Chapter 27 After
After
Dev all but drags me out of the bunker and back up the stairs. I can’t hear what he’s saying over the rushing sound in my ears. We close the door behind us, and the hinges make a plaintive sound.
I don’t speak again until I’m in the car, doors locked and Barry in the back seat with his hair still bristling. Dev looks over at me, expression haggard. “Talk to me,” he says.
I stare out at the dark road. “There were names.”
“I saw.”
“There were a lot of them.” My voice is a croak. My thoughts wheel, spinning through the implications of what we found. There wasn’t just one girl down there.
“Audrey. Those marks were old,” Dev says.
It takes me a moment to piece together what he means, and I nod. Who knows how many girls were down there, but none of them was Meghan Vale. My name is Stranger. Those words, too, were worn, faded by years. Meghan didn’t write them; she found them and wove their echo into her poem.
“We need to report this,” Dev tells me. “We should call the police.”
“Not yet,” I say.
“Audrey, we—-”
“I mean, yes. But carefully,” I say. “Let’s be smart about this. I know where to go.” I start up the car before he can voice an objection, and pull away. I watch for headlights in the rearview until we’re back on the main road, and even then I don’t relax.
Red handprints. A woman with hands drenched in red. Meghan saw something, all right. More than she should have, maybe. And Emily knew—-she had to. She knew what Meghan had found and she knew it was there in the first place.
I shut my eyes. The door opening, shutting, the hinges—-that’s the sound I heard, the day of the search. Not a child’s cry of fear but the wail of metal on metal.
Emily was conveniently on hand to save us. She said it was because she followed Bill into the woods, but what if it was the other way around? She could have gone to a hidden place that Bill didn’t know about, and he followed her, thinking there was an intruder on his land.
Could she have something to do with what happened there? With the names carved in that plank of wood, a desperate cry through time?
“They’re dead,” I say softly. At first, I don’t think Dev heard me over the sound of the engine, and then he lets out a breath, kneading the skin under his eyes with his fingertips.
“They have to be, don’t they?” he says. I nod. The chain, the bed, the words—-they tell a very specific story, and it’s not one that has a happy ending. “How old do you think that stuff was?”
“I don’t know.” But, oh, the answer changes everything, doesn’t it? Fifty years or five—-it changes who was here. And who had the strength, the viciousness, the hatred to put them there.
I drive into town. Dev doesn’t ask where I’m going. I don’t have the coherent thoughts to explain, and when I stop, Dev follows my lead, getting out without questioning me. I tell Barry to stay. He fogs the glass, watching us.
I walk up the steps of the house and I ring the doorbell, wait. Hammer out a knock. Finally lights go on, and Len peers bleary--eyed through the window by the door. He yanks it open, forgetting about the chain, fumbles it off.
“Audrey. What’s wrong?” he asks, looking between Dev’s ashen face and mine.
“Can we come in?” I ask, my voice steady but thin. “We need to talk.”
While Len listens to our recounting of the night’s events and stares at the photos on my phone, Kenny brews coffee. Both because we need it and because he needs an excuse to eavesdrop.
When we’ve explained everything, Len takes a deep breath. I brace for him to berate me, but he only lets it out. “Okay,” he says. His gaze is fixed on the phone in his hand. “Okay. We’ll . . . I’ll talk to Chief Wagner first thing in the morning.”
“In the morning? Can this wait?” Dev asks.
“If you want Wagner to listen, it’ll have to,” Len replies. “Look. This bunker is years old. No one knows you found it, right? So a few hours aren’t going to make a difference.”
“Meghan—-” I begin, but I stop. There’s no evidence that Meghan has been there recently. Whatever happened to her happened months ago, and she’s not in that bunker now. Len is right. It’s better to take this slow and do it right.
“Meet me at the station at nine thirty,” Len says.
“He’ll be past his morning coffee by then.
When you get there, follow my lead. The less you talk, the better.
Go with the hiking story. You went for an evening hike, Barry got away.
Don’t mention breaking the lock, okay? It was like that when you found it. ”
“Are you . . . Can you lie like that?” Dev asks.
“Getting you in trouble doesn’t change what you found, it just makes a bigger headache out of it,” Len says. He doesn’t sound happy. The hinge of his jaw is flared, his eyes dark. Kenny sets a cup of coffee down in front of him, and he takes it but doesn’t drink. “This is bad,” he says.
“I know,” I reply. This is so much worse than I imagined.
“You two should get home,” Len says. “Get some sleep. Make yourselves presentable. And don’t tell anyone else about this.” He hands my phone to me.
“We won’t,” I promise. I take Dev’s hand as I rise from the table. Kenny walks us to the door. Len stays sitting, gaze overshooting the table and fixed on nothing at all. Probably trying to think of what to say to his boss. How to make this all work out so we don’t end up sitting in a jail cell.
Kenny murmurs a goodbye, his attention already drifting back toward his husband.
Dev and I stagger back to the car. Barry wags his tail and shifts his weight rapidly from paw to paw in the back seat, whimpering with relief at our return.
I bat away his attempts to snuffle the side of my face, scratch his neck, and start up the car.
“Can I take you home?” I ask Dev.
He rubs his palms against his knees, hunched forward slightly. He looks over at me, his expression bleak. “You know,” he says, “I don’t think I want to go home to an empty apartment right now.”
Our eyes meet. Understanding passing between us—-a -decision—-an agreement. I don’t say another word as I back out of the drive.
We don’t say anything when I park at my house, either.
Nor when the door locks behind us, and I shed my coat, help him with his—-and then his hands are on my neck, my cheek, his lips against mine.
There’s a desperation to it, and a relief—-the release of feeling something other than fear and uncertainty, because this?
This is sure, and safe, and wanted, and a bright good thing that the night can’t touch.
We leave a trail of clothing all the way to the bedroom, and I have the momentary regret that I didn’t think to tidy up before committing misdemeanors with a handsome man, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
I’m down to my bra and jeans, Dev shirtless. I sit on the edge of the bed, and he stands between my parted knees, his hand trailing down my shoulder as he watches me, as I watch him. “Are you . . .” he says.
Am I sure. Do I want this. Is this a good idea. Questions we should ask and think about and answer carefully, but I’m past careful. Tonight is a night to be reckless.
“Yes,” I say, and draw him toward me.
We are alive and not alone, and that’s all I need in this moment, but that’s not all there is—-because there is also the scent of him, the sheen of sweat and the woods; there’s the quiet strength of his hands and the revelation of his body and the way he whispers my name like it’s beautiful, as beautiful as he is, and there is the way for a moment I have no name at all and the edges of me blur into his, and how, when we fall apart at last, it takes a slow moment for the boundaries of my being to return.
“Don’t go,” I tell him, threading my fingers with his in the dark.
“I won’t,” he promises. He kisses my bare shoulder, his breath warm against my chilled skin.
I don’t make the same promise. I can’t.
But for tonight, I can pretend.