His voice is low, fierce. “I’ll find them, but I won’t kill them right away. I’ll kill them slow and I’ll make you watch.”
The images flash through my mind, my mother on the ground, my father bleeding. My friend Chelsea crying, bewildered. Thwap.
And only then do I know for sure—I’ll never let that happen.
I grip his arm. It’s still wet from the river. My hand is wet too. We’re slick together, but I hold on tight. This is important. I need him to understand how serious I am. I need him to see that I mean it. “I swear to you—” My voice is trembling but not with fear this time. With determination.
The intensity in his stare doesn’t lessen one bit. He gives me a shake with my hair.
I know what he wants. “Your scars,” I say on a gasp, because the pain in my scalp burns. “I’ll never tell a single soul about your scars. I swear to you.”
I don’t bother swearing to God. I think a man like him doesn’t have faith in anything.
He’s studying my eyes, hands tightening around the back of my head. He’s not sure. Second-guessing his decision. I can’t let him do it—I can’t.
I’m good in school, an A student. This is what we do in school—we get told things and tell them back. I do it now, just for him.
“I was hiding, calling 911, and he came up behind me,” I whisper. “He put something over my head and forced me into a vehicle. One of the vans, maybe. We drove around forever. I was so scared, I don’t remember anything, or how much time passed. Nothing. He said if I took it off, he’d kill me.”
He watches my eyes. “He stopped and got out once, but that’s all you remember.”
“He stopped and got out once,” I repeat. “I don’t know where we were. That thing was over my head.”
“They can’t make you tell something you don’t remember,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
“Did you hear any other sounds?” he asks.
This is a test, just like they have in school. I can do this. “That’s all I remember.” I let the hysteria I feel creep into my voice. “We just drove around and stopped once.”
“He let you out here, and you whipped the sack off your head and ran.”
“I whipped the sack off my head and ran.”
“What direction?” he asks, fingertips digging into my skull, gemlike gaze fixed on my face.
“I don’t remember,” I say.
“Did he chase you?”
“I don’t know. I ran.”
He releases me. I stumble back, fall onto the mud.
He just watches me. “The people you love are counting on you to keep that up.”
I swallow, afraid even to move. He has no reason to leave me alive, no reason to trust me. Even if he believes I mean what I’m saying, he can’t be sure I’ll keep my word. Leaving me alive is a risk. He’s a stranger, he’s an animal, but he’s taking this risk to let me live.
Something drops by my hand onto the riverbed, a clatter of metal on plastic. I don’t look down.
I’m afraid to know what he’s left me.
“Find the nearest woman,” he says gruffly. “Tell her what I told you.”
He turns and walks away without a single backward glance. The van makes a turn as it pulls from its perch, headlights flashing onto me, lighting up my torn dress and blinding me all at once. For a second I think this might be it, that he’s decided to run me over instead of drowning me. Then the van turns away. It jolts and bounces its way back onto the road. In a matter of seconds, the red taillights fade into nothing.
It’s surreal, being out here alone. Like this really was a bad dream.
My ruined dress proves otherwise.
A laugh bursts out of me, hysteria and grief and leftover fear. I’m not safe yet. I still have to get out of here. I have to hope I don’t run into some man who would take advantage of my state. Find the nearest woman, he told me. As if he was worried about my safety.
I look down at the small silver thing on the white river rocks. A knife. He left me something to protect myself with. As if somebody like me knows how to use a knife.
Chapter 4
Stone
I glance at my watch. Dead.
The water must have gotten inside. The hands are stuck at eleven and twelve. It’s late, well past the time I should have checked back in with my guys. They’ll be worried about me. They’ll be pissed.
I don’t mind pissing them off, but I don’t like making them worry.
Any other time, I would have headed straight back to the hotel. Or at the very least, I would have found one of the few pay phones that are still around and called the secure number. Instead I’m sitting here, hidden by brush and a goddamn rock face, soaking wet, watching.
It didn’t take her long to find someone. She’d only walked a few yards down the road before a car slowed down. I could see her dark nipples through the pale wet fabric of her dress. I tensed until an older woman got out. Not that I trust women, much. But I inherently distrust all men aside from my crew. I watched from my hiding spot while the girl gave her sob story, crying and pointing to the river.
It wasn’t the stuff about Girl Scouts that got me, or the way she ate the fries, or the way she struggled to stay alive once she knew what I was doing. It was her desperation to be found with her clothes on. Fighting for that last bit of dignity, even when she was losing everything. That’s what spoke to me.
You always hang on to what you can.
You never let them take everything. Some people don’t get that. They think dead is dead, and it won’t matter if you’re dressed or not, if you kept your dignity at the end. When you’ve seen as much death as I have, you know it matters.
I keep to the shadows while the woman pulls a jacket from her back seat and presses it around her. And makes a call. An ambulance, maybe. I should already be gone from here. The girl will find her way back home. She’ll be safe, most likely. But the world is a scary place. I know that more than most. What if she met someone worse than me? Someone who wouldn’t feed her a burger and then let her go? And so I stay, watching, longer than I should.
I see Brooke talking, shaking her head. That’s her name, according to her phone. Her password is one-two-one-two. She really needs a better one than that.
The woman is looking around. Sensing somebody watching, maybe.
I made a gamble, but I don’t think it’s a bad one. Brooke’s a good girl, the kind who’ll cut out little pieces of her own heart before hurting anybody else. She’ll protect her people from me. She thinks I’m a monster, and she’s right.
By the time the red and blue lights flash over the treetops, I should have been gone. I shouldn’t be within a mile of cops if I can help it. It’s not only about the danger to me, but about the fact that I could lead them to the rest of the crew.
Fuck.
It’s because of the girl. Because of the strange feeling I get when I look at her, the tightness in my chest. Which proves I shouldn’t be near her either.
I back away through the trees, making myself invisible.
It’ll be a long time before they get organized enough for a search, and by then there won’t be a trace of me. Except when I reach the end of the woods, where I left the van, something feels off. I move slower, silent and so damn careful. That’s when I see it parked about half a mile back from the white van. A dark sedan. It’s not a white cop car with reflective lights and bold lettering. No, I recognize the make and model. This is a detective’s car. And there’s only one detective who would be watching the radar close enough to suspect Brooke’s call had to do with me.