by Sara Shepard
Freya snorted. “It’s not going to do any good.”
Seneca’s gaze lingered on the tent. “Are you sleeping here?”
Freya shrugged and avoided eye contact. “Maybe.”
“What’s wrong with home?”
She sniffed. “It’s none of your business.” And with that, she crawled into her tent and zipped up the flap. Fast, angry punk rock blasted through some speakers, though she stuck her head out once more and looked at Seneca. “Sorry about your mom or whatever.”
On the walk back to the car, Maddox stepped in a puddle that soaked his shoes through. “She reminds me of Aerin when we first met her,” Seneca said after a while. “Remember how combative she was? How closed-off? I’m surprised she wasn’t sleeping in a tent in the woods.”
“And what about Sadie Sage, huh?” Madison whispered. “Luring kids to Orlando? No records beyond three years ago? She obviously changed her identity. But why?”
“She’s the female version of Brett,” Seneca murmured as she climbed into the passenger seat. “She slips in and out of the public eye. She’s a zillion steps ahead of everyone else. She has an endgame…but we don’t know what it is. Just like we don’t know what Brett’s is.”
Madison’s eyes popped wide. “What if she’s Brett’s sister? Viola?”
Maddox twisted his mouth. “In the stories about her, it says people estimated her to be in her mid-forties when she took off with Damien. Not that we know exactly how old Brett is, but he doesn’t look much older than twenty-five—that puts them twenty years apart.”
“Let’s not rule it out completely,” Seneca said, looking disarmed…but also excited. “I never even thought of that, Madison.”
“Well, whoever it is, we need to find her,” Maddox said, feeling his stomach twist. “Because for all we know, this endgame—with Aerin—it’s going to happen soon.”
AERIN SLEPT FITFULLY through the night, and in the morning, everything hurt: her stomach, her back, her eyeballs. She was dying for a Tylenol, but she didn’t want to ingratiate herself to Brett and ask. In the wee hours before dawn, she lay on the bed, her wrists and ankles zip-tied, her eyes wide open in panic. She forced her brain to think about anything besides if she’d ever make it out of here alive.
She thought about kissing Thomas until the daydreaming became too painful. She thought about food because she had refused to eat anything Brett had given her—she’d rather die by starvation than let that asshole have the pleasure of killing her. She thought about her mom going through her daily routine: getting ready to pop in on the Scoops ice cream franchises to make sure everything was running smoothly. Going to yoga at Dexby Bikram. Making a Blue Apron meal for dinner. How could her mom not know she was imprisoned with a madman? Wasn’t there some sort of ESP mom alarm that went off when your kid was in danger? Had Helena thought the same thing just before Brett killed her?
The only thing that calmed Aerin was a hallucination of Helena shortly before the sun came up. When she looked toward the door, she swore she saw Helena’s flickering, ethereal figure, her blond hair cropped close, the white coat with the fur collar she’d worn the last day Aerin ever saw her zipped to her throat, a soothing smile on her face. Her sister walked toward her, eerily translucent, regally calm. It’s going to be okay, she said. I promise. You just need to find your way out.
How? Aerin asked. But then Helena had popped like a soap bubble.
As the light filtered in, she started to investigate the space some more. There was a bureau against the far wall—could she tip it, somehow, and smash through the room’s only window? But she probably wasn’t strong enough, and she’d need use of both hands. The only time Brett let her out of the zip ties was when she needed to use the bathroom…and then he remained close, hovering like a prison guard.
She slithered off the bed, wriggled to the window, and lifted the heavy curtain. The glass was boarded up—so there was no getting out that way. Aerin pressed her ear to the window and listened for clues, footsteps, a train horn, anything that might give away where they were. Out of nowhere, there was a rumbling. She froze. It was a construction truck of some sort. It beeped to back up. Stopped, then beeped again.
That noise wasn’t going to get her out of here, though. Aerin struggled back to the bed and flopped onto the mattress, exhausted. So maybe the bathroom was the answer—Brett let her close the door while she used it, and there was a tiny window near the ceiling that let in light and fresh air. Was there something Aerin could use to stand on to reach the window and climb out?
Suddenly, the door swung open. Aerin’s body filled with dread.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead.” Plates clinked as Brett set them on the nightstand. “Made you an egg sandwich. It’s just as yummy as that one we got from the food cart after that party in New York. Remember how awful you felt?”
Aerin pressed her head into her sweaty pillow, feeling a twinge of discomfort. Hungover after that party Brett had thrown at the Ritz-Carlton, she’d devoured the egg sandwich in practically one bite. Still. Don’t pretend like you know me, she thought angrily.
But Brett was still talking. “Everyone was wrecked that morning.” He chuckled lightly. “But I’ll always remember that party. It was the best night of my life.”
Aerin turned away. She knew where he was going. They’d almost kissed that night. He was trying to remind her.
The mattress springs squeaked as Brett sat down next to her. He undid her bound wrists and ankles, his fingers lingering on her skin. “Everything okay?”
His hand grazed her calf. An oily sensation spilled through her, and she felt her stomach contract. She didn’t dare move, though. Reacting meant his touch affected her. She wanted him to understand that she felt nothing for him.
“I get it. You don’t have to talk.” Brett pulled his fingers away and leaned back. “But listen. If you eat, I’ll tell you about my conversation with Seneca yesterday.”
Aerin held her breath. Good. Seneca knew. That buoyed her spirits. Only, why was Brett communicating with Seneca directly? That seemed foolish on his part.
But no. She wouldn’t ask. She wouldn’t play by his rules.
“I mean, don’t get your hopes up,” Brett went on in a teasing voice. “Seneca knows we’re together, but I told her that if she goes to the cops, she’ll regret it.”
Aerin’s nose twitched. Don’t move. He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.
Then he patted the mattress. “By the way, is this comfy enough? I bought it special for you—a Serta pillow top. It’s the same model your sister died on.”
It felt like he’d stabbed a fireplace poker clean though her body. Unwittingly, Aerin’s head shot up, and she stared at him, eyes wide. He held her gaze, amused. Her heart was beating in her throat. This guy could kill her so easily. He knew everything about her. He knew her weaknesses, her tells. What she needed to do, then, was be anything other than that girl, someone he wouldn’t understand. But that was easier said than done.
The smell of almond butter was making Aerin woozy. She sat up, all at once wanting to get started on her escape plan immediately. “I want to take a shower.”
Brett’s eyes narrowed. “All of a sudden you want to take a shower?”
“Yes.”
He looked her up and down. “You’re clean enough. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you last took one.”
A half smile shimmered onto his face, and Aerin felt an uneasy frisson. Maybe Brett was bluffing, or maybe he really did know the exact moment she’d taken a shower yesterday. It knocked her off her game, and it took everything inside her not to back down.
“I. Want. To. Take. A. Shower,” she repeated.
“Fine.” Brett held his hands up in surrender. “You have ten minutes.”
Aerin dashed through the bathroom door and shut it tight. To her chagrin, the door didn’t lock. She looked around for a surveillance camera but didn’t see one.
She turned on the shower to drow
n out the sounds of her movements, then peered at the little window near the ceiling. It seemed to open by pressing up a small, metal handle in the casing. Using the toilet plunger, she poked at the lever until it creaked open an inch, filling her with joy. If she got up there, she could press it open farther and crawl out.
But how could she climb high enough? As the room filled with steam, Aerin opened the cabinet under the sink. The only items were bathroom spray and a package of toilet paper. Aerin pulled out the toilet paper, placed it on the ground next to the wall, then tried to stand on it, but it didn’t support her weight or get her nearly high enough to reach the window.
Shit. Shit. Aerin grasped the sides of the sink and stared at her panicked reflection in the mirror. Then something on the counter caught her eye. It was a short brown hair. Definitely not hers—so, Brett’s?
She stared at the hair for a moment, knowing it might be useful, somehow. Then she opened one drawer, and another, looking for some way to store it away. Finally, in the bottom drawer, she found a small case for contact lenses. She rinsed and dried it, carefully dropped the single hair inside, and tucked the case into her pocket.
There was a knock on the door. “Ten minutes are up!” Brett called from the other side.
Aerin froze. That was impossible; only three minutes had passed, max. She shoved the toilet paper back into the cabinet just as Brett burst into the room. He seemed confused about the open cabinet and running shower. Then his gaze darted to the little window—it was almost as if he knew what she was up to.
Aerin’s heart sank. “I…” She fumbled for an excuse, but what excuse could she give?
Brett’s eyes narrowed. She could practically feel the fury settling over him. As she moved to turn off the shower, he pounced on her, pushing her to the tiled floor. Aerin let out a yelp, but Brett clapped a hand over her mouth, his fingers squeezing roughly at her throat.
“You really think you’re smarter than me?” Droplets of saliva hit her cheek, mixing with the swirling steam. “You should be bowing down to me, kissing my feet that I’ve been so kind to you, speaking to you nicely, making you food, not killing you yet. Because you think you know me, but you don’t know me.” He pounded hard on the floor, his fist mere inches from her body. “You. Don’t. Know. What. I’m. Capable. Of. For instance, want to know where your lame little boyfriend is right now? The hospital.”
Aerin’s heart stilled. “What? Why?”
“Because I put him there. I can make those kind of things happen. You should know that by now. So you’d better adjust your attitude, or this is going to get pretty rough.”
Aerin pinched her eyes shut. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled. She could smell the bleach on the bathroom tiles. A faint breeze blew in from the open window, cooling her skin.
“What was that?”
“I—I’m sorry!”
Brett yanked her up, dragged her into the bedroom, threw her back on the bed, and bound her wrists and ankles with fresh zip ties. Then he pivoted, knocked the coffee and toast to the dingy floor, and marched out of the room, slamming the door hard.
Aerin collapsed back onto the mattress in a flurry of sobs. Thomas, she thought desperately. What had Brett done to him? Was he going to live? Had Brett hurt him because of her?
Anger flooded her, followed by desperation, followed by a humiliating pang of pain. Her fingers inspected her neck—it already felt tender, and she’d probably have bruises within hours.
But maybe Brett had a point: He hadn’t killed her yet. Maybe she should be grateful about that. She had to find a way to prevent him from doing that for as long as she could—maybe that was the only way she’d find her way out, as Helena had said. Because what just happened? She couldn’t bear it happening again.
Aerin shut her eyes, an answer suddenly occurring to her. It wasn’t an answer she particularly liked, but it might be the only thing that would save her life.
“IT’S THE NEXT left up here.” Seneca gestured to the turnoff that was approaching. Maddox wrenched the Jeep’s steering wheel, its tires careening over pitted road. Up ahead, a squat brown building sat alone in a parking lot. The only thing that indicated they were in the right place was the several police cars parked in the back with faded lettering reading Catskill Police Department printed on the side.
Maddox turned off the ignition, but no one moved to get out of the car. They were huddled around Maddox’s cell phone, talking to Thomas at the hospital. “Don’t check yourself out early,” Seneca said into the speaker. “You haven’t had your MRI yet.”
“But I have to.” Thomas’s voice sounded thick and sleepy. “I have to help you find Aerin. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“We’re on it, bro,” Madison assured him. “We’re going to find her. Right now, we just need for you to get better.”
They hung up and sat in silence. It had been rough to call Thomas and break the news about all this, but Thomas deserved to know. Seneca still felt a little guilty, though. What kind of panicked, helpless thoughts were rushing through Thomas’s mind? Did he feel afraid? If Brett had tried to hurt him once, he could do it again, especially now that Thomas was vulnerable and weak.
Which meant they needed to find Brett, and fast. And that meant finding Damien, too. Maddox was right—they had no other choice but to follow Brett’s orders. And after talking to Freya, Seneca felt all in. The story about Damien’s disappearance struck a chord, and she now felt for the kid, for his family, and angry at the useless police force who’d dropped the ball. And also, could Sadie be Viola? It was an interesting idea. On the other hand, would Brett point them toward a crime his sister committed? What was his endgame? What sort of bread crumbs was he dropping for them to follow?
Seneca rolled her shoulders back and pushed open the door to the Jeep. Silently, the three of them strode across the gravel to the front door of the police station. The lobby smelled like woodsmoke and looked like the inside of a hunting cabin, with its wood-paneled walls and exposed beams. There was a very old soda machine in the corner, buzzing away. A small table fan blew at an empty chair at the front desk.
“Hello?” Seneca called out.
A door to the back creaked open. A large woman in a T-shirt printed with two vicious-looking wolves ambled out, intently studying something on her phone. She held a two-liter bottle of Coke tucked under her other armpit and was humming what sounded like Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” When she looked up and saw them, she jumped, then frowned. “Yes?”
Maddox stepped forward nervously. “Yes, hi. My name’s Thomas Grove, and I’m from the Dexby, Connecticut, police department and have some family in the area. I was wondering if I could talk to the officer on duty?”
“I’m the officer on duty.” The woman turned around a placard on the desk Seneca hadn’t noticed and tapped it with a long fingernail. It read Officer Lorna Gregg.
“Oh, great,” Maddox said, not missing a beat. “Any way I can access the records on the Damien Dover case? Interviews, any forensics, things like that?”
Officer Gregg twisted off the cap to the Coke bottle. It made a creepy hiss. “Can I see some credentials? You don’t look like a cop. You look like a kid.”
Maddox blushed. He made a show of riffling in his pockets for a badge. “If you call the station in Dexby, they can vouch for me, I swear….”
“Just stop,” Officer Gregg snapped icily. All signs of friendliness were gone. “You know it’s a crime to impersonate an officer, right?”
Maddox stopped riffling through his pockets. Seneca swallowed hard. “We’re really just trying to help,” she jumped in. “Can you at least tell us where Sadie Sage lived?” The only thing they’d been able to find online was that Sadie Sage rented a property in Catskill. They’d called every rental agent in the area, but no one copped to being Sadie Sage’s landlord. Only a fellow music teacher, Dahlia Quinn, gave them a hint: Sadie was always talking about how wherever she lived was “all her own”—sh
e was the first person who’d ever rented it. Meaning she could put her mark on the place, the teacher surmised. But was it a brand-new place? Or undesirable, somehow?
The officer shook her head. “I can’t give out those kind of details to the public. It’s still an open investigation.”
Seneca felt annoyance rising inside her. “Open investigation? We heard you let the case drop. I would think you’d want all the help you can get.”
Officer Gregg shot her an annoyed look, then started busily flipping through some papers on her desk. “I’d advise you kids get out of town. And you”—she glowered at Maddox—“don’t ever pretend you’re an officer again. You’re lucky I didn’t put you in cuffs.”
Maddox mumbled something under his breath and turned to leave, but Seneca stayed put. She wasn’t done with this lady yet. “Why aren’t you working harder to find Damien? Why are you in your office, swigging Coke, too lazy to even put on a uniform?”
Officer Gregg’s eyes flashed. “Seneca,” Maddox whispered warningly.
But now that Seneca had gotten started, she couldn’t stop. Damien deserved a better investigation. The whole family did. And yes, okay, maybe she was conflating this situation with her own family’s experience—how the police didn’t do much to find her mother’s killer, either—but justice was justice. “What other crimes do you have to worry about up here?” She gestured to the mountains out the window. “Why didn’t you call in reinforcements from other towns? Why didn’t you have fund-raisers and bump this up to a national story? It was barely a blip on a website—and it’s a missing boy. Someone’s child. A family’s life is ruined.”
Maddox’s nails dug into her arm. Okay, maybe she was becoming overwrought—but this cop needed to understand.