We ride in comfortable silence, the sun and the warm breeze our only company. Water burbles in the irrigation ditch as we drive alongside it. Something slips beneath the surface of the water. Probably one of those crawdad things.
I am 100 percent glad I played hookie today. V. I. C. T. O. R. Y.
“Want to see the corn maze?” he asks over the coughing of the engine.
“Is that allowed?” I ask, turning to look up at him.
In lieu of answering, he winks.
“What’s it shaped like?”
“Let’s see if you can figure it out. Just give me a minute.” Cutting off the tractor’s engine, Esau jumps down from the high seat and turns off an irrigation valve. The rich dirt beneath the sprawling vines is a rich cocoa brown.
When he swings himself up behind me, I nestle against him again. Being here, with Esau, I actually feel something. It’s been so long since I felt that way that it takes me a second to recognize it. Safety. I feel safe with Esau.
The corn looms up before us, rows and rows and rows of it so dense and wide and tall that it takes my breath away. The stalks wave in the gentle air as Esau helps me down, his hands tightening on my sides. His attention dips to my mouth.
“You can’t catch me!” I squeal, bolting toward the shelter of the maze. My laughter trails behind as Esau gives chase.
I run under the wooden arch into the maze, making turns at random. Left. Left. Right. Dead end.
I crouch in the corner and wait, listening.
“I helped cut this maze,” Esau calls from nearby, a cocky slant in his tone. “You can only hide from me for so long.”
“We’ll see.” I’m off, running down another path.
Footsteps thud behind me as I push my legs to their limit. Suddenly I stop in a little alcove where there’s a bale of hay set up as a bench. Easing down on it, I wait for Esau. My heart is drumming a gleeful rhythm in my chest. Whatever this game is, I’m pretty sure I’m winning.
Esau calls a taunt from somewhere to my right just as something snags the back of my dress. I stifle a gasp as I whirl around.
Nothing there but giant stalks of corn.
Weird.
Shaking it off, I wait for Esau to come around that corner, his eyes lighting up when he spots me.
A minute stretches out. I can hear Esau moving in a distant part of the maze. Somehow, he hasn’t found me yet.
Nearby, something snaps.
I whip my attention in that direction, but there’s nothing there. Slowly, I turn to face the path. Listening.
I can’t hear Esau anymore. He must be at the other end of the cornfield.
How big is this maze anyway?
The aisle feels narrower than it did before, as if the corn is looming in toward where I’m sitting. There’s a rustling in the next row.
“Took you long enough,” I say, but Esau doesn’t appear.
“Esau?” I call. “Hello?”
No response.
Nervous energy tingles up my back, making me pull my shoulder blades in. Being alone in this place is starting to get a little creepy. Like that Stephen King movie about people who were lost in an endless corn field for so long that they started to lose their minds.
Around me, the corn creates a tall, green wall that blocks everything from view. Above, the blue sky is empty. No clouds, no airplanes, no birds.
Maybe I should keep moving.
I make lots of noise as I advance through the maze, trying to find the way out.
I yell for Esau again, louder this time. He doesn’t answer.
A crow flies out of nowhere, cawing in my face, flapping its wings as it ascends.
I scream in surprise, and then I’m running blind. My feet beat a path over the dusty ground as I try vainly to find the exit. A stalk whips across my face as I take a sharp corner. My cheek stings, but I don’t stop. I have to get out of here.
I round another corner and run smack into Esau.
“Whoa, whoa. What’s wrong?” he asks, his hands gently rounding my shoulders.
I shake my head. Take in a shaky breath.
I can’t tell him. He’ll think I’m a scaredy cat. A paranoid kitten.
“Got scared by a crow,” I say with false bravado. Force out a laugh that’s faker than a blizzard in July.
But when I look up, Esau isn’t focused on me. His attention is on something over my shoulder, his mouth is parted in shock.
When I spin around, I see it. A black pillar of smoke coming from the edge of the cornfield. Birds flee with loud squawks from the growing spark of flame. Slowly, corn stalks begin to burn. Then more quickly.
“Shit!” Esau runs down the narrow path between the maze and the next field of corn. “Flip the valve!” he yells over his shoulder.
I’m frozen in incomprehension for a second before I spring into action. Running to the spot where the irrigation valve meets the larger line from the ditch, I open it wide. Rushing water spurts into the pipe leading toward the field, dowsing the ground in water. But I don’t know if it will be enough to stop the burning tide moving across one corner of the maze.
The fire department arrived quickly. It was dumb luck that they were doing a drill in an abandoned barn nearby and saw the smoke.
Esau and I stand off to one side, watching as they put out the fire with expert teamwork. I’m shaking with adrenaline, watching with rapt attention.
Once it’s done, the firefighter in charge comes over to us. “You two okay?”
We nod.
“How’s the maze?” Esau asks, looking past the man toward the blackened corner of the field.
“Far as we can tell, it didn’t get far enough to burn into any of the cut paths. Lucky we were close by. If we’d gotten here any later, the entire field would have gone up. Quick thinking, turning the irrigation back on. Looks like you’ll be able to open as planned on Friday, and I’m glad. My kids look forward to opening night every year.”
Esau gives him a customer service smile. “Us too. How’d the, uh, fire start?”
The firefighter shrugs. “Don’t know yet.”
With a pat on Esau’s shoulder and a nod to me, the man moves toward where the rest of his crew are working around the fire engine.
An EMT approaches us. “Are either of you hurt? Need looking over?” She leaves when we insist we’re fine.
“Come on then. I’ll take you home.” Esau slings an arm around me and steers me toward where his pickup is parked in the dirt. “You look like you could use something cold to drink.”
I stick close to him even though he’s filthy from using an irrigation hose to hold back the flames until help arrived. As we pick our way to where the truck is parked, I take one more glance over my shoulder at the maze. From out here it looks like an ordinary, harmless field of growing plants. But when I was in its heart, alone? It didn’t feel benign. It felt like I wasn’t alone. Like someone was watching me. Waiting for the opportune moment to slash my throat.
And then the fire started.
Chapter 33
Esau glances over to make sure I’m buckled in before he starts the truck. Gravel crunches under the tires as he pulls on to the street.
I sigh, relaxing into the bench seat. Today, being near Esau as he moved through the fields, quiet purposefulness emitting from his every muscle and bone, it was exactly what I needed. Never mind that Aunt Karen will be livid about me sneaking out again. Plus, the fact that I could have been burned to a crisp.
A truck I recognize turns into the road ahead of us. Justin’s. I thought I’d slipped past him, but he must have followed me to the empty lot where I met Esau, and then on to the farm. Did he see how the fire began? If he saw Esau and I leaving, did he decide to get a head start? It doesn’t make sense. My finger lingers over the call button on my phone, just in case I need to call Aunt Karen.
Instead of turning down the road that leads to home, Justin’s truck leads farther away from town. My chest squeezes when the truck pulls off the road
into a stand of trees near the Lopez’s driveway. Fear flaps its scraping wings along my insides. Did something happen to Noah and his family?
My heart stills under my sternum. “Pull over,” I hiss, tugging at Esau’s elbow. The truck’s wheel jerks under his hands.
“Careful,” he commands even as his hands move to heed mine.
My focus is locked on his dark, hooded figure as it moves quietly through the trees toward Noah’s house. If I didn’t know what Justin’s truck looked like, I wouldn’t know it was him. He takes careful steps, swinging low-hanging branches out of the way with ease. It’s clear that he’s had practice moving around without being detected.
My stomach drops. If he left me to come here, there can only be one reason. He must have gotten a call from Aunt Karen telling him to come over here. What if it’s already too late to stop whatever bloody tragedy that’s playing out inside Noah’s house?
Esau parks his truck far enough away that Justin doesn’t notice. Instead, the man is careful as his figure fades into the dusk between the eucalyptus trees.
“This is getting strange,” Esau says, swinging his gaze toward me. “Who is that?”
“Shh.” Pushing open the door, I slide down, praying my cute but impractical shoes are quiet over the gravel.
The hooded figure has disappeared. I can’t see him at all. Hopefully that means he can’t see us either.
Esau’s door opens and he steps out, shutting the door too loudly.
I wince, but start walking toward Noah’s house, rolling onto the balls of my feet in silence. The weight of Esau’s gaze, and his lingering questions, presses against the back of my neck like a large hand. I’ll owe him an explanation after this. My lips thin. How much will I have to tell him? How much do I want him to know?
Blood roars in my ears as I tiptoe through the trees, half expecting Justin to jump out at me from behind every trunk.
He doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
Dread creeps in. I have the sickening thought that I wish he was coming here to retrieve me, because it would mean the people inside the house a few yards away would be safer. Maybe I should have called the sheriff after all, risked the tang of his disdain.
At the treeline, I stop, hiding behind a wide, old eucalyptus. Its bark is craggy and rough under my palms. Esau hovers behind me, but his heat can’t penetrate the cold coursing through my body. I scan the yard, but there’s no sign of the tell-tale blue car.
Esau’s hand lands on the back of my neck in a gentle, protective caress. “There something you need to tell me, Megan?” he whispers.
I give the slightest shake of my head even as the air whooshes out of my chest.
Justin is slinking around the side of the dingy house, peeking into each window before moving on to the next. He stops, his back pressed against the building’s worn wooden siding. What horrors does he see when he looks in those windows? His lips are moving as if he’s talking to someone. With one hand, he returns his gun to the holster at his side.
A blaring crow makes me nearly jump out of my skin as it takes to the skies somewhere above. I’m beginning to hate those big black menaces. In the distance, a dog barks.
The Lopez’s attack rooster comes winging around the side of the house with a screech like a battle cry and starts jabbing its needle-sharp beak into Justin’s shins. The man growls in surprise and kicks at the bird.
A light flicks on inside the house, and someone shouts.
My eyes widen as Justin throws himself at the treeline, heading straight for us.
“We have to get out of here.”
I whirl, but Esau’s arms tighten around me, tugging me behind a girthy eucalyptus. “I’m calling the sheriff. Just let me…”
“Don’t call him! There’s no need for—”
Justin crashes through the trees mere feet away from where we’re hidden. His lack of stealth would be funny if I wasn’t so afraid of what he saw inside Noah’s house.
Instead, I’m breathless with fear as he draws level with us. Any second he’s going to glance this way. His eyes will lock on mine.
It happens just as he streaks past, leaves crunching and twigs snapping as the rooster chases him all the way to the road. He doesn’t turn back. The scent of burning rubber permeates the air as the truck peels out.
I sag against the patchy bark of the tree, frustration and relief battling within me. He’s gone. I have no idea what Justin was doing here, but I do know that if there was something bad happening inside Noah’s house, the man wouldn’t have run off.
“Let’s go,” I whisper, turning toward Esau.
Esau shakes his head. “They’re putting me through to the sheriff. They should know your favorite janitor was scoping out a student’s house.” His entire body is rigid, his phone to his ear. Through it I can hear the receptionist at the sheriff’s office talking. Esau’s eyes are locked on the Lopez house.
Noah is standing on the front porch, squinting out into the trees. “Stay inside,” he yells to someone inside. “Stay with Anza and Mattie.”
Someone answers low enough that I can’t make it out.
I pinch my eyes closed, wishing I had the power to vanish into the gathering dusk. My hands claw at the bark, wishing I could slough it off the sturdy trunk and cloak myself in it. I should not have followed Justin here.
Esau clears his throat and moves away from me, closer to where Noah is rustling through the undergrowth.
“Hello?” Noah says, his voice closer this time. “Esau? What are you doing here?”
“Saw a truck parked in the trees and thought I’d check on you.”
“Thanks,” Noah says, his voice high and nervous. “I think we’re okay, but Anza is pretty spooked. She saw a man peering in her window.”
Esau nods. “It was the new janitor at school. Justin.”
“Oh.” Noah looks over his shoulder at the house, his body visibly uncoiling.
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“Naw. I, um, forgot he was going to come by. He’s interested in some of our baby chicks. Too bad Napoleon scared him off,” Noah says with the fakest laugh I’ve ever heard. He’s such a terrible liar, it’s kind of endearing.
A pulse throbs in my neck. Justin must have come out here to see if I was with Noah, since I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. So I guess he didn’t know I was at the cornfield with Esau.
Noah is standing an arm’s length away from where I’m hidden, and I pray he doesn’t see me.
“Sheriff’s on his way,” Esau grunts. “You can explain it to him.”
Thanking him, Noah’s footsteps get farther away, back toward the house.
Esau takes my hand and leads me back to the truck. I keep peeking over my shoulder to make sure Noah doesn’t see me.
“Care to tell me what that was about?” he asks once we’re back on the road heading toward town.
“My guess is Justin went over there to see if I was with Noah, since I snuck out. Aunt Karen has him check up on me sometimes.” I won’t meet his eye, and from the way Esau’s jaw flexes, he knows I’m not telling him the whole story.
The rest of the drive is tense and silent.
It’s not until I get up to my bedroom that I discover how close I was to death in that cornfield. There’s a wide knife slash in the back of my dress and the shallow line of red that cuts across my back.
Chapter 34
Day 159, Friday
Aunt Karen went on a tear when she found out about Esau and the cornfield. She reinforced that taking off my bracelet was not an option. Then she started laying out an ironclad argument about how slipping past Justin was incomprehensibly perilous.
Then early this morning we got the call that the fire at the cornfield was arson. Someone tried to burn it to the ground knowing two people were inside. The knowledge has sent me spiraling even further into a pit of regret. All of this is my fault. My parents’ death. The deaths of the Andersons. The Chans. Eve
ry single person who has died at the hands of that psycho since May. If only I had pushed harder, made my parents listen to me about the man who showed up everywhere I went. If only I had made them listen, maybe all of this could have been stopped.
But they didn’t hear the desperation in my voice.
And I didn’t push.
Instead I let it go, and my parents were butchered.
And the Mayday Killer is still free. Lurking in the dark crevices of my mind and waiting for his next chance to cut and rend with his bloody blade.
Now, I can add siccing a tail on the Lopez family to my list of transgressions. Justin didn’t mean them any harm, but it didn’t prevent Anza and Mattie from being scared enough to keep their parents up all that night, crying from the nightmares.
I did not envy Aunt Karen for having to come up with an explanation to give Mr. and Mrs. Lopez about why Justin was sneaking around their property.
Aunt Karen informed me that the sheriff’s deputies are keeping a close watch on the Lopez house for signs of the Mayday Killer, and that they’re doing everything they can to warn twin families in nearby towns. But it’s the same as before: how do they warn the public without causing panic? If every twin family in the state knows what’s going on, how long before the public makes a spectacle out of it? How long before they whisper his name, sizing up their neighbors and friends as future murder victims. How long before the true crime fanatics descend on our town, digging for clues the sheriff and his cronies may have missed?
My stomach clenches tight and doesn’t loosen.
I can’t let that happen.
In May, when I thought I was being followed, I let my need for my parents’ approval, my need to please them win out over my instincts that were screaming something bad was happening. No longer. I can stop this, now. The time to be a shy orchid bud tucked behind a leaf is over. Instead, it’s time to be a vivid purple bloom. Demanding attention.
Taking the cuff off my wrist, I leave it on the desk. I pull on my favorite hoodie and zip it to my chin. Its over-large bulk is like a security blanket, even though it’s lost any hint of my dad’s scent. The greasy musk he’d track into the house after spending hours in the garage working on his latest car project. It’s the first time I’ve worn it out, because I know if Aunt Karen saw it she’d make me change clothes.
Don't Look Behind You (Don't Look Series Book 1) Page 19