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by Jordan, Drew

  I was getting impatient with Harry. Tired of playing his polite game. He wanted to trap me in some kind of lie but for what purpose? He wanted to pin the stranger as a kidnapper? None of this made sense and Harry needed to learn to mind his own fucking business unless there was a crime.

  My smile came back. Oh, right. There was. The very worst kind of crime, in fact. It was a panicked, hysterical kind of smile that smeared my face and I felt so much pain inside I wished I had a knife, so I could slice my skin open and release all that pressure.

  “Calling Michael sounds like a fine idea.” Harry leaned forward, his voice lowering. I could hear Gene, the skinny cop, talking to the stranger about the weather. “Unless for some reason you don’t think Cody will let you go see your friend.”

  I stared at him, trying to look confused. “What do you mean?”

  “He seems very protective of you.”

  It was obvious Harry the cop was trying to get me to admit I was being held captive. But my submissiveness was none of his concern. “I’m not an outdoorsy kind of girl. He needs to be.” I sat on my fingers to get them to stop trembling. “I fell in the river, but you know that already.”

  “True, true.”

  The urge to stand up, to get away from him, was almost overwhelming. I felt like I was vibrating with the need to flee, to go back to the safety of the cabin and the stranger’s arms. But I couldn’t run away from my problems. I was done running. That was my mission here, in Alaska. To get strong. To come into my true self. So I sat still even when I wanted to squirm and stand up and bolt.

  Harry reached behind his desk, leaning so that his double chin was almost resting on the metal surface. He was rummaging around on the floor. “There’s an investigation, of course, into the plane crash, but I got your personal effects released.” He sat back and held up my carry on bag. The fabric was dirty but it looked intact, still zipped.

  “Oh, wow,” I said, genuinely pleased. “I thought that was long gone.”

  I had packed it with comfort in mind, in case my luggage was lost. I had put a pair of sneakers in there, pajamas, three pairs of panties, a bag of toiletries, a soft tank top. Two novels. Some chocolates and a mini bottle of wine. There might be a couple of other random things, but I couldn’t remember what. I wasn’t sure I cared about the clothes, but the books and the wine, that would be nice. Creature comforts. Reminders of a life where I had free time and money to spend however I chose, as long as it wasn’t more than fifty dollars. Retail didn’t pay well.

  Harry plopped the bag on the desk. “All yours.”

  “Thank you.” I tugged the bag toward me. It tumbled into my lap, heavier than I expected. I wondered if Harry had gone through it. Or Devin. If they had put my panties to their nose, or rubbed them against the front of their work slacks. Harry would be the garden variety pervert-he would jack off holding my panties in his fist. Devin looked like he would take it further. The product of the first generation with access to free porn online. He’d put my panties on, or use them as a cock ring.

  I could feel the heavy testosterone in the room and I was aware, not for the first time, how isolating being a woman in Alaska could be. It took a certain amount of cunning to live in the bush, among the socially inept and believers in ultimate independence. Being a woman, a young woman, could feel like prey here. I was hunted by Devin’s eyes, by Harry’s questions, by the stranger’s dark needs.

  For the first time in a while, I momentarily wanted to return to the safety of Seattle.

  “I guess you didn’t find my regular suitcase,” I said to Harry. “I think it was stowed in the cargo area or whatever it’s called.”

  He shook his head. “No suitcase. If it was underneath it got crushed.” He gave me a look I couldn’t quite decipher. “I’ll be honest with you, young lady. I don’t understand how you’re alive. I walked that wreckage. The impact should have killed you. Seems you have an angel watching over you.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I knew that I was lucky to have survived, but to hear it said out loud that I should have died, was unsettling. And if I had an angel looking out for me, she must regret her decision to let me live.

  There it was-the guilt. It crashed over me like a tsunami, a pounding wave of disgust and remorse and horror that I was so selfish, so greedy. My palms started to sweat, my breathing going shallow, quick uneven gasps.

  Cody’s hand rested lightly on my shoulder. I turned to look up at him, needing his strength, his reassurance.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, giving me a smile.

  “Yes.” I struggled to stand up, trying to put the bag strap over my shoulder.

  “Here, I’ve got that.” He took it from me, lifting the weight from me.

  For a second I thought he was going to kiss me but he stopped himself. I tried to see what was in his eyes but he had the mask in place. Not the feral cold mask he had in the cabin when he was displeased, or the intensity of his first stare when I’d opened my eyes in that plane wreck. But the mask where he managed to slide someone else entirely over his face. Like as if he took a mild-mannered dog trainer and just dropped his entire persona over the top of him, hiding himself from view. Like me. Like Laney of the floral dresses and the retail shop job. Like the Laney who wore beanies and walked around with a crocheted purse in lavender.

  When I looked at him, I saw me, and I was steadied, comforted.

  So I smiled at him. He smiled back.

  And we looked normal. We looked fucking normal. Like two ordinary people whose lives had been a series of mild successes and small bumps. Who were neither unattractive nor supermodel material. Not rich. Not poor. Ordinary, everyday people who drift through the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks. The years.

  No one knows what lurks behind the face of each person they encounter. How many times do we walk past someone, glance, see nothing of interest, and keep on moving, like suitcases on the conveyor belt at the airport, some stuffed to the gills, some beat to hell, some tidy and shiny and designer.

  All still baggage.

  “We’re going to go into the diner,” he told me in a low voice after we had stepped out of the police station. “You can charge your phone, then you need to call Michael and leave him a voice mail.”

  “Okay.” The thought made my stomach tighten, though that was stupid. But turning on my phone also upset me. I had a feeling there were going to be texts and voice messages I didn’t want to hear.

  While I had been tucked away from modern communication, life in Seattle had gone on without me, and I knew that even though it wasn’t my fault, I had caused anxiety for people. I also knew that I’d had a brief window of about five minutes to send a text to someone, anyone, to let them know I was okay, the last time the stranger and I had come to town and I hadn’t, and now I was going to have to see and hear anguish over my disappearance. Anguish I could have prevented in those stolen minutes in the diner restroom when I had been alone and my phone might have had a connection.

  I didn’t recognize the waitress. This one was younger than the previous waitress. She wasn’t friendly and she wasn’t fast moving. Overweight by about a hundred pounds, she gave me a dirty look that I recognized. She was instantly annoyed, viewing me as competition since we were about the same age. I gave her a smile anyway.

  “Is there an outlet where I can charge my phone?” I asked.

  She gestured to the right wall. “There’s one somewhere over there, but you have to order something. You can’t just sit here.”

  “I’ll take a coffee.” I turned to the stranger. “Cody, are we eating lunch here?”

  He pulled his knit hat off of his head and shook out his hair and beard. “Sure.” He looked over at the waitress and stared at her intently. “Is that okay with you?”

  Her full cheeks flushed. “Well, of course. I wasn’t saying you couldn’t.” The skin of her chest bloomed with a splotchy red, and her cleavage jiggled as she leaned over to nervously adjust the salt and pepper sha
ker on a table.

  I didn’t blame her for feeling scrutinized by him. He had that effect on women, or at least on me. I moved away as he requested a menu, and bent over to plug in my phone, having fished it out of my coat pocket. It had been turned off since our last trip to town, just days before, but a lifetime ago. I watched the battery light up and I waited impatiently, staring at it, for the minute when I could turn it back on. Feeling sick, I stood up quickly, turning away, letting it sit on the table.

  “Aren’t you eating?” he asked me, coming up and putting his hands on my shoulders. He rubbed them before leaning down and kissing the top of my head.

  “My stomach is upset.”

  “Don’t be nervous,” he murmured against my ear. “Let me order you some soup or something.”

  I nodded, even as my stomach rolled over, and bile crawled up my throat. When I wrapped my arms around his middle, he hugged me. A true, full on squeeze. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Then he let me go and I reached back and turned on my phone. The powering on was terminal, and then it searched and searched for a connection. But once it found one, my phone buzzed and buzzed and buzzed, as the notifications went off fast and furious.

  All those daily communications that I dealt with as they arrived, now flooded my phone all at once, a deluge of minutiae. I didn’t care about the social media. It was the texts and the voicemails I wanted to see. Yet I was afraid and I wasn’t sure why. I sat down, the chair scraping across the concrete floor. The screen lit up so fast that I could only see glimpses, names flying by as they got quickly bumped by a new message. Sammy, my roommate. Sis, my label in my phone for Victoria. That hit me hard. Poor kid. I had never meant for her to have a life as jacked up and lonely as my childhood had been, and yet, somehow that was precisely what had happened to her.

  Guilt. What a vice-like emotion.

  Harrison, my friend from college, had texted several times in a row. Co-workers. Dean couldn’t text, but I imagine he had left me a message.

  Michael. Bam. Like a punch in the gut. I tried to swipe the screen, to see what it said, but the texts weren’t done loading and I ended up with one of Harrison’s instead. I couldn’t even read it because it was some kind of weird confession of love now that I was dead, or so he thought. What the hell?

  Finally it stopped. The notification noise fell silent and I had hundreds of messages waiting for me to read. Only I was afraid. What if no one cared that I had died? What if they said things I wouldn’t want to know? What if Michael was so sweet and concerned that I hated myself with every breath in my body?

  Even if I had contacted Dean or my grandmother in that brief few minutes in the restroom, it wouldn’t have answered anyone’s questions. It wouldn’t have brought them to me, or me to them. It would have given them hope and maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it wasn’t. The Laney they loved wasn’t coming home. But I couldn’t handle my sister-my child’s-pain. Or anger. The anger might be worse. I wasn’t sure. I scanned her messages quickly. At first she was mad, then worried, then mad again, her statements clearly showing her age. I HATE YOU FOR DYING was the worst one.

  The phone fell out of my hand and tears blurred my vision. “Oh, God,” I said out loud, pushing my chair back. I needed to move. To walk, to run, to clench my fists. I felt like I was going to throw up.

  It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault.

  But it was. Everything was my fault. Victoria’s life was my responsibility. Her very existence.

  My mother’s voice rolled around in my head.

  You’re a selfish bitch.

  I’d always thought that was her. That it was ironic that she pushed that off on me, when it was her, always her.

  But she was right. I was a selfish bitch.

  “What’s the matter?” the stranger asked, turning around, a menu in his hand. He came to me, gripping my arm.

  “I feel like I’m going to be sick. Like I’m going to puke.”

  “Laney,” he asked, frowning. “When was the last time you had your period? You haven’t had one since you got here.”

  “Wha—

  I cut myself off. I knew what he meant. I knew what he meant and I knew that there wasn’t any worse possible second to contemplate that possibility than this one. I felt the room start to spin, and I swallowed hard, fighting off the nausea. I reached for the front of his jacket, needing something to hold onto.

  “What’s wrong with her?” the waitress asked, sounding disgusted. “If she’s going to yack, she needs to go outside.”

  “She’s not going to throw up,” he said, his voice cold. He cupped my cheeks, his rough fingers scraping across my flushed skin. “It’s okay, Laney. You’re okay.”

  But I wasn’t. Because right then the door to the diner flew open hard and I saw Harry Robertson standing in the doorway, looking somber.

  “Ms. Turner, I need to speak to you. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  And I knew.

  They’d found the body.

  And all my brushes with death? I would have welcomed their triumph right then because I was going to go to prison for the rest of my natural life.

  “What is it?” the stranger asked Harry, shielding me against his chest.

  But I didn’t want to hide. I couldn’t hide. I pulled back, away from him, peering around his arm. The diner wasn’t big. It wasn’t hard to see or hear Harry. It wasn’t crowded either. We were the only people in there besides the waitress. “Yes?” I asked.

  Harry moved closer to us. “Have you heard from your friend Michael?”

  “I saw him a few days ago, here in town. But that’s the last time I talked to him. I was actually just about to call him. My phone is charging,” I added, a pointless comment.

  Here it came. We found his body. He’s dead. You killed him. There was a roaring in my ears that was growing louder, and each second drew out in a horrible agonizing suspense. A million thoughts raced through my head, from how I should play it off to if I could hire Dean’s lawyer to the realization that poor Michael’s mother would know that he had befriended crazy little Laney and she had killed him.

  What was taking him so long to speak? Why was he dragging it out, the do-gooder prick?

  “His neighbor gave me a ring because he saw on the news that you’ve been found, Miss Turner. So he got to wondering why Michael hadn’t turned up back at home because he didn’t leave enough gas to run his generator this long and he figured Michael’s pipes are going to burst. He thought maybe he was in town with you, but I told him you weren’t with him. Did Michael mention to you if he was going home or anything?”

  My stomach dropped out of my throat. They didn’t know. Not yet anyway. “He said he was going straight home.” I looked up at the stranger. “Cody, what day was that?”

  “Five days ago.”

  “Huh.” Harry frowned. “That’s got me a fair bit concerned. He’s new to the area. Could have taken a wrong turn. It sounds like he’s missing.”

  “Oh, no, that’s horrible,” I said. “Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to call him now and see if I can get an answer?”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  I pushed off the stranger’s chest and nodded, going for my phone. My concern was oddly genuine. Like Michael really was missing. In a way, he was. I didn’t know where he was lying. It felt surreal, anyway. Like if I imagined hard enough, he was still alive. I scrolled through my phone and found the last text from Michael.

  You should have been here by now. Getting worried.

  I ignored the things that did to my insides and hit “call” and put my phone to my ear. It immediately rolled to voicemail, which meant the battery was dead. That was good when I realized that if it had still been on they would be able to locate his phone by my phone call, right? I wasn’t even sure. I knew that was how people fucked themselves in crimes. They let their phones ping off towers they shouldn’t have been able to based on where they were allegedly at during the
crime. But did it matter if the phone was off?

  “This is Michael. Leave me a message, thanks.”

  “Hi, Michael, it’s Laney. The policeman here in town, Harry, he says your neighbor noticed you haven’t come home yet. That has me really worried because you should have been there days ago. Please call me or text me and let me know you’re all right. Thanks, talk to you soon. Bye.”

  I shook my head at Harry. “Obviously he didn’t pick up. He’s okay, though, right? He just went somewhere else?”

  “I don’t know. Not sure where else he could go.” Harry gave a dry cough, covering it up with his hand. “Are there any friends of his in the area you can put me in touch with?”

  I tried to think of someone, anyone, the wheels in my head churning as slowly as the stranger’s fish wheel in the river, heavy and squeaking. “Um, I don’t know. He never really mentioned anyone other than a guy named Pete who was helping him build his cabin. He met him in Fort Yukon through an ad he placed for a handyman.” I’d remembered something that would at least send Harry in a direction that had nothing to do with me. “God, this is just nerve wracking.”

  “Maybe he just decided the bush isn’t for him or he’s off on a bender in Fairbanks.” Harry gave me a pointed look. “Maybe he was carrying a torch for you and he found you all snuggled up there with Cody. That could hit a man hard.”

  I gasped. “Do you think he would hurt himself?” It seemed a good seed to plant. In a weird way, I started to believe the unfolding of my own story. Maybe he had hurt himself. Maybe he’d driven off, upset, shocked to find me with the stranger, and he had driven too fast into the woods, hit a tree…

  What the hell was I thinking? Of course he hadn’t hurt himself. I’d hurt him. My thoughts were running crazy.

  “You tell me. Is that his personality? Is he prone to depression?”

  Definitely that wasn’t Michael. “No. Not at all.”

  “What about a search party? I’m happy to help you,” Cody said. “I’ve got my dogs too. It’s easier to cover ground with them while searching than a snow machine. I can see more.”