by Helena Shaw
It took Agent Nash a moment to reply to her, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes until he settled on what to say. “There isn’t any evidence, not yet at least, to indicate his story doesn’t check out. He dropped her off outside her house and went home. Until we have more to go on, there isn’t much the FBI can do.”
“You can’t believe that, though,” Dawn insisted. “There has to be something you can do. A stakeout, or a warrant, or something.”
“The FBI’s hands are tied unless we have more to go on.” Agent Nash’s words were firm, but his green eyes were almost apologetic as Dawn’s gaze caught his.
“What if I got you more to go on?” she offered. “What if I can find a clue or something?”
It went against her better judgement. Getting involved in an open FBI investigation was the last thing she needed if she wanted to remain unseen in Goosemont, but it didn’t seem to matter as much with Courtney missing. All that mattered was getting her friend back.
Before she could finish her own internal debate over whether her idea was a wise one, the agent cut off her train of thought. “Do not,” he said, his voice so stern that he almost sounded like an angry teacher, “even think about doing something that stupid. You have no idea if this man is really behind your friend’s disappearance and what he might be capable of.”
“I can handle myself,” Dawn said, turning indignant. Now that she was finally free, the idea of someone else telling her how to live her life sent spikes of resentment coursing through her.
“No, you can’t,” Agent Nash said, cutting off her indignant attitude with only a few words. “You have no idea what might be lurking outside of town, and if you go looking for danger, I guarantee it will find you. I can’t have another pretty young woman go missing.”
“Excuse me?” Dawn balked at that. Sure, patrons at the bar called her pretty. They often slurred it after slapping her ass. But having an actual FBI agent say something so unprofessional, yet weirdly flattering, cut the last of her protests to ribbons.
“You heard me,” the agent said, though there was something uncomfortable settling in the room. “Though I’ve wondered why you wear colored contacts. The dyed hair I can get behind, but who in this hick town are you trying to impress with the contacts?”
The discomfort turned to panic in Dawn’s chest. No one, not once, had called her out on her contacts before. The hair was bound to get noticed, but the contacts were subtle. So easily did they change her brown eyes to a shade somewhere between hazel and green. Even she had trouble telling they weren’t real.
“It’s aesthetic,” she finally stumbled on as she tried to decide what to tell the agent. “I thought it would be exciting to have a bit of a change.”
“Don’t be afraid to show their real color,” Agent Nash said as his eyes locked on hers. “I’m sure the real you is plenty exciting.”
“Only so long as I don’t go trying to find my friend, right?” she shot back at him. His compliments were making her fidget in her seat and she didn’t know how to accept them, so instead she went with defiance.
“You know as well as I do that it’s a bad idea,” Agent Nash reminded her. “Please, just stay in town. Hopefully we’ll get lucky and she just took off for the day and will call you soon enough.”
“I doubt it,” Dawn sighed. “I just... God, I shouldn’t have let her go off with that guy.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Agent Nash told her. “You had no way of knowing this would happen.”
“I guess,” was all Dawn could say. She was exhausted from worry, the beer wasn’t even touching the panic still roiling in her belly, and she blamed herself for what happened to her friend. All she wanted was to rewind the world by twenty-four hours and stop Courtney from leaving with that stupid guy.
It was him, it had to be, yet no one seemed to understand that.
“Here,” Agent Nash said as he fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to her. The paper it was printed on was thin and flimsy, and it was creased from being in his pocket. There was a slightly blurred FBI insignia on it with his name and a number, nothing more.
“What’s this for?” Dawn asked as she eyed the cheap-looking card.
“If you hear anything, anything at all,” Agent Nash said as he pushed himself up from Jim’s desk, “I want you to call me. That’s my direct number, and it’s always on.”
“Thanks,” Dawn said as she ran her thumb over the thin embossing of the letters. “Listen, do you, uh, think I’m nuts for insisting it’s Mosley?”
“You have reasonable cause,” Agent Nash said. “But we need more than that. Go home, get some sleep, and if you think of anything, call me.”
“Okay.” Dawn nodded as she rose from the old chair. She had to leave the closet of an office to make room for the agent to leave, but once they got back out into the bar, she saw Gabe and the agents were having it out.
“You can’t just interrogate us with no reason,” he was telling the senior agent. “She’s been in there for twenty minutes!”
“It’s not an interrogation,” Agent Hart was insisted. “It’s just to talk.”
“Bullshit!” Gabe argued. “If you want to question us, I need a warrant, or an arrest, or something!”
“Gabe,” Dawn tried to cut in to stop the argument, but it was no use. The agents and her coworker were too involved in their pissing contest to notice her pleas for peace.
From beside her, a sharp whistle broke through the ever-escalating argument and silenced everyone in the room.
“Hey!” Agent Nash bellowed once he took his fingers from between his lips. “That’s enough!”
“Please,” Dawn tried again once everyone was looking at them. “Everything’s fine, I swear. He didn’t interrogate me or anything. We just talked.”
“You sure?” Jim asked as his eyes narrowed at Agent Nash.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she insisted. “So stop arguing, please.”
“It’s getting late,” the senior agent said as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “We should start seeing if anyone else saw anything before people start going to bed.”
“Good,” Gabe said, but a look from Jim shut him up.
The agents made their way to the door as they offered weak promises of letting the staff know if they heard anything. Dawn knew it was a half-hearted lie, but she appreciated it anyway. The only one who seemed genuine was Agent Nash, but there was just something about him that made Dawn look twice. He wasn’t like any other cop she’d ever known, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“God, I wish they spent more time looking for the poor girl instead of flapping their gums at us,” Jim sighed as he collapsed into a chair.
“You okay?” Gabe asked Dawn as he grabbed her a refill of her beer. “Was that cop telling the truth?”
“He’s FBI,” she corrected him. “But yeah, no lies. We just talked. He helped talk me off the ledge, so to speak. He’s... he’s okay.”
“Well, I hope he’s as good as he seems to think he is,” Jim said. “Because those other two are useless sons of bitches.”
“I hope so too,” Dawn nodded as she let the memory of how Agent Nash looked at her wash over her. He saw her, he really did, and that scared and excited her. No one else in the rinky-dink town seemed to really see her except for him.
As she sipped her beer, her mind started to move into more forbidden territory. For a flash, she was thinking about the agent’s lips on her own, about his rough hands moving over her body, and pulling her close. Then, as quickly as the fantasy had begun, she shook it from her mind. Courtney was missing. This was no time for her to be fantasizing about being intimate with an FBI agent.
“I’m going to get back to work,” Dawn said as she set down her beer.
“There’s no one here,” Jim insisted. “The feds closed the bar.”
Dawn didn’t hear him though. She wasn’t letting herself think at all. Thinking was too painful, and she let herself slip into that
secret place where she used to hide so many years ago.
Chapter Six
Dawn’s mind was on autopilot as she tidied up the empty bar. She washed and put away the few mugs that had been used, cleaned the beer taps for the night, shut the oven off, and mopped the floors. Still, Dawn continued to tidy until Jim’s hand on her shoulder broke the spell.
“Go home, sweetie,” he told her. “That floor isn’t getting any cleaner.”
She hadn’t realized it until then, but when she glanced up at the old clock on the wall, Dawn saw she had been mopping the same two square feet of floor for the last five or six minutes. Even knowing that, she tried to keep going. If she stopped, Dawn knew she’d break down and she might not be able to pick up the pieces again.
“What if she calls?” Dawn mumbled as Jim took the mop from her hand. “What if she walks in the front door? I can’t go yet. She’ll want me to be here.”
“If she calls,” Jim said, “I’ll send her to your place.”
It was an entirely empty promise. Deep down, they both knew that Courtney wouldn’t be calling. A tiny voice in Dawn’s mind was trying to tell her that Courtney would never be calling again, but she refused to listen. It was all a misunderstanding. It had to be.
“Go home,” Jim insisted again. “Gabe can walk you.”
“I’m fine,” Dawn told him. The idea of having to be walked home just made everything seem worse and all too real. Her little house wasn’t far, anyway, and she normally made the five-minute walk alone. Normalcy was what she wanted, not having to be walked home like a child.
“Are you sure?” Jim asked as he raised a bushy gray eyebrow. “You’re on his way.”
“I swear, I’m fine,” Dawn insisted. “I’ll call if anything comes up or if I change my mind, okay?”
Jim didn’t look too happy about it, but Dawn wasn’t going to change her mind, and they both seemed to understand that. She said she wanted to be alone, and he respected that, even if he thought it was a bad idea, given the circumstances.
“Call if you need anything at all,” Jim said. “Even if it’s just to talk, okay?”
“Thanks, Jim,” Dawn said as she grabbed her old plaid jacket and pulled it on. “I’ll be okay, I promise.”
“You better,” Jim said with a weak smile. “And take tomorrow off.”
“I’ll think about it,” Dawn said, but they both knew she wouldn’t. Not only did Dawn like the bar, but too much time without something to do would be deadly for her psyche. She’d be there tomorrow, even if it meant having to deal with more questions.
The late evening was colder than she’d expected as she stepped out of the bar. The breeze tugged at her hair and she pulled the jacket tighter around herself as she turned toward home.
Somewhere far in the distance, a coyote, maybe a wolf, howled, its call echoing off mountains and trees alike. The sound sent a chill down her spine, but she forced herself to think rationally. The sound, even with the echoes, was far enough away that she knew she was safe.
But another idea was taking root in her mind. What if it’s not a bear? What if it was a wolf that attacked those hikers?
Though the howl had been far away, the idea that was wiggling in her mind was enough to get her feet walking just a bit faster.
As she walked home, a familiar feeling started to creep over her. It was late and the streets were empty, but just as the night before, Dawn didn’t feel entirely alone. Something, someone, maybe, was watching her. She could almost feel their eyes on her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see who was there.
But it was no one. The streets were empty and her mind was playing tricks on her again.
“Stop it,” she said as she made her way past the yellow tape that was becoming all too familiar. Someone, or maybe it was just the wind, had turned some of the tape to ribbons, and it fluttered like spider webs in the breeze, but Dawn didn’t stop to look at it. Her mind was telling her, no, ordering her, to get home and lock the doors.
Somewhere behind her, a loud clatter erupted in the night, startling her enough to make her jump. She knew she should keep going, but she spun just in time to see a raccoon come running out of the alley, its prize of a piece of discarded pizza clenched in its jaws.
You’re being silly, she told herself, but another clatter from the alley sent her running for home. It was probably just another raccoon, but she couldn’t chance it. It could be the bear, or the wolf, or whatever animal was out there killing hikers. Dawn had no intention of finding out for sure.
She leapt up the three steps of her porch like it was nothing and jammed her key into the lock. No one in Goosemont ever locked their doors, but she did, and for once, she regretted it. She had to fight with the old tumblers, but once they clicked, she threw herself through the door and slammed it behind herself.
The moment she was inside, Dawn couldn’t help but laugh at her own paranoid behavior. What had to have been a family of raccoons had sent her running scared. She laughed and laughed at herself until she was sobbing and her whole world began to collapse around her.
“Goddamn it!” she let herself scream as she cried. “Just... goddamn it.” Her second outburst paled in comparison to the first. Her adrenaline was running overtime, and nothing was making sense. She just wanted things to go back to how things were a few days ago, when life was quiet, normal, and boring.
When her tears began to slow, she finally pulled herself away from the door and moved to the kitchen. Her mind had begun to race, debating her next move. She had already begun to agonize over whether she should go looking for Courtney, how she really felt about the oddly-comforting FBI agent, and she knew the only thing that would shut those thoughts up.
In a cupboard under her sink was a large bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, a gift from Courtney on Dawn’s fake birthday. Though she’d really been born on the twentieth of September, Dawn Garrett claimed the date as August thirtieth. She grabbed it and poured herself a shot, and then another before she put the bottle on the counter along with the glass.
The whiskey burned her throat even after she’d finished her second shot, but at least the sensation took her mind off everything else that was troubling her. It was pure alcohol, and it worked its way through her veins at a rapid pace. The world around her was finally starting to slow down some, and Dawn was beginning to think that she might just be able to get some sleep.
Suddenly, from the porch, she heard something crash against the creaky old wood. A startled scream rose up in her throat, but she forced it back down as her body froze. Her porch creaked heavily under footsteps, and there was no denying that there was something out there, and that it wasn’t a raccoon.
In a moment of panic, Dawn grabbed an old butcher’s knife out of the block that rested on her counter. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the knife if she had to use it, but with the blade in hand, she stalked her way toward the front door and waited to hear another sound.
At first, there was nothing. It seemed whatever had been out there hadn’t found what it was looking for and left again. Still, Dawn pressed her ear to the door and listened hard for a hint of what might be out there.
A loud thud slammed against the door and sent Dawn screaming as she tumbled backwards from the shock. On her porch, the footsteps returned, and she swore she heard claws as they scrambled across the wooden planks. It was an animal, it had to be, yet somehow she swore it knew she was inside.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” she gasped as she crawled to the center of her tiny cabin. She threw herself behind the couch before she realized she’d dropped her knife somewhere along the way.
The footsteps were quiet again, and Dawn peered over the sofa to see if she could spot her makeshift weapon, but instead her eyes caught something else. On the kitchen counter sat her outdated rotary phone, and she lunged for it.
“Please there, please be there,” she chanted to herself as she dug her fingers into her jeans pocket. She didn’t know why she was searching for the t
attered business card that Agent Nash had given her, but in that moment, he seemed like the only person in the world that she should call.
At the bottom of her pocket, Dawn’s fingers found the thin card and she fished it out. She stabbed the number into her old phone and began to pray that he would pick up.
Agent Nash’s cool, deep voice answered her so casually that it shocked her. “Yeah?”
“Um, Agent Nash?” she confirmed, terrified she’d dialed the wrong number.
“You got him,” he said.
“It’s Dawn,” she said. “Dawn Garrett. You told me to call if anything came up, and well...”
Another noise outside sent her jumping so hard that she almost dropped the phone.
“Dawn?” Agent Nash’s voice brought her back to the phone. “Dawn, is everything okay?”
“No!” she admitted. “No, something’s outside. Someone, or something. I’m probably just panicking, but I’m scared.”
“I’ll be right there,” Agent Nash assured her, but there was a touch of fear in his own voice that did nothing to calm Dawn’s already frayed nerves.
After she’d given him her address, Dawn hung up the phone and grabbed her knife off the floor. He was only a few blocks away at the old motel in town, but he seemed to take an eternity to get there. All Dawn could do while she waited was clutch the knife to her chest and pray he got there before someone, or something, else did.
Dawn stood deadly still in the middle of her small house while she strained to listen for the agent’s approach. The wind howled outside, and she swore she heard footsteps, but nothing came of it. Soon, she was straining so hard that she was giving herself a headache, and she almost moved to call Agent Nash’s number again to find out what was taking him so long.
Just as she was about to move back toward the kitchen, a knock at her door made her yelp once more.
“Dawn?” Agent Nash’s voice called her door as he knocked again. “Dawn, it’s me.”
“Oh my God,” she sighed as she opened the door for him. “What took you so long?”