by Lexie Ray
“She’s a monster,” said Linden.
“Who’s a monster?”
“Hunter Mann. The entire thing was premeditated. She went out on the street, bought guns to kill, and executed her plan,” he said. “Serial killer, do you think?”
“Hardly,” said Sarah. “She was scared. She needed to protect herself. The only thing she’s guilty of is protecting herself too well.”
Linden shook his head at that.
“You’re wrong this time, Sarah,” he said. “We’ve got ourselves a brutal killer, and she’s taking her thirst for blood up north. We’ve got a potential massacre on our hands if we don’t go up and stop her.”
This was exactly what Sarah was trying to avoid.
“I need you watching The Chef and his gang in case Hunter comes back for more weapons,” said Sarah.
“Forget it, Voss,” he said. “I’m going after Mann. I’m going to nail that bitch to the ground. You think I didn’t get a call this morning as well? I know she’s midway to New Hampshire by now. Let’s go.”
Linden popped the passenger’s side door of Sarah’s vehicle open and poured himself into the seat.
“This case is going to make our careers,” he said with an odd smirk before struggling his way around his own stomach to get his seatbelt fastened and shut the door.
That went less according to plan than she had hoped.
How was she supposed to lose Linden now?
* * *
The blinds did little to prevent the stark afternoon sun from spilling through the motel room, making it too bright to sleep. Hunter opened her eyes, squinting, careful not to be blinded by the sun’s glare. The weight of Ash’s arm across her collarbone was soothing. He had held her close all morning, spooning her, making her feel safe, protected, and by afternoon their snuggling had evolved into its current shape. Hunter was positioned in repose, leaning into Ash, back to front, as though she was partially on top of him. She had never been more comfortable in her life, and for a long moment, this was all there was: only Ash, his warm embrace, their cool motel room, and the peace of the afternoon sun. Hunter wanted this moment to last forever.
But it didn’t.
Dread crept in slowly as she lay there, riveting her with a low thrum of anxiety, putting her on edge, making her feel agitated and restless. She needed a pill. This was not the time to go sober, but she had nothing to set her mind at ease. Nothing but Ash.
Her anxious thoughts drifted towards her sister, Blair. Where was Blair at this very moment, Hunter wondered? Hunter was already scared to see how broken down her sister might be. The farmhouse could turn a lively and spirited child into an empty shell in no time. Was Hunter strong enough to see her sister like that? She certainly hadn’t been before. She hadn’t been able to bear the sight, the thought. She had left Blair behind for a million reasons even though she had every reason to bring her along, every reason to smuggle her out of the farmhouse when she had escaped.
Hunter had been so selfish, and the pain she must have caused Blair was unthinkable. Suddenly, Hunter burst out crying. She quickly covered her mouth in attempts to muffle the sobs, but it barely helped.
Ash took a sharp breath in, waking. Hunter needed to stop crying, stop her body from shaking from the tears, but the floodgates had opened. She couldn’t hold it back.
Sensing something was wrong as he awakened, Ash held Hunter close, stabilizing her so her body could quake freely, releasing the pent up emotions. He would be her support until she could hold herself up again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
“Everything,” she said through her sobs.
“We’ll get her back,” he said. “We’ll get all the girls back.”
“I don’t see how we’re going to do that, Ash,” she said, her tears finally drying up enough to speak clearly.
“We’re going to plan it out,” he said. “We’re going to get up there and case the farmhouse, make a plan of attack based on that. We won’t know exactly how to get in and get out with the girls, then defeat the entire operation until we’re there, can we?”
“You’re right,” said Hunter. “I’m just so afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?” he asked. “And don’t say ‘everything’” His tone was kidding, teasing her, inviting her to smile and laugh, as though it was okay. Was it?
“I’m afraid of being taken. I’m afraid they’ll get me, and I’ll never get out again. I’m afraid the rest of my life will be spent in slavery, watching the girls around me die on the inside, then die for real.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” he said.
Hunter held her tongue.
That was the problem. She believed his intentions, but she didn’t trust he had the power to prevent any of it. And that’s what truly scared her.
* * *
Twitch stood at the road’s edge across from the motel and looked out across a gigantic field. The field was green, many shades of bright green, and luscious with yellow flowers. They were probably weeds, goldenrod to be exact, but Twitch thought they were pretty. He hadn’t seen a field, much less flowers, in years. His world had been nothing but concrete, dumpsters, and the underside of bridges for as long as he could remember.
Molly would have liked it here, he thought. He wanted to do something nice for her, maybe say a few words to acknowledge that she was really gone. He almost couldn’t believe it. Part of him thought Molly was with the other girls, taken back to the farmhouse. It seemed so unfair that she was dead. But then again, all of this was unfair.
He walked out a little further into the field where the goldenrod was so tall it reached his waist, and brushed his hand over its yellow flowers. His hand became coated in pollen.
It reminded him of the time he and Molly had gone out into one of the fields behind the farmhouse. The weeds there had grown exceptionally tall, and they had gotten lost in the thick of them. At the time Twitch really hoped they could get lost, but knew deep down there was nowhere they could’ve gone without being found. It had been such a horrible place, the farmhouse, the barn, the shadow house. He didn’t want to return.
Twitch turned abruptly, looking behind himself, startled by the sound of rustling. He sighed, discovering it was only Hunter and Ash. They were walking through the high weeds and tall grass towards him.
“You sleep okay?” asked Hunter.
“Yeah,” said Twitch as he turned back towards the field. “It’s pretty out here.”
Hunter stopped as soon as she stood beside Twitch. Ash paused next to her.
“I know we should get going,” said Twitch. “I just need a minute.” After a long moment, Twitch took a deep breath and said, “Molly would’ve liked it here.”
Hunter nodded in agreement, then turned to Ash.
“At the farmhouse,” she began, “when a girl died, we never had a funeral or anything, of course. We didn’t even have a body. But the girls always knew when one of us had died, you know? So we’d gather around in a field and remember the fallen girl. Sometimes we’d remember in silence because it was too painful to speak. And other times we’d each say something.”
Hunter looked at Twitch, whose eyes were filling with tears.
“No matter who it was though, and no matter how silent we felt like being, we always said one thing, didn’t we?” Hunter asked.
“They were free,” said Twitch.
“That’s right,” said Hunter. “They were the lucky one, they got out, it was over for them. They were finally free.”
Twitch smacked a flower bud off of a tall weed in front of him.
“That’s bullshit,” he said furiously. “She’s not lucky. She’s dead. None of us are lucky.”
Hunter couldn’t argue with that. She fell silent.
Twitch seemed to calm down and turned back to them.
“Well,” he said, “let’s kill those motherfuckers.”
“You need to learn how to shoot first,” said Ash, as he handed Twitch a gun
from the back of his pants.
Twitch’s eyes lit up as he took the piece in his hands.
Ash handed a handgun to Hunter as well and told them to follow him.
He led Hunter and Twitch east, cutting across the field towards the forest. Once there, he meandered deeper into the cool woods until he found a fallen tree. Ash took a deck of playing cards from his pocket and wedged them, one by one into the trunk of the fallen tree. He was making little targets.
He guided Hunter and Twitch away from the log by about fifty feet.
“Hunter, you take the first twenty cards from left to right. Twitch you go from right to left.”
“There’s no way I can hit that,” said Hunter. “It’s way too far away.”
“You’ll need to,” he said. “We’re going to have to take these guys out from far away. As many as possible. If we have to get up close and personal, then we will, but we aren’t going to go into the farmhouse planning on that. It’s too dangerous. There’s too much risk and room for error. We need to pluck them off, one by one, from afar.”
Twitch raised his gun, aiming carefully with one eye pinched shut and fired. A flock of pheasants flew up from the brush into the air, startled by where the bullet struck a tree. It was a good eight feet right of his edge of the log.
“I’m a terrible shot,” he said. “Damn, that was embarrassing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ash. “That’s why we’re out here.”
Hunter raised her gun with one hand. She had never attempted to shoot anything from this far away before. It was almost dizzying how her vision split between the shape of the gun and the small playing card yards ahead in the distance. Depending on which she was focused on, she seemed to have double vision of whatever she wasn’t looking at. Two guns, or multiple playing cards.
Twitch resumed firing from his side, but Hunter couldn’t seem to get confident. She didn’t want to pull the trigger unless she was sure she’d hit her mark. But it wasn’t just that, that wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t seem to fire the gun. Hunter realized she couldn’t afford to lose hope. She had so little of it to begin with. If she stood here in the woods and couldn’t even hit the target, then what hope did she have of saving her sister?
Suddenly Ash was standing behind her, she discovered when he placed his hands gently around her hips. Soon she felt the length of him behind her, the rise and fall of his chest against her back.
“Hold the gun with both hands,” he instructed in a low whisper, his lips grazing her ear.
Hunter did as she was told, positioning her left hand as a base to the right, securing the weapon in her firm grip.
She felt Ash’s hands slide up her sides then down the length of her arms. He guided her aim higher, but only by a few inches, then retracted his hands away, allowing her to stand on her own.
“Now line the target between this plastic curve here,” he said, pointing to the front sight at the gun’s top.
Hunter did, though the double vision dilemma was still evident. “But it makes me see two targets,” she said after a long moment of hesitation.
“You need to line up the front sight, the back sight, with the target in-between,” he clarified. “And keep both eyes open. If you close one eye, you’ll see half as well. That goes for you too, Twitch.”
Twitch lowered his gun. “You mind schooling me next? All I’m hitting over here are squirrels and that’s on accident.”
“Give me a second,” said Ash, returning his attention to Hunter. “When you squeeze the trigger, don’t pull your finger back. You need to squeeze your entire fist as one unit. Go ahead, Hunter. You got this.”
Hunter took a deep breath, lined the target up with the front and back sights at the top of the gun, then slowly pulled the trigger by squeezing her entire fist into a ball and shot. The deafening sound bounced off the trees and more birds took flight.
She lowered the handgun, unable to believe her eyes.
The middle of the playing card had been pierced, dead center.
A smile spread across Hunter’s face.
She finally felt ready.
* * *
The manager’s office of the Super 8 motel smelled like mildew, stale cigarettes, and burnt coffee. Despite the clear blue skies outside, the office was somehow dark and gloomy, particles of dust floated, dancing in the low beams of light. The room reminded Sarah of her parents’ house, sadly. You never know how bad you have it ‘til you leave home, she thought, while waiting for the manager to return with the keys to room #201.
What a dismal place. Sarah tapped a bobble-head raccoon that sat, collecting dust, on the counter. It barely moved in response, as though even the bobble-head was depressed by the lack of light.
Sarah lifted the curtain back from the window. Linden was still in the passenger’s seat of her car, ruining her investigation. All of a sudden Linden cared so much about a case. It was infuriating, but Sarah had ways of making use of him if he really had had a change of heart and felt motivated to get to the bottom of all this. It would take energy and ingenuity, but Sarah could pull it off. The trick would be to focus him on tasks that would put her at an advantage, and distract him away from these blood thirsty notions that Hunter Mann was a burgeoning serial killer.
Christ, he must be watching way too much TV to have developed a theory like that.
“Far as I know, she’s still in there with the guy,” said the motel manager when he returned with the key.
“What guy?” asked Sarah.
“The guy who wanted to pay cash,” he said, not answering her question in any helpful way, shape, or form. “I didn’t let them. You know kids today. When it’s cash, they trash.”
“Is that a thing?” she asked.
He glared at her while lowering his chin to his chest in preparation to glance down at the key, checking to see he had the correct one.
“Lead the way,” said Sarah.
“Are they dangerous?” he asked, returning his gaze to her.
“No,” she said. “No more dangerous than you or I would be if we were being hunted.”
Her answer seemed to confuse the manager, but he led her out of the office anyway, and up the stairs at the far side of the motel.
Sarah was surprised to discover her heart was pounding as she waited with the motel manager outside of #201.
There was no response to the manager’s loud knock, so he keyed into the motel room. Sarah sighed in both relief and disappointment to find the room empty.
“Sorry, Lady,” said the motel manager. “You must’ve just missed them. I booked them in at eleven this morning. I thought for sure they’d sleep through ‘til dark.”
“It’s okay. Thanks for your help,” she said, but instead of turning back towards the stairs, Sarah entered the room. “Do you mind if I have a look around?”
“Take your time,” he said, leaving her.
Sarah paced slowly through the room. Though the bed was unmade, there was no other evidence that anyone had stayed here. Or so Sarah thought until she entered the bathroom and flipped on the light.
There resting on the counter beside the sink was a necklace, a dingy silver chain with a pendant. As Sarah approached and took the chain in her hand, she realized the pendant was a bullet.
Black dread sliced through her, twisting her stomach into knots, causing tears to spring to her eyes.
“Shit,” she said aloud.
It was her greatest fear realized.
Sarah began to tremble, balling her hand into a fist around the bullet. She glanced up, locking eyes with her reflection in the mirror. She barely recognized her own face. The only feature that seemed familiar were her eyes, their large round shape, and the darkness that swirled just below the surface.
Sarah bowed her head, pulling the dingy chain over her head, putting the necklace on, then tucked the bullet under her shirt.
“She was here, wasn’t she?” asked Linden the second Sarah had opened the driver’s side door and low
ered herself behind the wheel.
“She was,” she said, coy not to let on any more than she had to.
Sarah turned the key. The engine purred, ready to go anywhere, but she didn’t put the car into gear.
“Why is it I always gotta wait holding my breath for you to give me all the facts?” asked Linden. “I got this for you,” he added in a complete tonal shift as he handed her a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” she said, before taking a sip. “That was nice of you.”
“It’s a road trip. It doesn’t have to be miserable,” said Linden.
“She’s with a guy,” said Sarah, even though she would’ve rather kept that piece to herself.
“Do we have a name?” asked Linden.
“No,” said Sarah, “but the manager figured we just missed them. If only we knew where they were going.”
“Don’t give me that crap, Sarah,” said Linden. “They’re headed for the farmhouse and so are we.”
Sarah sighed into her coffee. “Good work, detective,” she said sarcastically.
She could feel Linden’s eyes on her. There was something smug about the way he was looking at her. He clearly knew something she didn’t, and yet he wanted her to ask. It would seem Linden had evolved from being completely useless to acting like a child. If only that were good news.
“Ask me,” said Linden with a huge smile on his face.
“I’m not going to ask you, Linden. This isn’t twenty-questions.”
“This is going to be a very long trip if you’re going to be so serious all the time,” he said. “Fine, I’ll tell you.”
“Lucky me,” said Sarah.
“The station called. They got another anonymous tip...” Linden let that hang in the air between them. He obviously wanted to savor the fun of dangling a lead in front of Sarah’s nose, but she wasn’t in the mood to play along. “Fine!” he said, stealing a quick sip of his coffee. “Apparently... and let me just preface this by saying that I’m not going to say ‘I told you so,’ but apparently our Hunter Mann used to have a little hobby up at the farmhouse.”
Sarah’s brows furrowed. She immediately feared where he might be going with this.