by Hannah Jayne
Her heart gave a panicked double thump.
Heat pricked out along her spine.
Footprints.
Standing at the back of her tub, a pair of dirty boot prints. Someone had been in her house. Someone had been in her shower.
Forty-Two
“Oh my God!”
“Addie? Honey? Are you okay?”
Addie heard the front door creak open and swing shut. She heard the lock drop as she thundered down the stairs, towel wrapped around her chest. “There was someone in my shower.”
“What? Addison—”
“Dad, I’m serious. We have to get out of here. We have to call Maya’s parents. Whoever set the fire probably followed me home, Dad, he—”
“Addie, wait.” Morton Gaines pushed Addie behind him. “Your upstairs shower?”
“Yes, Dad, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to go check.”
“Dad, no!”
A sob caught in Addie’s throat. Tears lined up on her lower lashes. Addie’s father turned to face her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve been through a really traumatic couple of weeks, honey. You’re just jumpy.”
Anger curled over the fear in Addie’s gut. “Jumpy? Dad, I know what I saw. I’ll show you.”
She followed her father up the stairs and into her bedroom. The faucet was still on full bore, steam filling the bathroom. Addie yanked back the shower curtain, pointing. “See? There!”
Morton Gaines leaned over and turned off the water, eyes sweeping across the pristine white porcelain. “There’s nothing there, hon.”
Addie blinked, searching the tub.
“I know what I saw. They were right there! Two boot prints. Big ones. They were right there.”
“Honey, there’s nothing there. Look, why don’t you take the medication and lay down? The doctor said it will help you relax—”
“The steam! The steam and the water! They’re gone because of the steam, but they were there, I promise you! I promise, Dad, you’ve got to believe me.”
Mr. Gaines stood up and gathered Addie in a hug, kissing her forehead. He pulled her robe from the back of the bathroom door and draped it over her shoulders, then filled a glass with water. He poured a single pill from the little orange container into the palm of his hand and held it out with Addie.
“This will help you calm down.”
Addie sniffed, salt tears rolling over her cheeks. “I’m not crazy.”
“I know you’re not, sweetie. You’re just tired. It’s been a long day.”
Addie shook her head. “You’re never around, Dad. You don’t understand. You don’t know what’s been going on.”
Morton Gaines’s eyes went to the pill in the palm of his hand, his other hand holding the water out to his daughter. “You’ll feel better, okay? You’ll sleep tonight and tomorrow we can figure this whole thing out. I’m just going to go in for a few hours and get my stuff, then I’ll work from home the rest of the week. Louisa—”
Addie stamped her bare foot. “No! Not Louisa! I’m tired of being your second thought, Dad. Someone tried to kill me tonight! Someone has been harassing me for weeks!”
Her father didn’t say anything, his hazel eyes clear and wide. “You just need to rest, Addie.”
Addie swallowed the pill and shut the door on her father, shrugging into a nightshirt and sliding into bed. She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to dream. Her eyes closed just as she saw her curtains flutter against her open window. The air sucked them in and out, in and out. If Addie hadn’t been so tired, so would have realized that someone had removed the screen from her window.
***
Addie slept like the dead, waking up past eleven the following morning. There were four messages on her phone. She thumbed through the first three—Maya, checking in; Louisa, saying she was on her way; her father, saying he would be home by two. There was another one from Louisa, but Addie didn’t listen to it.
She had something she wanted to do.
She sat in front of her computer, lips pursed, anger coursing through her.
“Please stop contacting me,” she typed. “This isn’t funny anymore. I’ve gone to the police.”
She sucked in a shaky breath and closed her eyes when she hit Send. She didn’t know what she expected: her laptop to explode, R. J. Rosen to come through the screen to strangle her, her cell phone to start pinging with a waterfall of horrific images, but none of it happened. There was nothing but silence—and that was unnerving. Her entire house seemed to be holding its breath and Addie realized she was holding hers too. She let out a whoosh of air and her laptop pinged.
MAILERDAEMON: Your message could not be sent.
Addie tried to read the gobbledygook in the message portion of the email—something about the address not found and the server no longer trying. She hit Send a second time, and this time the message bounced back immediately.
Forty-Three
Addie went for her phone, squealing when it rang in her hand.
“Hello?”
“Addie, this is Chief Garcia.”
She nodded, unsure she could form words.
“Are you there, dear?”
“Yes.” It was barely a whisper.
“We’re going to need you to come down to the station.”
“I…there’s no one home. My…Louisa is supposed to be here soon and my dad will be here in a few hours but…is there something wrong?”
Chief Garcia paused dramatically and Addie’s heart started to thump. “We’ve been going over the emails, the ones you said came from the author R. J. Rosen?”
“Yeah, I just tried to—”
“Addie, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but the charade is up.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We traced the IP address. We know where the emails are coming from, Addison. We know they’re coming from you.”
Addie’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean? Someone sent them—”
“Someone sent them from your computer, Addison. You know it’s a crime to hinder an investigation.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t.” Addie shook her head, the tears starting to fall again. “I didn’t send the emails to myself! I didn’t!”
“They came from your computer, Addison. We can prove it. Please have your father drive you down here at your earliest convenience.”
The click on the other end of the phone was deafening.
Addie immediately dialed her father. For once, he picked up on the first ring. “Everything okay, hon? Is Louisa taking good care of you?”
“She’s not here yet. Are you coming home soon?”
“Half hour, tops. Everything okay?”
Addie bit her lip. “No. Please just hurry, okay?”
Still shaking, Addie padded down the stairs, her heartbeat only slowing to a normal pace when she heard Louisa’s keys in the door. She laid her cell phone on the banister and craned her neck.
“Hello?” she called toward the foyer.
Then she heard the chuckle. It was slightly off, a forced laugh coming from the kitchen.
Dad?
Heat pricked at the back of Addie’s neck but she shrugged it off, stopping short when she stepped into the kitchen. The lights were off, curtains drawn, everything cast in shadow. She went for the light switch.
“I didn’t know people actually did that in real life.”
Addie’s stomach dropped, but she forced her fingers to find the light switch.
“Spencer?”
“Really, I thought that was just a stupid horror movie thing, you know? Pretty young ingénue yells out, ‘hello?’ signaling to the killer exactly where she is.” He shook his head.
“What are you talking…and how did you get in here?”
&nbs
p; Spencer looked up, weirdly shocked to see Addie standing there in front of him in her own kitchen. Then he grinned, a beaming, tooth-bared grin that in the past made Addie’s knees weak.
But today, it was chilling, slightly off.
He dangled Addie’s spare keys in front of his nose, still grinning. “Lose something?”
Addie scratched her neck. “Those are mine.”
“I know.”
She held out her hand. Spencer stared at her palm but made no move to hand the keys over.
“Can I have them, please?”
He pressed his lips together, cocked his head, and studied the keys. “So the young ingénue thinks that asking nicely will make everything okay.”
“Spencer, I want my keys. I’m just asking for you to give them back and…you don’t have to leave, we could just hang out or something. My housekeeper will be here in a few minutes. She could make us something to eat.” Addie shifted her weight, a strange mix of anxiety and hope thrumming through her.
“Do you think this is a date?”
“What? What are you—”
“Do you think this is a social call, Addie?”
Addie reached for her keys and Spencer snatched them back, slammed them on the table. His eyes went sharp and hard.
“I think you should leave. Give me my keys and go. Please.”
Spencer blinked, dragged his tongue over his lower lip, and settled into a slow, comfortable smile. He looked like regular Spencer, the guy from school with the adorable half smile. But his voice was lower than Addie was used to.
“This isn’t a social call.” He bit off his words.
Addie held her hands up. “Okay, Spencer. Look, Louisa and my dad are going to be here—”
“Louisa’s not going to make it.”
Addie blinked. “What?”
Spencer rubbed his stomach and shook his head sadly. “She ate something that she shouldn’t have.”
“What are you—”
“Rat poison.”
Addie felt like someone struck her in the gut. “What are you talking about?”
Spencer’s eyes went wide. “Oh, don’t worry. She’s not going to die! She just ate a little bit.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart a quarter inch. “Doesn’t take much to knock someone out for a couple of days. Didn’t you get her message?”
“Did you poison Louisa?”
Spencer didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on hers. She held his gaze, her hand darting for the keys.
He clamped a hand over her wrist, yanking her toward him so her hip dug into the edge of the table, her ribs crushing against the pushed-in chair.
“Spencer, what the—”
His voice was a serpentine whisper. “It was a calm, easy day in Gap Lake. The tourists were baking in the sun, sucking down Slurpees and ice creams, but Jordan was fighting for her life.”
Addie stopped struggling.
Spencer still held Addie against him, his breath hot on her cheek. “Do you know what it feels like to fight for your life?”
Addie sucked in a breath, tried to steel herself. This was her friend, Spencer. This was a high school kid who only stood a few inches taller than she did. “No, I don’t.”
“You write about it.”
“I write fiction.”
“It looks terrible. When someone is taking their last breath? Is struggling to live?” He blew out a sigh and shook his head, his fingers digging into Addie’s forearm. “You know the look. Eyes, frozen in fear. Mouth opened, but nothing coming out. Like, like—”
“A silent scream.”
Spencer pumped his head and Addie could see his cheek rise. He was smiling. “Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it. You know what I’m talking about.”
Addie slowly licked her chapped lips. “Because I’m a good writer.”
“No!” Spencer yelled, tightening up on Addie’s wrist and twisting it ever so slightly. A needle of pain shot up her forearm, a lightning bolt that exploded on her shoulder. She winced.
There was fury in Spencer’s eyes. His nostrils flared and Addie could feel his breath coming in short, hot bursts.
“Spencer. Let. Me. Go.”
He flicked a tongue over his bottom lip, his teeth showing as his lips inched up into a too-pleased grin.
“Don’t you want to be with me, Addie?”
Forty-Four
His voice was hot tar. Addie’s eyes swept the kitchen table, her hand circling a wooden pepper grinder. Spencer saw it too, amusement in his eyes. The edge of his lips quirked up until Addie cracked the grinder against his temple. Wood clacked against flesh and Spencer’s smile turned into a scowl. His eyebrow was cracked open, a tiny slice that bubbled with blood.
“Bitch!”
He released Addie, gingerly pressing his hand against his forehead and cheek. Addie turned, her sneakers eeking on the linoleum.
Spencer sent a kitchen chair crashing into her. It caught her mid-thigh and her knees buckled; she tripped over her own feet and slammed chest-first to the ground, letting out an inelegant “Oof!”
She tried to struggle, tried to scream, but her breath was gone and Spencer stomped a foot in the middle of her back, stepping on her, gathering the chair. Addie heaved; her ribs ached against the tiled floor, her back sagged under Spencer’s weight. He stepped off and kicked her so she was laying on her back. Addie tried to sit up, tried to move, but Spencer caged her with the legs of the chair.
“Spencer, please—” Her voice was soft, choked.
He slid down, backward, on the seat of the chair, arms slung over the back, and grinned. “You shouldn’t have done that, Addie.”
She was pinned, arms akimbo, completely stuck. And then she saw the glint of the knife. Spencer was looking at it too, the thing silver and shiny in his hand, glaring with hints of sunlight.
“I can’t wait to kill you.”
“No…Spencer, why? Why? What did I ever do to you?”
Spencer glared down at her, his face pulsating with rage; a mask of sinister red. “You could have stopped him,” he said slowly, biting off each word. “You should have stopped him.”
“What are you—”
“Your dad.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know why I had to hide in the closet whenever my dad came home?”
“He drinks, Spencer.” Addie tried to shrug him off. “You told me he drinks. It’s okay, my dad does too.”
“Oh, that’s right, he does. He drinks and plows into a market full of people.”
A sob lodged in Addie’s chest. “No one got hurt.” It sounded like a weak and stupid excuse and Spencer raged, tightening his grip.
“That’s right! No one got hurt, and your dad walked home and got to sleep in his bed that night. Because your daddy’s rich, so he suffers no consequences.”
“Please, Spencer, if you need to talk, we could talk about this. We could go somewhere.”
“How about to my house?”
Addie raised her hands, palms up. “Sure, okay, of course. Wherever you want.”
His eyes narrowed. His nostrils flared again and that breathing: hard, fast, hot, started again. “I don’t have a house anymore. Your rich daddy took it.”
Addie shook her head, her hair snapping and breaking under the legs of the chair. “No. No, he didn’t.”
“My dad invested everything and your dad just took it. Everything.” He licked his lips, his teeth bared. “Everything but the vodka bottles.”
“I’m sorry, Spencer, I didn’t know. The market was bad for everyone, I guess. It was—”
“Just business?” He cocked his head. “That’s what your dad said too. And my dad started drinking. And my mom took off because she couldn’t deal with it anymore. And she was going to come back for me, but you kn
ow what? She didn’t. And you! You get to live here”—he threw out his arms—“in this fucking castle where nothing bad ever happens because you’re Morton Gaines’s daughter. And if he bankrupts people it doesn’t matter. And if he drives drunk and mows down eighteen rows of cabbage, it doesn’t matter!”
“I’m so, so sorry, Spencer.”
“Are you? ’Cause your dad rolls out a little tipsy and gets a slap on the wrist. My dad does and he loses his job. His license. Our house.”
“I didn’t know.”
Spencer paused, his breath still coming in ragged gasps and Addie thought he was softening, listening. She watched the fingers on his hand open and close over the hilt of the knife.
“You. Should. Have. Stopped. Him!” Spencer sliced with each word, the point of the blade coming within a hairsbreadth of Addie’s chest.
“I live in a fucking motel, Addie, while you live here in this goddamn mansion.” Spencer lurched over the chair’s back. “My mom walked out because my dad is a fucking mess! He’s a mess because your dad took everything he had and he came home to his precious fucking Goody Two-shoes daughter and got to live his life. Home fucking free.” He was spitting, chewing on the words. His eyes were wild, brown-black, and Addie was terrified, unable to move even as bits of spit struck her lips and cheeks.
“He never suffered. He never had to know suffering. But…” Spencer’s eyes cut to the knife, one finger running the length of the blade and drawing a pristine red thread of blood. He smiled once again, and Addie wondered how she never noticed how maniacal that smile was. “But…” Spencer sucked his bloody finger and grinned again, this time his teeth stained a haunting pink. He pinned Addie with those wild eyes and spat, blood-tinged saliva spraying all over her chin and neck. “Now he will.”
Addie lost her breath. Her whole body tensed as Spencer leveled the knife over her again. He looked like he was thinking, considering. She started to shake her head, to beg. He yanked the chair off her and slammed down hard, his knee landing on her chest, squeezing out what little air was left. She saw the knife raised, leveled over her throat. She couldn’t look, wouldn’t witness her own demise. She dug her fingers into the floor, crawling, trying to inch away.