by Hunt, Jack
“I didn’t lie.”
“Oh but you didn’t tell the truth either. But don’t worry, I will once you’re gone.” He said it so coldly and matter-of-factly.
“Cole.”
“Shut up!” he said taking a few more steps toward her, snapping up and down his hand like a mouth in front of him. “All you do is yak, yak, yak. I’m sick of it.” She stepped back and nearly lost her footing. A cold wind blew against her threatening to push her over. “Oh, Kelly the blameless. Never at fault, are you? No, it’s all me. You had nothing to do with the way things unfolded, isn’t that right? Huh? You were just a helpless writer trying to live out your life with a nasty husband who was jealous.” He laughed. “Jealous! That’s what you told them, right? That I was jealous of you? You self-righteous bitch! Who covered the cost of everything when you were trying to make something of yourself? Huh? Me. Who had your back when others asked what you were doing with your life? Me. And this is how you repay me?” he said through gritted teeth.
“They’ll never believe you.”
“Oh, but they will,” he said fishing into his jacket pocket and pulling out a handful of envelopes and shaking them in the air. “You know how many celebrities have stalkers? How many have broken into their homes? How many have shown up uninvited? How many have threatened them? The headlines are full of celebrities getting restraining orders.” He got closer to her and tossed a few of the envelopes at her feet. They were already open. She bent down and picked them up and fished out the letters, keeping her eyes on Cole. Each one was signed JD, each one written to her, pages and pages of him talking about how they would one day be together, how he couldn’t live without her in his life, and how they were meant to be with one another. But that wasn’t just it, there were photos of her taken without her knowledge. Photos of her getting into a taxi, ordering coffee, walking down the street, going into her agent’s office and going about her private life. She looked up at Cole, almost speechless.
“You told the department I had a stalker, didn’t you?”
He smiled and nodded. She was about to learn from her lawyer what Cole’s defense was, and what was holding things up, but now she knew.
Cole took a few more steps toward her, his face lighting up. “Pay attention, Kelly, as this is the best part. They’ll find him dead, and the people he’s killed, and these letters, and a very dead police officer nearby. Based on evidence found they will conclude that Officer Hurst was too late in coming to your aid, but managed to shoot him with his rifle before succumbing to his own injuries,” he said holding up the rifle that must have belonged to Hurst. That’s when she noticed Cole was wearing gloves. “Like I said, it’s perfect. They’ll understand that there was truth to my original statement and I will be reinstated and you…” He laughed. “And, you… well, you’ll be dead. A tragedy at the hands of an obsessive stalker who couldn’t live without the woman he loved.” He raised a finger. “Oh, but hold that thought.” He crossed over to where Travis was, all the while keeping the rifle trained on her. He reached down and picked up the handgun Travis had been carrying. “Can’t be using this,” he said tossing the rifle. “I’ll bring Hurst over after. Set him beside the rifle and well… have our man here…” He chuckled. “I mean, me, shoot you and that should do it.”
Kelly placed both of her hands out in front of her. “Cole, please. You don’t have to do this.”
“I know. I want to.” His expression went dark.
Behind him, Travis moved. He wasn’t dead. The movement was ever so slight only she saw it. Travis raised his gaze at her then at Cole who continued his tirade of abuse as the wind masked Travis’ rise.
“Now what was that you said about writing… finish what you started?” Cole slowly lifted the handgun at her. “Goodbye, Kelly.”
In a final act of obsessive possession or sacrifice, Travis lunged forward. It all happened in an instant, so fast she could barely process it. He slammed into Cole, wrapping his arms around his waist and thrusting him toward the edge of the cliff. At the same moment, the gun went off. Kelly flinched, thinking she was shot but then opened her eyes in time to see them barreling toward her. She shifted to avoid the collision but Cole snagged her jacket, pulling her backwards with them as they soared over the edge.
18
It was like diving into a bath of liquid nitrogen.
Travis took the brunt of the fall, his back cracking the slick sheet of ice. The impact of their combined weight forced them through into the frigid lake water trapped below. Whether expecting to drown, or gasping in shock as she went over the bluff, Kelly had taken a large lungful of air on the way down.
The blast of icy cold water stung like a thousand jellyfish.
Her body convulsed in the sudden shock.
At first she didn’t have the wherewithal to even think.
It was dark beneath the ice. Inky black and made even scarier by the sight of Cole. Years of fear immediately took hold, threatening to paralyze her. For a second she saw Travis’ body sink into the darkness, his eyes wide, fixed on her, his mouth agape.
You’re not dying here. Not here, she told herself.
Kelly’s will to survive ignited like an engine growling to life.
Bursting upward she swam a few feet until she felt a hand on her leg.
She kicked her feet to no avail.
Cole had hold of her.
Thrashing in his grip, Kelly tried to swim harder but was quickly pulled down.
As she struggled to break free, he overwhelmed her, his hands finding their target, wrapping around her throat seeking to finish what he’d started. Kelly stared into his eyes, nothing but potholes of darkness and anger reflecting back as she fought for her life. Clumsy winter jackets and heavy boots weighed them down, making even the tiniest movement hard. Her hands wrapped around his wrists, trying to pry them loose, but he was too strong. Every attempt to break free only made him tighten more. They sank deeper; her lungs heaved as they cried for air. It felt like her insides would explode if she didn’t catch a breath. Punching, poking, she tried everything but Cole wouldn’t let go.
She slammed up against him and they twisted and turned in the murky waters, just two bodies lost in darkness. Her hands fumbled aimlessly, scraping at his duty belt hoping to find anything, a weapon, a gun but it wasn’t there. Slowly, darkness crept in at the sides of her eyes. Seconds. That’s all it would take. She was moments away from losing consciousness. Groping in the dark, her hand latched on to the knife in his duty belt. Clicking up the button, she felt it come loose.
Cole was so focused on strangling her, he didn’t even realize until it was too late.
Kelly thrust the knife up into his rib cage, twice, then pulled it out and watched his face go into shock. Though he was still holding her neck, his grasp weakened and then he fell away, slipping backward, swallowed by the lake.
Bubbles, small and big, escaped her lips as she rose.
How long had she been under?
Seconds, a minute? It was hard to tell.
Overwhelmed, and desperate for air, Kelly sloughed off her jacket, and kicked upward as hard as she could toward the surface. It was so dark she couldn’t tell what was up or down until her head slammed into ice. A cold shock of pain went through her skull as she beat on the sheet of ice with her fist but it wouldn’t budge. The undercurrent carried her along, pulling and twisting her in its watery grasp.
That’s when she took the knife and stabbed the ice; once, twice, three times. Had the current not been as strong she might have been able to focus the tip of the knife on one area but it kept inhaling her backward into its dark mouth. Only capable of making a few cracks at a time before being swept away, she saw darkness creeping in.
Any second.
Any moment now and she would go unconscious.
Kelly dug deep for what little strength remained, hearing Erin’s words echoing. You’re stronger than you think. She slammed the tip of the knife upward using all her strength. Whether the
patch of ice was thinner in that spot or her will to survive was stronger, she’d never know — Kelly’s fist broke through, cracking it above, a spider web of lines fissured out, weakening the rest and turning the ice into fragments.
One final kick, and her mouth breached the surface, taking in a lungful of air.
Remembering what her father had taught her about how to survive a fall through the ice, Kelly clambered onto the edge of the strongest section. She leaned forward, stabbed the tip of the knife against the ice and used it to gain traction to pull herself up, then began kicking her legs until her body was horizontal. Finally she pulled herself onto her elbows and slid forward on the ice.
Paranoid that it would break again, she lay there for a few seconds until the frigid wind nipped at her skin, threatening to cause hypothermia. She knew the symptoms: slurred speech, confusion, clumsiness, sleepiness, shivering and a weak pulse. Sliding away from the weakest area of ice, still gripped by fear, Kelly cautiously worked her way across the ice as fast as she could. Once she made it to the foot of the cliff, she wrapped her arms around her body and hurried back to the lookout to get warm.
Stumbling through the snow, she could feel her muscles weakening, becoming too cold to function. Kelly collapsed, then got up again, falling forward a few feet later into the snow, her eyes rolling back as she succumbed to the winter. She wasn’t sure how long she was there before she heard the voice.
“Over here. Over here!”
A whimper for help escaped her blue lips.
“Ms. Danvers.”
The blurred face of a young cop in uniform holding a radio solidified before her before going hazy. “Stay with me. Stay with me!” A radio crackled and she heard him request EMS before looming over and scooping her up. “Help is on the way.” The last thing Kelly saw was her snow-covered lookout before everything went black.
Epilogue
A year and a half later
Kelly stabbed the paper with the ballpoint pen before closing the hardcover.
She handed the book back to a grateful reader before turning to her assistant, Tim, and indicating she was ready for that break.
A small white sign to say she would be back in fifteen minutes was posted in front of the desk stacked with copies of her latest novel — Escaping Darkness. Barnes & Noble in Boise was busy that Saturday morning as she stepped outside and breathed in the warm summer air. She worked out the tension in her neck from signing over three hundred copies. She set her aviator glasses on and glanced in the display window where her book was front and center, surrounded by multiple copies.
It almost looked like a shrine.
She couldn’t help but think of Jarod, aka Travis, and that box, or what he’d told her about his private library or shrine dedicated to her.
In the weeks following that cold winter night when many lost their lives, she’d come to learn that she wasn’t the first to have crossed paths with Jarod Davis. He’d had multiple restraining orders, had done six months in jail for breaking into another author’s home, and had narrowly escaped a lengthy sentence for stalking.
Though he was unable to speak for himself, media outlets were quick to theorize why he’d done it. She and two authors before her were similar in appearance to his ex-wife, a woman who had scorned him and walked out taking his kids with her. A woman who later came forward to make a few bucks off her story about living with a controlling monster. Viewers ate it up, and Kelly had already been approached by one director about turning her time at the lookout with Jarod into a film, but she’d turned it down, saying that living through it once was enough for her.
She pushed the thought of him from her mind.
As for Cole, well, that was a whole other kettle of fish. He was as equally controlling and demented as JD. He wasn’t lying when he said he’d directed Jarod toward Kelly. After an extensive investigation it was determined that it wasn’t Nora filtering her mail, it was Cole. Attempting to control her life, Cole had taken the mail arriving at the house, and had seen the endless stream of bizarre letters from Jarod, from there it was simply a matter of pointing him in her direction. No different than a jilted security guard of a gated community giving the access code out to a stalker. After the night she went to the police, it was concluded that Cole had replied to JD, under the guise that it was Kelly responding. Multiple letters were found at Jarod’s residence in Boise. The handwriting was a match for Cole’s. While Cole hadn’t directly told him to come to the lookout, he’d given him enough rope to hang himself: information that she was back in town (gained from someone who had spoken with Erin prior to her arrival), news that she was working on a new book, but most importantly, he’d listed the lookout’s location at the top of the letter.
From there it was just a matter of time before Jarod showed up in Emery.
Kelly sighed. So many good people had lost their life because of Cole. Sure, Jarod had been the one to take those lives but Cole had directed his actions. As for Erin and Hank, well, their bodies were found and in light of the situation, the court deemed Hank’s death an accident.
Still, it wasn’t easy to live with and Kelly was seeing a therapist to work through it all.
However, even as the months passed and the sting of loss grew less painful, there were moments when she wondered if there were other fans like JD out there, ready to step in and take his place.
“Oh wow, you’re Kelly Danvers, aren’t you?” a woman asked coming up behind her. An awkward feeling rose, that uncomfortable moment that came with her career.
She cleared her throat. “That’s right.”
The lady looked overjoyed, her husband not so. The woman asked if she could take a selfie before gushing over Kelly’s latest book and telling her how it was the best thing since sliced bread and how she intended to wait in line to have her copy personally autographed. Kelly let her take the photo, thanked her and walked a short distance away, hoping to avoid any further attention. Since the event her agent had been nagging at her to restrict the amount of access readers had through her website, social media and book tours, but Kelly shot it down. In her mind, doing so would give JD a foothold in her life and if she was to live out a normal existence, she wanted to act normal, and stay connected with readers. After all, it was them who had given her a career.
And for that she was grateful. Genuinely, even if she was an introvert.
The lot around the bookstore that morning was packed with vehicles. Many were out getting their weekend shopping or simply basking in the soaring temperature.
It felt good to feel the sunshine on her skin.
Kelly reached into her bag and checked the messages on her phone from her mother. There was one: I didn’t want to disturb you. I know you’re busy, honey, call me when you get a moment.
She dialed, stretching out her back as she waited for her mother to pick up.
“Hi darling.”
“Hey.”
“How’s it going?”
“Good. Two more cities after this and I should get a break and be home.”
She was now staying only a few blocks from her mother in the city. She’d bought a cute place, a small two-bedroom house, nothing fancy, modest, something that allowed for growth if she ever decided to have a family. Her mother wanted her to move in but she still wanted her independence and Kelly was only walking distance away if she wanted to drop in.
“Heard any more news?”
“Yeah, looks like I have a buyer,” Kelly said, enthusiastically.
Although she loved the lookout, and was previously against the idea of selling it — the place was now mired in intense grief and memories that she preferred to forget. With Hank gone, she’d posted it with the Fire Lookout Association, an organization that was involved in the research and preservation of current and former fire lookouts. They’d offered her a listing on their website and within a week she had multiple offers from people who had a genuine interest in its history and preservation, not simply because of the murders.
/> “That’s good news.” There was a pause. “You doing okay?”
Her mother checked in regularly just to be sure.
“Yeah. I’m good. How’s Megan?”
“She’s well, I’m with the baby as I speak. You really have to see her, Kelly. She has Adam’s eyes.”
A pause.
“Someday.”
“Kelly. Megan wants you to see her.”
Even though she couldn’t have prevented their deaths, Kelly couldn’t help but feel guilty. It was because of that she’d decided to donate the earnings from her second novel to Megan and her child, and the families of Erin, Hank, and Officer Hurst to ensure they didn’t want for anything. And, well, she still made enough money from her first book to live comfortably with close to a million copies sold worldwide every year.
Her assistant called out to her and tapped his watch.
“Listen, Mom, sorry to cut you short but I have to go. I will be in touch in a couple of days. I promise. Love you.”
After she returned to the table, a long line of people were waiting. “Thanks for your patience, everyone.” She took a seat and began the rewarding but repetitive task of signing books and greeting each person. After seeing numerous copies of her latest novel pass in front of her, it caught her off guard when a fresh hardcover of A Call to War slid before her.
She lifted her eyes, to see a clean-shaven, middle-aged man, dark eyes, good looking. He wore a long tweed jacket, and a jean shirt tucked into stylish gray pants.
He smiled but said nothing.
Kelly stared down at the book. It had been a long time since she’d signed one of these. “Huh? Do you want the latest signed too? Or just this?”
“Just that one,” he replied politely.
She nodded slowly, and opened the front. “Who do I make it out to?”
“JD.”
Her stomach sank and went into knots and she began having a coughing fit. Tim stepped in and offered a bottle of water. Kelly took a giant gulp and breathed out again. “You okay?” Tim asked placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.