I lean my head against the cool window and read the opening quotes and the dedication, the places where Ava always embeds her initial clues:
The two children were bonded so deeply that they never went out into the world without holding hands tightly one with the other, and when Snow-white said: “Never shall we two part,” Rose-red answered: “Not heaven nor hell nor death itself will separate me from you,” and their mother vowed: “You two are as one. What one has belongs just as fully to the other.”
To the man in the forest. Through snares and thorns and beasts, may our story wend its way to happily-ever-after.
Not what I expected. Sure, the quote is about two sisters, but who is the man in the forest? Glenn? I can’t see Ava wanting the two of us to share him. And I actually don’t know much about their life together now. When I was with Glenn, he wasn’t into hiking or camping or the outdoors. He was at the U.S. Naval War College for a few months, doing what he referred to as “specialized training.” Once he was back with Ava, any internet search I did on him came up empty. In Northern Virginia, that usually means someone works “for the government.”
I’m not a conspiracy theorist—anyone could hack emails and track me down—but if Glenn’s working for the government, he’s probably the one framing me. That stings in a familiar way. Bet he blamed our entire affair on me too. Either he knows I’m innocent because he’s the bad guy and he’s setting me up, or he’s innocent but he thinks I’m guilty. I’ll step off the plane and right into my role as scapegoat.
Ava is a good writer, and I really want to lose myself in a story. Even this one. I turn the page and let the words wash over me.
Ava’s book opens with a little girl lost in the woods. She wanders alone, hearing the crackling of branches and the rustling of squirrels. Then she comes upon a little house. Ava has written, “No candy lined the front path, the fence was not made of peppermint sticks. The clouded windows were aged glass, not sugar panes, and the bricks were not mortared with icing. Nonetheless, it might have been a fairy-tale house, because once upon a time, when the little girl entered it, the darkness took and ate her, and she was never heard from again.”
Creepy. Much creepier than I remember Ava’s books being. And thinking of Ava, maybe really missing, maybe afraid and alone in the dark, makes me shiver. I flip the page quickly, as though I might find the answers to her real-life disappearance in this made-up story.
The next chapter focuses on a woman who has moved into a little house in the woods, and we—the readers—know it is the same house. Is she the darkness who took the little girl? Is she the little girl all grown up? Or is she the one who will unravel the mystery of the past?
I have to keep reading to find out.
CHAPTER
6
AVA
I’M SLEEPING WITH my cheek on my writing desk, but around me the world’s in motion, blowing like the wind through branches. My mind struggles to remember why I’m here, but when I open my eyes, I’m still in the dream. A man in a scarlet jacket and trousers the spring green of new leaves stands in the doorway of my study. “Won’t you come and dance?” He holds out a hand in invitation, but a slender black asp coils around his fingers, its scales flashing. His thin lips twist in a smile. “Your sister wasn’t afraid to come to the Goblin Fair.” In the lenses of his round glasses, I see Zoe’s reflection, her eyes wide with accusation. Then he tosses the snake right in my face.
With a cry, I regain consciousness, but this isn’t the reality I expect—my own home or even a hospital—no, I’m lying on a vibrating metal floor with my arms pulled taut behind me. The muscles of my biceps feel the strain. My feet are bound to each other, and I can feel something thin cutting into my ankles. There’s enough light to make out where I am, the back of a moving van. Without my hands to steady myself, I’m being jolted as we rattle and bang along.
The last thing I remember is working in my study, lost in a world of my own making. Writing, telling stories, that’s who I am, what I do, and my success hasn’t just fallen into my lap. Maybe people like Zoe see the publicity shots and the interviews and the movie premieres, but no one sees all the times I shut the study door, all the times I can’t hear what other people are saying because of the story flowing through my mind, all the times the words are a wall between me and my actual life.
I must have been drugged. That’s the only explanation. Some potion erased any memory that could fill the gap between sitting at my desk and lying here, bound. Now that it occurs to me, my sluggish thoughts fill in the lacunae to build a convincing narrative. Maybe my mind morphed the memory of the actual man who drugged me into a fairy-tale dream. The bite of the dream-snake seems so real, I could swear there’s a sore place on my neck—a place like an injection site.
Panic bubbles up through the fog that fills my brain. I twist my hands, but all I get is a stretched-out pain in my shoulders and a penetrating numbness in my fingers. If this were a story, I’d already be chewing through my skin and sinew, trying to break free, but I’m not as rash as the characters I create. They can afford to be reactionary, but as the author, I have to plan.
Wiggling to a seated position, I lean over as far as I’m able. My feet are bound with a zip tie. Excellent. I’ve only written about this technique, never tried it, but I am able to pull my feet up and scoot back through the loop of my arms, so they are now bound in front of me. And they are also fastened at the wrists with another zip tie.
Even as my mind is coolly ticking off the steps of my plan, deep inside me there’s a whimpering animal caught in a trap. I ignore it, forcing myself to rise until I’m standing, but when we hit another pothole, I lose my footing. My shoulder and cheek strike the side of the van. My eyes sting with pain and I end up on the floor, gasping.
Finally, I scoot into a corner and use it to support myself until I’m on my feet. When I saw this done, the person had plenty of room to stand and stretch his arms overhead. I’m short, but I can barely straighten up in this space. I take a minute to focus, believing this will work, picturing the move in my head. There isn’t room for anything except this single image. Then I raise my arms and bring them down hard and fast, as if I’m going to drive them straight through my own body.
And the zip tie gives way. My hands are free.
I rub them together, trying to restore feeling, to warm them up, but no part of me is warm right now. Extricating myself from these plastic bonds is only the first step in solving my physical problems, and even while I’m executing that plan, another part of my mind is already searching for the guilty party. Every good story has a villain, and I need to know mine.
If I were mapping out the plot of a thriller, the first, most obvious choice for my baddie would be the husband, but my husband Glenn doesn’t have a reckless, vindictive nature. Even if he didn’t love me, even if he wasn’t my knight in shining armor, he’d never mastermind a kidnapping plot. And the second choice, my ex-husband, Beckett, couldn’t pull it off. The only person I know who hates me—truly and deeply hates me—is Zoe.
Just thinking her name brings the darkness inside me, until I feel as cold and hard as the metal floorboard. The truck bumps over the road, shaking me like a sack of mail. No matter who set this up, I’m all alone back here—clearly I’ll have to stage my own rescue and be my own hero.