, across the landscape.
“I spent a long time searching for you,” she continues.
“Three days locked in that shack. I tried to memorize as many names as I could, but yours was at the bottom of the list. I mentioned you to the police, but they told me I was wrong, that there was no Steffani. I let them convince me that you were a mistake. It wasn’t until I saw the crime scene photos that I realized someone had scratched your name off the list. Someone didn’t want you to be found. ”
“Maybe you should’ve taken the hint.”
She laughs; it’s not a nice sound. “Didn’t help that yours was the only one without a last name.
It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a missing persons report for an out-of-state bounty hunter that everything started clicking together.
His car was last seen a few miles away from the shack. A blue Ford Taurus.
“You were easy to track down after that. Although I can’t tell you how shocked I was when I finally uncovered your photo in a high school yearbook and realized that you were the same girl who’d called nine-one-one and saved my life.
You look different now, but after that night, I would recognize you anywhere.
Tom Woods’s daughter.” She spits out the word like it’s gone rancid.
“Except you’re not, are you? You’re a victim—just like me. You knew all along what he was.”
“I didn’t know he was still abducting women. He promised he was done with all that—”
“And you believed him? A man who drugged you, locked you up, and then set you free just so he could run you over? You looked at him and thought, Yes, this seems like a man I can trust?”
“You wouldn’t understand—”
“Then make me! We survived him, you and I; we’re supposed to be the same.
We’re supposed—” She chokes on what sounds like a sob, then collects herself.
“The shack was less than an hour’s walk from where you were living.
You never once thought that maybe you should check to make sure no one was inside? ”
No, not once.
“You’re just as much to blame as he is,” she says. “Those other women, you could’ve saved them, but you didn’t because you believed whatever he told you.”
I know.
God, I know.
But instead of telling her how those women have been scratching on the door to my mind ever since, I say, “I’m not the only one here responsible for someone’s death.”
Silence. The back of my neck itches, like someone’s watching me, and again, I search the bridge for any signs of her. The mist swirls in front of me; when I raise the axe, I can’t even make out the edge of its blade.
“What happened, Audrey?”
“Zach offered to tell me where you’d be this weekend if I gave him something in return.”
The research folder.
“That night, I found him downstairs in the kitchen, pressing a freezer bag full of ice against his nose. Nicola had punched him, he told me, after she discovered him photographing her sketchbooks. He was worried about what might happen if you found out, that somehow you’d use your connections to get his book deal canceled.
‘Forget about the follow-up,’ he told me, ‘the first one won’t even make it onto the shelves.
’ He’d never mentioned anything about a follow-up.
That’s when he let it slip: He’d received a two-book deal.
The first would be about the club, but the second he wanted to write about me.
He’d planned on pitching it during our meeting on Monday.
I told him I wasn’t interested, but he announced he was going to write the book anyway—with or without my help.
I argued with him, threatened him even, but nothing I said was enough.
“No one knows who I am. If he broke my anonymity, I would never be able to escape Tom Woods. I don’t want him to be the most important thing about me.”
She doesn’t realize she’s already made him the most important thing about herself.
Audrey had everything growing up—supportive parents, a good education, all the opportunities in the world.
However, in the years since her abduction, her life has grown smaller and smaller, until the only thing left in it is Tom Woods.
She’s still locked in that shack, still trying to break loose, and she thinks vengeance is her way out.
Vengeance is never the way out.
“He started for the staircase, and that’s when I noticed the statue on the pedestal by the front door. I didn’t mean to kill him; I just wanted him to stop.”
“I understand.”
I’d just wanted my father to stop, too.
“I’ll make sure no one ever finds out.” I’ll convince Connor not to call the police; we can bury Zach in the backyard like we’d originally planned. “You can start over, put all this behind you—”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“Not until Tom Woods is dead.”
I wish that we were standing face-to-face, that she could see how difficult this is for me. “I’m sorry, Audrey. That’s not going to happen.”
A crunching sound comes from somewhere nearby—rocks caught in the water maybe, grinding against the cliffs. “It’s not.”
“I won’t let it. I love him too much. And even if I didn’t, I don’t believe in the death penalty.”
“Well.”
A searing whiteness floods my vision. I spin to find two lights carving their way through the fog. Cupping my hand across my forehead, I’m finally able to tell what the crunching sound is: the Challenger, its headlights aimed directly at me.
“I do,” she says.
The receiver drops from my hand. I’m standing in the center of a single-lane bridge. I glance over my shoulder, but the mainland isn’t even visible from here. The Challenger revs its engine, and that’s all the warning I get before it comes barreling toward me at full speed.
I run.
As fast as I can, toward the other end of the bridge.
But even as the muscles in my legs begin to burn, my lungs cramping from the effort, I know it’s no use.
She’s stomped down on the accelerator, and there’s no way I’ll be able to outrun my own car.
The light grows brighter and brighter as she closes in on me.
I pitch the axe at the front tire, hoping a flat might slow her down, but it ricochets off the bumper instead.
Shit. I could throw myself against the railing as she’s driving past, but there’s nothing stopping her from slamming the car into reverse and pinning me between the trunk and the barrier.
That’s when I know what I need to do.
Maybe the road has always been leading here—ever since I threw that portable ladder out of my apartment window and decided to start running.
I’ve taken some detours, sure, but this, right here, has always been my spot on the map.
Without a second thought, I veer sharply to the left and grab hold of the railing.
I haul myself over the edge, pausing for just a moment to take in the soupy emptiness below.
I can’t see the river, but I can hear the water thundering against the rocks.
I push off the railing…
I’m falling.
Time slows to a series of clicks, like a projector carousel rotating through family vacation snapshots.
Click. A pair of scissors slicing through the AAA brochure as my mom cuts out a photo of Hawaii.
Click. The flick of my dad’s lighter as he holds it to his cigarette, jumping shadows hollowing trenches under his eyes.
Click. The lock dropping off the shack door right before Tom Woods walks inside. Click.
The beat of my sneakers as I keep moving forward, the sun burning the back of my neck, my socks rubbing a blister on my heel. The open road stretching out as far as the eye can see.
That was it.
The moment I was happiest.
When I finally felt free.
As I plummet toward the river, nothing but sky above and salt below, I think, At least this comes close.