Day 140, Sunday
Noah groans in frustration. “There has to be something here that we’re missing.” He shuffles through the stack of papers he’s printed about the Mayday Killer, reading bits here and there. One slides off the edge of the table and floats to the grubby library carpet. Using the toe of my shoe, I slide it toward myself and pick it up.
At the information desk, the librarian glances our way. She seems really nice, but I’m guessing that, in the tradition of all librarians, she’ll shush Noah if he gets any louder.
“Did you find any connection between the victims?” he asks, looking at me over the frames of his glasses, which have fallen down his nose.
A single, solitary name printed on a piece of paper.
My lips purse. I’ve been prohibited from telling anyone that I already know what links each of the Mayday Killer’s victims, even though the police haven’t released that information. It was one of the conditions Aunt Karen had for letting me move in with her. I can’t tell Noah about the survivor whose name I removed from the list he found on one of the true crime forums. I don’t have the heart to tell him about my sneaking suspicion that there’s nothing we can do that the police haven’t thought of already. And they haven’t caught the killer yet, despite the clear and bloody path he’s cut through the state. If the professionals are having trouble nailing him down, how will two teenagers manage it?
My stomach rolls as I go over the talk Aunt Karen had with me this morning. When I came downstairs for breakfast, she was sitting at the dining table with her hands wrapped around her coffee thermos and her handgun resting on the table. “From here on out, you’re not to go anywhere without telling me exactly where you’ll be. No sneaking out under any circumstances. Understand?”
My blood had run cold at the severity of her tone. “Did something happen?”
“I’d tell you not to check the news, but isn’t telling a teenager not to do something the equivalent of daring them to do it?”
“Not always,” I murmured as I navigated to the news app on my phone. Dreading what I would find. There it was. The morning’s top headline: Mayday Killer Strikes Again; Two More Dead.
My stomach had clenched as I read the article. It was short, without much information. A line at the bottom promised updates as soon as the police released more information. My eyes had lingered on the name of the city where the crime had occurred. It looked familiar somehow. Like I’d been there before.
I popped out of my chair, hoping the movement would stir a buried memory.
“The Mirror Museum. Have you ever been there?” My guardian had asked before bringing her coffee mug to her lips.
The memory had hit me so hard my knees had buckled, and I’d had to clutch at the table’s edge to keep from stumbling. My parents had taken me to the Mirror Museum a couple of summers ago. There were rooms filled with mirrors in all shapes and sizes. One room had the glass panes suspended from clear wires that made them appear to be floating in empty air. Another was filled with cracked and broken mirrors that distorted your reflection in strange ways. My favorite had been the small, octagonal mirror room that, when I stepped inside, made hundreds of copies of me appear, grinning from ear to ear and making silly faces. In that moment, I had felt infinite. Powerful. Not insignificant and diminished like I usually did.
My question wasn’t much more than a whispered plea. “The Chans?” The family who ran the museum.
Aunt Karen’s eyes didn’t leave mine as she nods her head.
This time I did stumble, falling back into the chair I’d just vacated.
My guardian had reached over and put a tentative hand on my shoulder. “If there’s anything you can remember that might be useful, just let me know.”
I’d nodded, unable to speak.
Another family had been shattered, and I couldn’t help feeling that it was my fault, although I couldn’t work out how. Why?
I swallow, bringing my focus back to the sheets of papers spread out over the library table. There has to be something here I can use. Something I can give to the police they’ve not already thought of and discarded as a dead end.
“I’m hungry. Want something from the vending machines?” Noah pushes to a stand and settles his gaze on me.
My stomach feels like an empty pit because I haven’t eaten anything since Aunt Karen’s news delivered over breakfast. I’m too worried the knot of nerves at the base of my spine will push any food right back up. By now I’m starving. “Yeah, okay.”
Noah smiles and heads toward the front of the library where there’s a water fountain and a vending machine.
When he’s gone, I look down at the paper in my hands. It’s a transcript of the messages the Mayday Killer has left behind at each of his crime scenes. His calling card. His crimes may be unique in their motivation, but his messages aren’t. They’re all bastardizations of famous poems. I read them slowly, trying to place each one. I guess I should have paid more attention in English class.
Wait.
All of these quotes are familiar.
Opening my social media app, I scroll through until I find one of the girls I follow—CuteAshleeXOXO. All of her posts are blurry nature images with famous quotes superimposed over top. I like them, usually. They’re… uplifting. But right now I can’t help but notice that the quotes are word for word the same as the ones the Mayday Killer has used. I start typing them into the search engine to find the originals. The social media posts contain some of the same misspellings as the killer’s leavings.
My hand starts shaking as I scroll through the girl’s older posts. I nearly drop my phone when I see what she posted the day Before. “Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”
My stomach contracts, sending me reeling out of my chair toward the bathroom, free hand clapped over my mouth to keep my empty stomach from puking bile all over the library floor.
I run headlong into Noah, who drops the snacks he was carrying in surprise. He tries to steady me with light hands on my shoulders. “You okay?”
Frantic, I push him away and sprint to the bathroom, letting the door slam shut behind me. I make it as far as the sink before acid climbs my throat and comes spewing out between my lips. My entire body writhes and heaves until my stomach is completely and totally empty.
Back in May. The crime scene where the Mayday Killer was interrupted before he could finish scrawling his macabre message on a wall with his victims’ blood. The words he did manage to get down before he fled from the house, taking his bloody knife with him? Never to suffer would never to…
On a shocked gasp, I scroll back through my social. Pausing on the photos I posed of myself with Nate and Kate that summer at camp. To the photos of me with my family at the Mirror Museum.
The killer’s getting ideas for victims from my posts on social media.
My entire body heaves again and again until I’m wrung out and dry as a desert.
There’s a knock on the bathroom door, and then Noah’s voice. “Megan? You okay?”
Wiping my mouth with a dry paper towel, I take in a few mouthfuls of air. “I’m okay,” I croak.
“That wasn’t reassuring. Can you come out? Do you need me to call someone? Your aunt?”
“Gimme a minute,” I say, trying to speak confidently. It doesn’t really work, but Noah says he’ll be right outside whenever I’m ready. He doesn’t mention the snacks he snagged for us, which is good because if I think about food too hard right now, I’m liable to start heaving again.
Straightening, I take a couple of careful breaths. My stomach stills. Okay. Here I go. Lifting my phone up to my eyes, I scroll to the bottom of CuteAshleeXOSO’s feed. The very first quote was posted the day before the Mayday Killer’s first victims were found. The quotes match. Word for word.
Either Ashlee inspired a serial killer’s wannabe artistic bent, or…
I knew he was following me, even when everyone thought I was delusional. What if, to infiltrate my life even furth
er, he created a profile on social media and posed as a cute teenage girl named Ashlee?
Taking a screenshot of one of Ashlee’s few selfies, I do a reverse image search. My entire body flashes hot when the results come up. Her photos—they’re stolen from a stock site. If I look closely I can see the watermarks even through the blurring filter whoever posted these used to mask them.
Another heave wells up from the base of my stomach, and I clamp my mouth shut. I’ve been chatting with Ashlee online for months. And the entire time, it hasn’t been a teenage girl. It’s someone pretending to be one.
Opening my private messages, I send her one before I can think better of it. Who are you really? I know your name isn’t Ashlee.
Then I go to my own feed and find the first photo I posted After. Ashlee’s comment was the very first.
My chest constricts when I see there’s a location under my post: Valley High School. My legs nearly give out, but I catch myself on the slick edge of the sink. Gulp in air before my vision tunnels. I hit so many wrong buttons in my panic to delete it that it takes me a couple minutes, but I get it done.
Even so, I know it’s too late.
Because the Mayday Killer has been moving north for the past two months. Ever since I accidentally posted a photo with my location tagged.
I meet my own gaze in the mirror. My eyes are red from heaving, my cheeks are blotchy, my hair a mess around my shoulders. I didn’t know it at the time, but the minute I posted that stupid photo, I re-lit the giant, flashing neon target sign that Aunt Karen had tried to extinguish.
It’s my doing that he knows where I am.
Chapter 26
Day 142, Tuesday
Esau is standing at the base of the front porch when I crouch to jump off the roof. His hair is up in a dark bun at the back of his head, and he’s bundled in a thick shearling coat. He looks so country I almost laugh. He steps right up to the roofline. “Here, give me your hands.”
His fingers are warm and firm around mine as he helps me jump down. “Don’t want you to land on your ass this time.”
I start to shush him, but he slides an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. All of the air leaves my lungs as his eyes find mine in the glow of the moon. When I start to smile, he lowers his mouth to mine in a quick brush. Then he pulls back, just a touch. Our breaths mingle in a haze between us. His hand flinches against my waist, but before he can unhand me, I tuck my fingers into the warmth under the collar of his jacket and kiss him again. One of us groans, I’m not sure which, but it spurs Esau on. In two steps he backs me up against one of the wooden support beams under the patio cover. Esau’s free hand lands on the painted wood over my head as he leans into me, sheltering me from sight with his broad body.
His nose nuzzles my throat as he places a feather-light kiss there.
We’re both breathing heavy.
“This isn’t… When I texted you...” I start, but it’s hard to focus on words with Esau’s thumb drawing circles on my side. Maybe it’s exactly what I intended. To find a way to forget the repugnance of today, even for a few hours.
“Course not,” he whispers, his hair tickling my nose as he caresses the shell of my ear. The pad of his thumb is coarse over my bottom lip, and then he’s leaning in again. My eyes flutter shut. I don’t want to merely see this moment; I want to focus on how it feels like warm elixir pouring through me.
“Not that I want to stop,” I manage to say when he lifts his head long enough to take a breath. Esau could definitely help me forget.
He sighs against my mouth.
A sound from inside the old house makes us freeze.
“Go,” I whisper-yell, pushing at Esau’s chest. We run down the lawn and duck behind Aunt Karen’s car. We sit hunched in the silence. Any second that front door is going to open and my guardian is going to be yelling at me for sneaking out again. The only reason she found out the first time was because of that box of photos from the basement. I shiver at the thought of Justin following Esau and I to the orchard. Fear raises goosebumps along my skin as I look up and down the street. No sign of who could be lurking in the shadows.
This is stupid. I’m making dangerous choices. I should go marching back into that house and lock the door behind me. But I don’t.
“I think the coast is clear,” Esau whispers. “Let’s go.” He opens the truck door for me and closes it once I’m inside. He steers out of the neighborhood easily, and once again we’re coasting through town as if we’re the only two people awake in all the world. It’s one thing I love about this place. Unlike at home, when there are always people out no matter how late, here everything slows down after dark. Stores close. People return to their homes. One by one the lights go out. I never thought I’d prefer the quiet of night to the bustle of day, but I do.
I never considered a lot of things Before.
“That was so close,” I say, relieved as the tension rolls off my shoulders. “I just knew Aunt Karen was going to throw the door open and start yelling.”
“Me too.” He glances at me, the corner of his mouth upturned.
“So…”
“So?”
“That kiss back there.”
Esau adjusts the gear shifter as he turns out of town toward the country. “Wanted to make sure it happened this time. Didn’t know you’d be so into it though.” His cocky smirk sends a warm current through my veins.
“Just to be clear, that was not why I texted you.”
He snorts. “Didn’t think it was.”
“Okay, good.” Now that that’s settled.
“Got to say, kissing you is way more fun than arguing, though I don’t mind that either. You’re so… aggravating.”
“You’re no piece of cake either.”
“My abuela says I’m sweet as candy.” Esau’s confident grin makes me smirk.
“Has your abuela met you?”
Esau chuckles. “I haven’t seen her in years. Maybe if she saw me now…”
“She’d still think you were sweet. Grandparents are supposed to be willfully ignorant of their grandkids’ faults.”
He chuckles as he drives past the iron gate that leads to the farm where he works and turns down a dirt path at the edge of the property. I bounce around on the seat as he drives beyond the house and buildings toward one of the fields. Esau parks between two patches of pumpkins and hops out, coming around to open my door.
“Where are these manners in drama club?”
“I think you like baiting me,” he says, eyebrow arched.
“Yep.” I slide out of the cab, pulling my jacket tighter around my neck. It’s chilly out. Somewhere nearby, an owl cries.
Esau leads me around to the tailgate. There are two rolled up sleeping bags and two pillows up against the cab.
“Uh…”
“Two people. Two separate sleeping bags. Two separate pillows. Get your mind out of the gutter, Megan.”
My lips part at the way he says it. It burns all the way down my throat. “So it’s a totally innocent overnight camping trip.”
“I have heard of such a thing.”
“With teenagers? Aren’t we all supposed to be raging sacks of hormones with no self-control?”
“I can control myself. You, though. I have my doubts. Is my virtue safe tonight?” He leans an elbow against the tailgate, eyeing me under lowered lashes.
“Shut. Up.”
“There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight. I was gonna come out here alone, but when I got your text…” He hoists himself up into the truck bed before giving me a hand in.
We situate ourselves in our sleeping bags, and I have to admit that despite the dropping temperature, I’m pretty cozy. There’s a foam pad between my bag and the metal truck bed, and the pillow smells like laundry detergent. Without all of the light pollution, the sky is awash with stars. I can even see the Milky Way. Unlike the old house, I don’t feel forced to tiptoe and whisper. There are no eggshells littering the truck bed. I sigh as t
he weight on me lifts. I could fall asleep out here.
Esau lies beside me with his hands behind his head. He’s taken out his bun, leaving his hair to spill over the pillow. He must sense me looking at him, because he shifts just enough to meet my eyes. “What?”
I can’t believe I’m out in a field in the middle of the night with you.
You make me forget.
You’re beautiful.
Unlike the terrible things I’ve seen.
Want to argue some more?
Make out some more?
I finally settle on, “You look comfortable.”
“I am. You?”
“Uh huh.” We fall into a hush, me half hoping he’ll breach the gap he left between his sleeping bag and mine, but knowing that, like outside the old house, he’ll wait for me to up the ante on this evening. If I hadn’t interfered, he would have backed off after that first, gentle kiss. If I wanted to, I could roll over right now and forget everything that’s stressing me out in Esau’s capable mouth. I’m about to do just that when he whispers, “Look.”
His arm is outstretched, pointing toward a streak of light in the sky.
My breath hitches as flashes of glowing light paint white across the navy canvas before fading among the stars. We fall silent as we watch the sparkling galactic show. It probably only lasts for a few minutes, but it feels like hours when I’m so focused on the beauty unfolding before us I’m able to overlook the constant urge to freak out.
Yesterday, there was a possible sighting of the Mayday Killer less than a fifty miles from Hacienda. He could be here already, hiding. Waiting for his moment. Counting down the time until he can finish the job he started all those months ago. Aunt Karen was so wound up she was pacing around the living room, whispering into her phone. She threatened to pull me out of school and keep me locked in the house at all times. I had to beg her not to, especially after she found out about CuteAshleeXOXO and that location-tagged post on social media. Aunt Karen had yelled so loud I thought the ceiling was going to collapse. Afterward, she’d grounded me from everything but school.
With all of the patrols the sheriff’s deputies are doing, I should be safe. Especially with Aunt Karen being constantly on high alert. I appreciate how strong my guardian’s protective drive is, but I can’t function in that house. Under that level of stress. Under the lingering questions about Justin’s loyalty. I can’t breathe. It’s the reason I texted Esau tonight, hoping he’d be up for another drive.
Don't Look Behind You (Don't Look Series Book 1) Page 15