One Was Lost

by Natalie D. Richards

  Guilt smothers me. “I’m sorry,” I say, inching us forward at a crawl, my voice choked with terror. “I’m so sorry.”

  Lucas presses the crown of his head to the back of my neck. He’s breathing hard and ragged. “’S OK.”

  My throat goes fist-tight, and distant thunder rumbles. It’s absolutely not OK. I shake my head and continue, much slower now. I start edging to the left, farther from the ridge, where it’s safer.

  I sigh at the piles of sharp, moss-strewn rocks. “We’ve got to get back north,” I say as if he needs the reminder. As if we aren’t both perfectly aware we’ve been funneled into a channel, a one-way road heading the absolute wrong direction.

  I grit my teeth and release the throttle even further. It’s easier to hear Lucas now, to feel the sticks snap and pop under the tires and his answering groans. I can’t see the road, but I imagine it up there, a gray line of salvation tucked behind a forest that is eating me alive.

  There’s a craggy overhang on my right and what looks like a footpath. Is that the trail? Too small, but it could be something. I spot an orange-red box next to the overhang and muddy boot tracks.

  I hit the brakes gently. There’s an opening, but I don’t think the quad will fit through. Those are definitely boot tracks too. Lots of them.

  “Do you see that?” I ask, nodding at the red stuff. “Is that a first aid kit?”

  Lucas shudders behind me, his pain spelled out in a strangled groan.

  I switch the quad out of gear and try to get a closer look at the plastic box. It’s closed with white latches. When my eyes adjust, I see there are letters on the side. I can only read part of them.

  F L A R

  Flare. That’s a flare gun.

  Chapter 29

  Hope uncurls, warming my throat and cheeks. My heartbeat quickens as I stop us just past the box and cut the engine. There’s a red rain slicker and a thermos next to it. Everything looks clean. Recent. None of this has been here long. Someone might be close.

  The stuff is all situated against a ledge, and I can see that the ledge disappears downward behind another craggy formation. It’s a hallway of stone, one that curves down and to the left.

  We might already be rescued.

  I turn off the quad and consider the box with the flare gun. Should I shoot one off, or would that just bring Mr. Walker back? I mean, he doesn’t know we have it, right?

  “What’s wrong?” Lucas’s speech has gone muddy. Slurred.

  “That box is a flare gun. And I think whoever owns that stuff is down there.” I jut my chin toward the corridor between the two rocks. “Maybe it’s another hiking group.”

  His only answer is a series of sharp breaths.

  I turn in my seat to look at him and gasp. “Lucas!”

  I clutch the front of his shirt even as he sags sideways. He looks beyond awful. His shirt is soaked, hair dripping on his forehead. He also weighs more than this quad, and I’m sure we’re both going to go sideways off the seat. At the last second, he jams his good hand onto the back tire and grunts.

  “I’m fine,” he says, righting himself on the seat.

  “Like hell you’re fine! Why didn’t you stop me?” I ask, voice cracking.

  He smirks, that devil-may-care spark reduced to a bare flicker in his hooded eyes. “Only way out is through, right?”

  He tries a smile, but I can tell it’s beyond painful, and there’s nothing I can do. He’s too big, too heavy. I have nothing to secure his arm with, and frankly, I wouldn’t know how even if I did. If someone else were here…

  My eyes stray to the slicker, and hope burns, ember-bright, in my center. “Lucas, I want you to sit tight. I’m going to check to see if someone’s down there. Or if there’s a good place to shoot one of these flares.”

  The wind picks up, carrying the smell of rain on its back.

  He shakes his head once. “No. North.”

  “You’ll fall off, and you know it.” I move an arm around his waist, my words floating along the tears in my voice. “You said I was in charge, so I say we’re stopping.”

  “I said you were bossy,” he says. “That’s different.”

  I help him off the quad, and he slings a long arm over my shoulders. I take a breath that’s heavy with sweat and pain and bite my lip when we awkwardly work him off the seat. His hand shakes against my side, so I try to be steady. I have to fix this. He’s out here for me—to protect me. I’m at the center of all of this, and I have to get us out of here.

  “Dammit,” he mutters as we ease his back against a tree.

  “Is it bad? Was the quad better?”

  “Not that.” He looks up, and whatever’s swimming in his eyes tears me apart. “I’m sorry. We didn’t need this.”

  “Shut up,” I whisper, wishing instantly I’d picked better words. Nicer words. “Just…just don’t say that. We’re getting out of here.”

  I touch his forehead, my palm kissing his sweaty brow. I clench my teeth and straighten my spine. “Stay put. I’m going to get help.”

  I ease toward the stack of flares and the slicker, but Lucas lifts his hand, his eyes clearing.

  “Don’t just…don’t charge down there,” he says.

  It’s not Mr. Walker. I know what he’s worried about, but the bright-red slicker and emergency flares don’t exactly scream clandestine murderer. Still, he’s right. We’ve been fooled before. I need to be careful.

  I tilt my head, looking through the tracks. Some of them are too smeared to make out, just a bit of heel or toe. I finally find a full print a few feet from the quad. I settle my own boot next to it and smile.

  The print is smaller than mine would be. Not a guy. Definitely not Mr. Walker, whose boots were almost as big as Lucas’s.

  “It’s not Mr. Walker down there, Lucas. The prints are too small. I checked.”

  He seems mollified, but I still unlatch the flare box and take the gun out. It is very orange and very basic. I load a cartridge in and smile up at Lucas. “See? Now I’m armed to blind and burn. Extra careful.”

  “Extra careful,” he repeats.

  “Hey, maybe these belong to a pair of picnicking paramedics.” I grin. “They could be down there right now, wondering who will eat their extra bacon cheeseburgers.”

  He almost laughs. “Let’s hope those burgers are slathered in morphine. The expired ibuprofen from the first aid kit is not cutting it.”

  I smile as I ease my way farther along the stone wall, my good hand gripping the flare gun. Rocks slither down in a series of natural steps curving into darkness. I go slowly to let my eyes adjust as I move through the tight crevice. I don’t know what’s on the other side. It could be a cliff. Or a cavern.

  Or something worse.

  I lick my lips but stay quiet. Careful. That was my promise. I’m not going to stumble off a cliff because I’m rushing. The stones are smooth and slicked with mud under my feet. Even in the darkness, I can see the smear of footprints here and there along the edges. One person couldn’t have made all these passing through. Not unless they’ve been in and out of here a dozen times.

  As I curve around farther, light leaks into the narrow channel, and some crazy part of me thinks I smell food. Burgers, just like Lucas wants. I move just a little faster, my feet a quiet scrape against the stones. I can see the opening. My heart falls because what’s out there is not what I want. It is not a way out. It’s practically a cave. And there’s no one here to help.

  I step into the light and stumble forward, my vision blurring, eyes blinking like crazy. I’m in a clearing, a roofless stone alcove, with shadowy crevices and overhangs and what once might have been a cool place to see before it was littered with all this trash from campers long gone.

  We’re still alone. The thought snatches the air out of my lungs with hot fingers. The floor tilts…or no—no, that’s me. I
’m just dizzy. I stumble to a wall and lean my shoulder against it. Blink until my vision clears at the edges.

  OK. OK, so we’re alone. I’ll figure out a way to get Lucas back on the quad. We’ll shoot flares and keep driving. Someone will be looking for us, so we just keep moving and—

  Something familiar catches my eye. My gaze trails over the trash strewn in the shadows of the cavern, and I find it again. A backpack with a familiar white granola wrapper.

  That’s from one of Madison’s granola bars. Is that Madison’s backpack?

  I shuffle away from the wall, assessing the litter along the walls. There are piles of twigs and twine in various sizes. A stack of ratty sleeping bags in the shadows. Black and gray bits of plastic. A striped backpack strap.

  My heart hurls sideways like a skipping rock. That’s my backpack strap. The sticks that made the dolls. I find more things. A crushed box of yogurts. The cap of a black marker that makes my fingers scratch at the letters on my arm.

  It’s like bracing myself for a fall one second too late. I can’t save myself now. I’ve walked into my killer’s lair.

  Chapter 30

  I turn for the exit slowly. I think my heart is thundering in my ears, but it’s not. That’s real thunder, a low ripple that picks at my edges. I clench my fists to hold myself together. He’s not here. I found his hidey hole, his little backstage setup area, but Mr. Walker isn’t inside. He’s out looking for me.

  Time to go.

  I blink back furious tears and start toward the stairs. My feet stutter-stop after two steps. The small, boxy GPS device is sitting on the back wall, strapped in its bright holster with Walker printed neatly down the side in familiar permanent ink. My vision narrows until it is all I see.

  He used this to keep help from coming. This is how he lied to our parents, to my father, clicking a few buttons and letting them sleep at night, believing we are OK.

  We are not OK. And now I am going to tell them.

  My heart grows strangely steady as I cross the cavern floor. I tuck the flare gun under my arm and reach for the GPS. He taught us how to call for emergencies. His one mistake, it seems. When my fingers graze the canvas holder, they are buzzing with anticipation. It’s easy to activate the emergency call. As easy as putting in my locker combination.

  I check it again because I’m not sure I did it right, but the message is there.

  Confirmed.

  Help is coming. It feels like the tide rolling away. I step back on wooden limbs and look up the channel that will lead me back out to Lucas.

  Something moves out of the corner of my eye. It’s just the sleeping bag.

  No.

  It’s something inside the sleeping bag. And it’s moving.

  I can’t muster a scream, so I scramble for the tunnel as the mound shifts and twists in the shadows. Gun. I have a gun. Flare gun or not, it’s something. I raise my weapon and face the sleeping bag, trying to back my way up and out.

  The bag bends. Folds. Someone is in there, trying to sit up. An awful gurgling cough comes from inside all that fabric. Then a bloody face emerges in the light.

  Mr. Walker. My finger is on the trigger when he slumps sideways, shaking violently. I lower the gun an inch because Emily was right. He is sick. It wasn’t an act. Not before and not now. Something is very wrong with him.

  He opens his mouth and closes it. I can almost see his lips forming around my name, and it makes me want to burn the Darling off my arm, but I don’t need to. I put in the distress call, so help will come now. They will find us and rescue us.

  Mr. Walker lets out a breath that gurgles, and I really look at him. At the blood on his shirt. The blood around his mouth, like he’s been coughing it up. Spitting it out.

  I think we’re already rescued. I didn’t rescue myself. Lucas didn’t do it either. We aren’t the heroes. Whatever is killing Mr. Walker, that fever burning him from the inside out? That’s the hero.

  I force my shoulders down as his eyes find mine. I want him to look at me. I want him to face what he’s done and to know I’m not afraid anymore. He won’t get up and relive his little eighteen-year-old murder scene. He might not ever get up again.

  My stomach knots as I look at him because he still doesn’t watch me like I’m a Darling. Or like I’m something he wants to destroy. It doesn’t matter. Getting out of here matters. I force myself forward, and Mr. Walker startles, another wet cough rattling in his throat as he tries to talk to me.

  He works one arm out of the bag, and I can see a paper folded in his hand. I can’t read it from here, but I can see there’s a girl’s picture. Is that Hannah? From her funeral maybe?

  Yeah, it’s her picture, her face under Mr. Walker’s smeared crimson fingerprints. He squirms, one arm still pinned in the sleeping bag. He’s a bloody, hacking worm, and looking at him clenches my stomach. And it makes me angry.

  I lift the flare gun and take a step toward him. Because I want him to know I’m not the girl he thinks I am. For one sliver of a second, I think I might pull the trigger.

  But I am not that girl either.

  I lower the weapon, and he tries to say something. His breath is a sticky rattle, telling me he doesn’t have long. Finally, he shapes the words, pushes them out of his mouth with a croak of voice.

  “Run, Sera.”

  Anger flares through me at the words. Screw him. I will not run from him. Not one more minute. I’ll walk away when I’m good and ready because it’s crystal clear he’s not hurting anyone anymore.

  He nudges the paper with his chin, but it goes nowhere, just flutters to his lap, her face bending over one of his thighs. He makes a noise that I think is supposed to be a laugh and a sob all mixed together. It is a monstrosity of both. Bile blooms at the back of my throat.

  “I thought it was you,” he says. “I thought you were down here, hiding. I thought—”

  I look down at the girl who isn’t me. The memorial card from her funeral, I guess. Her face is framed in appropriately somber ivy, her smile frozen beneath the bloody stamp of Mr. Walker’s fingerprints.

  Hannah Grace Soral. Beloved daughter and stepsister.

  Stepsister. His stepsister? Is that what he thinks? Is that why he looked out for me? Fed me? Called me Darling?

  “I am not Hannah!” The words fire out of me without warning. “I am Sera Khoury.”

  I don’t know if it’s rage or exhaustion or some need to hold on to the truth of my identity, but I see it now. I understand. I am not this girl, and I am not my mother. I’m just Sera, a theater director and a mediocre student and a girl who’s going to survive this hell.

  “I’m not your sister.” I feel better for saying it—lighter maybe because I know it’s over. I will not end here, a bloody heap in this forest like him.

  Mr. Walker moves his head so slowly, chin back and forth. He’s shaking his head, but I look away. I’ve seen enough I don’t want to see.

  It’s time to go back to Lucas.

  “Run!” Mr. Walker cries out. “Before she comes—” A cough. Some awful, stomach-curdling noise in his throat that swallows up half of his next words. I catch all the sticky bits that come between his hacks. “—pushed me down—zipped me in—can’t move my legs—it’s the anniversary, Sera—she thinks you’re Hannah—she thinks Lucas—”

  He cuts off with another soul-shattering hack and something about a deer, I think, but after that, he doesn’t speak again. I’ve already heard enough. I move closer, look at the spattered paper on his stomach.

  She. He said she. Oh God. Was it really Madison? Did we leave her with Jude and Emily? Panic tingles through my limbs.

  “Run, Sera!” he says again, dissolving into a fit of coughing that spatters the paper and the bags with more blood.

  “Who did this?” My voice is nearly as shattered as his. “Who killed Ms. Brighton?”

 
He’s coughing too much to speak, to even breathe well, but he jabs his hands at the paper again and again. Flipping it over at last. The words on the back are hard to read, smeared brown-red and turning my stomach to a bag of worms.

  He gives a groan, and I flinch away, but he’s not reaching for me. He’s holding it out, letting me see. I scan the rest of it, focus on the line he’s jabbing.

  When I read it, the world tilts under my feet. My eyes lock with Mr. Walker’s. He doesn’t have to tell me again to run.

  Chapter 31

  I slip, bashing my elbow, smacking my knees into a jagged rock. Up! Get up!

  I’m on my feet. Climbing. My knees are weak, my muscles like Silly Putty. Like my old dollies that wouldn’t sit up or stay standing. I should not stumble like this. I cannot fall. I can’t.

  I judge wrong in the dark of the crevice, and my foot slips. I reach to catch myself and drop the flare gun. It clatters and bangs all the way down the tunnel, landing somewhere at the bottom. I leave it.

  There’s no time. I move forward again, bracing myself on the walls on either side, though pain slices through my bad palm and up my arm. I bite back my cry. Keep going. Just go.

  I move up, one rock, then another, then the ground goes level, and I am out. Birdsong descends with a soft occasional patter from high above. I tear out from the gap between the stone outcrops, the not-a-bridge, the not-a-canyon, the not-a-path. Out of the cave where a man is dying and the truth took my legs out from underneath me.

  A fat raindrop slaps into my forehead. Another on my arm. They feel like tears and burn like shame. How did we get it so wrong?

  No. Don’t think about that now. Find Lucas. Make sure he’s OK.

  My heart is pounding double time as I search. Trees, trees, the quad. Lucas.

  He’s dozing where I left him, sweat-damp hair over his eyes and those soft lips parted in sleep.

  My heart swells, and there is no time for me to think—not of the things I want or the fact that I can’t understand why I spent sixty-two days avoiding this face or all the kisses we shared in the last two days. But I think of all those things as I cross to him now.