He was always just a shadow, just a small motion in the corner of my eyes. I never thought I’d be taken, never thought I’d be held somewhere against my will.
I also never thought I’d be begging for my life in the den of a serial killer.
Still, Easton was out there. It was him that I needed, his strength that kept me from screaming out. I remembered the way his arms grabbed me against his body, the way his tattoos snaked in and out of his sleeves, and that wicked, teasing grin.
I thought of him over and over, locked in that cage.
I’m going to cut his throat for you, Laney. I’m going to make you watch.
Shivers ran down my spine.
Open your mouth, Laney. Scream for me.
Quiet as a mouse.
Still as the dead.
I wouldn’t give him what he wanted.
1
Laney
I hadn’t been home in almost three years.
Once I got out of Mishawaka, I thought I was gone for good. I never wanted to go back to my small, backwoods town in the middle of Indiana.
But, unfortunately, it was hard not to come home when your dad just got married without telling you about it.
Mishawaka. Town of a few thousand people, and a few thousand more lies. It was every single small-town stereotype all rolled into one very real place. I loved it back when I was a little kid. My mom was alive back then, and Mishawaka felt like a real home. Things changed after she passed away and I began to realize that small-town life wasn’t what I thought it was.
College was my way out. When I got my scholarship to study criminal justice at the University of Chicago, my whole world changed. Suddenly it wasn’t just the same three places and the same old people, but it was an entire city. I was both surrounded and alone, and it was totally amazing. Nobody knew me and I knew nobody, and I liked it like that.
Of course, I made friends. College was just like that. You had to really hate people if you wanted to make absolutely no friends. I fell into a comfortable life in the city, working a decent job during summers to afford my apartment and going to school.
Up until I got the call, at least.
Summer had just started and the city was coming alive after a particularly brutal winter. It was early and I had just finished my finals. I was looking forward to finally taking it easy and not working while going to classes every single day.
But that was a pipe dream, of course.
My cell phone rang, but I didn’t recognize the number. I considered not answering, and in retrospect I wish I hadn’t. That one phone call would lead to everything, to working side by side with the most frustrating man I’d ever met, to helping people in ways I never realized I could, to getting locked in a cage.
But that wasn’t for another few weeks.
“Hello?” I said, picking up the phone.
“Sweetie, it’s Dad.”
I paused, surprised. I hadn’t heard from him in a few months. “How’s it going, Dad?”
“I’m fine.” There was another awkward pause. Why had things gotten so strained between the two of us?
I knew the answer to that question. I moved away from Mishawaka and never looked back, and in a lot of ways Dad felt like that was like turning my back on our family. He had lived in town his whole life and so had my mom, and he never really understood me moving all the way to the city to get away from town.
I should have kept in better touch with him, even went home a few times to visit, but it was so easy for time to get away from you. One day I hadn’t been home once during freshman year, and the next day it’d been three years, all in the blink of an eye.
“I have to tell you something, kiddo,” he said.
“Okay. What happened?” I felt nervous, like I had somehow done something wrong.
“I got married.”
My eyes went wide and I took a short breath. “Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yes, dear, very serious. Do you remember Mrs. Wright?”
“Sure, I remember her.” She was blond, tall, and infamous. Her husband had died years before I was born, but she’d kept his name. She was a popular lawyer in town and sat on the council, the only woman with a recurring seat. In a lot of ways, Susan Wright was the most powerful woman in town.
“Well,” Dad continued, “her and I have been getting very close over the past couple of years. Last weekend, we decided to finally make it official.”
I shook my head. “This is pretty hard to believe.”
“Listen, sweetie, I know we haven’t seen much of each other lately, but I’d love it if you could come home and spend some time with us this summer.”
I bit my lip. “I don’t know, Dad.”
“Please? It’d mean a lot to both of us.”
“I have a lot of work to do here. I have a job. I can’t just leave, you know?”
“Actually, about jobs,” Dad said quickly. “Susan heard you were a criminal justice major, and she pulled some strings. If you want, there’s an important internship with a detective that would be perfect for you.”
“An internship with a detective?”
“Sure. It’s part of a new program at the sheriff’s.”
I was completely blown away and speechless. I had barely spoken to my dad in the last three years, and suddenly he was dropping bombshells on me one after the other.
“Let’s slow down,” I said.
“Hold on, honey,” he replied. I heard some sounds on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry. I have to run. I’m at a job site right now.”
I sighed. “Okay, sure.” Dad was one of the most famous and influential property developers in our area, and he was pretty much always working.
“Please think about it.”
“Okay. I will.”
“Good to hear from you.” He hung up the phone.
I leaned back in my chair, tossing my phone onto the couch. I barely understood what I was feeling as I took a few deep breaths.
My dad had remarried. He hadn’t even told me about his relationship before that point. Not that I could blame him; I was pretty much estranged from him. But suddenly he wanted me home and had even found a job for me?
I sighed, looking out the window. It had been a long time since I was home. Things had to have changed. At least, I had certainly changed. There were friends back home that I hadn’t seen in a while.
Plus, if Susan Wright had gotten me a job, it was probably pretty serious. I was working as a waitress at a local upscale bar, and while the money was good, it wasn’t exactly helping my career at all.
My long-time goal was to go into the FBI. I didn’t necessarily want to be a field agent, but instead I wanted to work as an analyst or something like that. Ideally, I’d work as support for agents, providing intelligent analysis on field reports and cases, essentially acting as an extra brain for stuck agents.
Unfortunately, splitting the bill thirty ways on thirty different credit cards for drunk assholes didn’t exactly give me the skills I needed.
It was a tough decision. I had left Mishawaka for a lot of reasons, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to go back. Then again, I had changed. That town didn’t have control over me anymore.
It was a tough decision either way.
I stood up and stretched. I decided that there was only one way to figure things out: I needed to order a pizza.