by JA Huss
“Tell me he wasn’t on the set.”
“He’s not on our roster. At least not under this name. But we think he was a guest of someone else in the effects department the night of your premiere. That’s how he got inside the theatre to make that call. We’re going house to house with all the effects people to try and get a confirmation. What’d you guys find out?”
“We’re at the old theatre teacher’s house right now. It’s not looking promising.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean, there’s nothing here but cows. It looks…” I hesitate to say the word. I hate to say the word But it’s the only one that fits. “Dead.”
“Well, this Hauser guy doesn’t own any property in the area anymore. His family died way back and he sold the farm the same year. So I’m not sure where we’d even look for him. Try to get it out of the old man. He’s our best lead right now. Because this guy could be anywhere.”
We hang up and I look over at Felicity. “I guess we go ask this guy.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird,” she says, her eyes never leaving mine, “that we’ve been sitting in this guy’s driveway for ten minutes and no one’s come out to ask us what the hell we’re doing? I mean, this area strikes me as being filled with shoot-first kinda people.”
I stare at her. “You think they’re in there?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. But we don’t even have a gun. Maybe we should call the police?”
Just then my phone buzzes in my pocket.
@MrsInvsman has logged on to Twitter, my third-party app tells me. “Grace!” I say. “That’s Grace!”
Girl @mrsinvsman
@mrinvsman help me help me help me
Oh, fuck. I almost throw up.
“Answer her, V! Quick!” Felicity grabs the phone from my hand and begins to type.
Master @mrinvsman
@mrsinvsman where are you I’m looking for you in Alliance, Nebraska
Girl @mrsinvsman
@mrinvsman I don’t know! I smell cows and I see corn. I can’t get outside! It’s locked. I can’t get outside! He’s not dead!
I snatch the phone from Felicity and start typing.
Chapter Seventy-Eight - Grace
Master @mrinvsman
@mrsinvsman kill him! Now. Kill him and break a window
I’m barely done reading the message when I hear a groan behind me. I whirl around and he’s already on his feet. I reach for the nearest object but I’m not fast enough. He lunges for my legs and tackles me to the floor.
“No!” I scream. I’m so fucking close! I kick and squirm, but he drapes his heavy body over mine and I’m helpless. He’s too big. He’s too heavy. I’m too weak, and tired.
I’m caught.
Again.
Chapter Seventy-Nine - Vaughn
“GODDAMN“ it! She’s gone! She’s logged off!”
“We should check the house, V. Maybe she’s in there? Maybe she’s right in there?”
We both get out of the car and slam our doors closed, running to the front door as quick as we can.
We have no weapons. We might be walking into something we won’t be able to walk out of. But in moments like this, I work on instinct.
I hear the knocking before I realize that’s what I’m doing.
Chapter Eighty - Grace
A CAR door slams outside and both of us go still. I am just about to scream for help when his bloodied hand wraps around my face so tight, it cuts off my mouth and nose at the same time. I flail my arms as I try to find a breath, but it’s no use. He’s smothering me.
A few seconds later there’s a knock at the door.
Chapter Eighty-One - Vaughn
WE wait. We place our ears up against the door and listen. We shuffle our feet and knock again and again and again. But no one comes.
“Let’s break in.”
“Felicity, if this isn’t the place, we’ll go to jail. We’re not breaking in.”
“And if this is the place and Grace is being murdered right now because we’re standing out here on the doorstep like idiots?”
She breaks the window next to the front door and reaches inside to unlock the latch. I twist the handle as soon as I hear the click and slowly open the door.
Chapter Eighty-Two - Grace
THE door unlocks as we lie on the floor, him panting, me smothering. Both of us bleeding.
The door opens with a creak.
“Derek?”
My captor relaxes for a moment and I twist my body. His hand slips off my mouth and I gasp for air. My chest fills up, the burning in my lungs almost taking my mind off my dizziness.
And then hands are pulling me to my feet.
“Jesus! Derek! You’ve got blood everywhere!”
I stare at the old man in the doorway. He’s got long, greasy gray hair and soiled jeans. His boots are covered in mud and his shirt is stained with food. He smells.
I recoil with too much momentum and when Derek lets me go, I crash to the floor once more.
This time I stay down. I can’t see right. My vision is suddenly black and blurry and I feel like I’m going to faint.
“She tried to escape,” Derek says to the old man as he walks forward to meet him. “She stabbed me in the fucking face with a piece of glass!”
“I told you, son, children and grown women are not the same thing. You waited too long. She’s never going to be what you want her to be.”
“I don’t want to kill her. I want to keep her. You said I could keep her.”
Derek sounds more like a child than a kidnapper right now and I force myself to take deep breaths, hoping the dizziness will subside. These men are discussing my life. They are discussing whether or not they will kill me.
I know Vaughn got that message. I know he’s in Nebraska and I think that’s where I am right now. But I’m not sure. I’m on a farm, but it could be any farm. Farms are everywhere.
“She needs to go, son. People are looking for her.”
My eyes dart up but when I find the old man’s face, I immediately cast them downward again.
Those eyes tell me the decision has been made.
“I just got a call from Brenda over at the extension office. She said some out-of-towners were on their way over to my place. I came over right away to help you get rid of her.”
“I don’t want to get rid of her, goddammit! I told you, I want to keep her!”
“Now listen, boy—”
“I’m not your fucking boy anymore!” Derek pushes the old man hard enough to send him backwards. The old man’s arms flail and then he trips over the rug and goes down.
A gunshot blasts through the room and I have to cover my ears to stop the ringing.
Chapter Eighty-Three - Vaughn
“WAS that a gunshot?” Felicity and I stand still, our heads tilted as we strain to hear. Another pop comes from outside and we bolt through the door of the house and stop on the porch.
Another shot.
“That way!” Felicity says, pointing across the field. She takes off running but I grab her arm and point down to the muddy driveway. “Look. Tracks. And boot prints.”
The foot prints end near four deep depressions. Tires.
“He left in a car. Come on, we follow the tracks and I bet we’ll find out where those gunshots are coming from.”
We scramble back inside the car and I start the engine. “Hurry!” Felicity says. “The shooting is still going on! He could be killing her right now!”
Chapter Eighty-Four - Grace
I’M crab-walking again, only this time I’m not the one being hunted. I’m just trying to get away from crazy Derek with the gun.
The old man is dead. His brains have been splashed all over the front door. I get to my feet, stumble, and then bolt for the kitchen. I grab the biggest knife out of the block and wield it like a woman who is about to be raped or murdered or both. “Don’t come near me.”
He aims the gun at my head.
“I�
�m warning you.”
“Bang, bang, little flower. I have a gun, Daisy. Now put the knife down and be a good girl and get back in your closet.”
“Fuck you!” I slash out at him, missing by feet, but it makes me feel like I’m putting up a fight. I know I can’t win, but I can put up a fight.
I dart around the kitchen island and another shot goes off. This time it shatters the granite countertop and sharp slivers of stone shrapnel make their way into my skin.
I feel nothing. Nothing but fear. I duck and crawl, desperately trying to find a way to save my life.
“Daisy,” Derek says from the other side of the island. “If you give up and be good, I’ll only wound you.”
Oh, fuck!
“If you run, I’ll shoot you in the back on your way out the door.”
I glance over at the door. It’s open from when the old man came in.
“Now be good, child. I’m going to come around the island and take you back to your closet. We can settle up your punishment tomorrow—”
I see his feet under the cupboards, making their way towards me, one step at a time.
“—and I won’t hurt you at all tonight. How’s that?”
Another step. I glance at the door again. Can I make it?
Probably not, but I have to try. This time I will not let this asshole corrupt my mind and hold me prisoner. I refuse to give him permission to keep me as his prisoner. I refuse to live through it. I refuse. I’d rather die escaping with a bullet in my back than live this life again.
Another step and I raise my knife.
“Dai-sy,” he calls out in a sing-song voice. “I’m coming to get you…”
He takes that final step and I thrust the knife through his shoe with all my strength. I feel it stick in the floor boards and then I run.
A shot goes off and I duck, but it misses me. I leap over the dead man’s body and fly through the door. I slip on a wet patch on the porch and slide, but another shot goes off and somehow, some way, my body recovers. My heart is beating so fast as I jump down the porch steps I think I might have a heart attack.
I race for the cornfield and my hands part the tall stalks as I enter.
He can’t shoot me in here. He can’t shoot me in here. He can’t shoot me in here.
A shot rings out behind me and I run fast.
He can shoot me in here. He might not be able to see me, but that bullet will find my body if he points it in the right direction.
I zig-zag. I go left for a few rows, then right, then left again. I’m a lot smaller than him, and the corn is tall and thick, almost ready for harvest. So he can’t see me.
But I can’t see him either.
“I know this cornfield, flower,” he calls out. “I know where you’re go-ing…” That sing-song voice will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Oh, God! Please don’t know where I’m going. I don’t even know where I’m going.
But a few seconds later I see what he meant. I stop at the edge of the cornfield, my bare feet covered in soil.
It’s an opening. A very large opening. Why the fuck is there an opening in the middle of a fucking cornfield?
I want to scream it, but of course I can’t, because psycho kidnapper is right behind me.
“I know you’ve stopped running, flower. I know right where you are. I’ve been watching the corn as you ran. I told you. You can’t get away.”
My breathing becomes so loud I’m afraid it will lead him right to me.
“Stay put now,” he calls out, a lot closer than he was before.
I only have one chance. I have to cross the clearing.
I bolt for the other side, but the gunshot rings out as soon as I step into the opening. My leg is on fire and I stumble. He fucking shot me!
I fall face first next to a pipe coming out of the ground. My hands grasp for something—grass, soil, something—to hold on to as the pain rockets up my thigh. My heart is so jacked up I can’t breathe. Please, God, I pray. Do not let me have a panic attack right now. Please! My hand grasps nothing but soil and my arms both reach around the pipe for something to keep hold of. It’s wet here. A puddle of water is pooled up against the pipe and I realize what this clearing is.
An irrigation well.
My arms collapse as the corn parts on the other side of the circle with a crackle of dry husks. He comes out into the area bare of crops and my hand rests on a large steel tool.
A plumber’s wrench. A weapon.
If he’s gonna take me down, I’m bringing him with me.
I wait. I lie very still. Play dead. And wait.
And when he finally stumbles up to me, I take my last chance. My body twists. I grab that heavy wrench with both hands, and I hurl it. Straight at his face.
Time slows down for me as I watch. My vision is blurred with blood. My hands are sticky with it. The fertile ground beneath me is stained crimson with it. I should not be able to hurl a plumber’s wrench with such force, but there it is.
My miracle.
My win.
It smashes against his forehead before he can block it with his forearm and then stumbles backwards, still so very, very slowly. His eyes widen for a moment, and then they roll back in his head as he crashes to the ground.
I put the pain away somewhere else and force myself to get up.
I see only one thing. The gun.
I grab it and shoot. His head splatters into a bazillion pieces.
I shoot again, this time in his chest. Large pools of blood bubble up, but it’s not enough. I shoot again, and again, and again.
And then there’s someone else in the clearing with me. And I shoot him too.
Chapter Eighty-Five - Vaughn
SHE points the gun at me and pulls the trigger.
Click, click, click. Over and over again, she pulls the trigger.
The magazine is empty.
“Vaughn,” she screams, dropping the gun. “Vaughn,” she wails, dropping to her knees where blood is pooling. She presses her head into the soil and sobs.
“Grace!” I cover the distance between us in seconds. I kneel next to her and pull her up off the ground. “You’re OK now. It’s OK.” Felicity talks on her phone, trying to tell the FBI where we are. “I’ve got you, Grace.”
Grace shakes. Her body trembles in my arms and I press my lips to her head. Her blood soaks us both now. “We need a fucking ambulance!”
Felicity is still talking on her phone.
I rock Grace in my arms. “Shhh,” I say to quiet her sobs. “It’s over now. He’s dead.”
“I shot you.”
“No, the gun was empty. You didn’t shoot me.”
“But I would’ve!” Her words come out hitched from her crying. “I would’ve killed you.”
“It doesn’t count, Grace. You didn’t. So it doesn’t count. Now be still so you don’t lose any more blood.”
I sit back on the ground and just hold her. The sobs ebb and then her breathing slows. “Grace?” I ask, trying to figure out if she’s losing consciousness or calming down.
“I’m pregnant.”
I’m stunned. “What?”
But when I tip her head up to get more information, she really is unconscious.
A few minutes later I hear the wail of an ambulance. I don’t know how we will get her to the driveway, but then the ambulance drives straight through the corn on what appears to be a narrow access road.
From there life becomes blurred.
They remove her from my arms and carry her away.
“I’m her husband,” I tell them when they try to prevent me from entering the ambulance with her. Those are the magic words for the next several hours. Whenever they throw up a roadblock, I say “I’m her husband,” and it gets me past the waiting room after she’s been treated. It gets me a one-on-one update on her bullet wound—which is bloody and grazed her femur, requiring surgery and stiches—but more importantly, it gets me answers about the pregnancy.
The test is
positive, but the ultrasound conducted on her sedated body says something different.
I don’t know how I will tell her. I have no idea how I’ll tell her.
There will be no baby.
Chapter Eighty-Six - Grace
#NotInTheMoodToHashtag
“HOW are you doing today, Grace?” the doctor asks me as she walks into my room, closes the door, and takes a seat. This is the third time today she’s been in here. Vaughn said they need me to say something before they let me leave, but I’m not a prisoner. I’m wheeling myself out of this place in twenty minutes no matter what. “Do you want to talk about it yet?”
I ignore her. No one—and I do mean no one—is getting into my head. Not this shrink. Not Bebe. Not Kristi. Not Vaughn. All of whom have come to see me since I was transferred to Denver for surgery on my leg. In fact, I think Vaughn is living here in the waiting room. I can’t see him right now. I can’t. I’m just too upset. He told me that the pregnancy test came back positive but the ultrasound showed an empty sac.
I wasn’t pregnant. Or maybe I was, but it never developed. Either way, I’m not pregnant now.
And that just… I don’t know. Makes me so fucking sad.
They keep asking me about Derek, that’s what this lady wants me to talk about, but who gives a shit about that guy? He had me less than a day. I got myself out. I killed him. It’s over. End of story.
I just want to go home.
“Grace?” Vaughn asks, peeking from the doorway. “Just say no if you don’t want to talk about it.”
But no feels like a trick. If I say no, the next question will be, why?
“Just say fuck off, Asher. I’m sure every nurse in this place wants to say that to me right now. Did you know,” he says, coming fully into the room now, “that I personally talked to the guy they call a chef down in the cafeteria and had him make you those special chicken nuggets last night?”