Dangerous Past

by Cobe Reinbold

  Our clothes stank of smoke and soot and I sure didn’t want Mom to smell it when she came home. We needed to get out of these clothes and get rid of them. A shower should take care of the grime and the smell in my hair. Instead of us going in right away, I made everyone stop by their houses on the way home and pick up clean clothes. Luckily everyone’s parents were at work so they didn’t have to answer any questions about smelling like a bonfire. We used the hose at my house to wash out our old clothes and changed into the clean ones. Good as new. I shoved the wet stinky clothes into a trash bag and stuffed it in the garage. I’d get rid of it the next time I went into town. Find a dumpster somewhere and chuck it.

  After we had gotten rid of most of the smell, I let everyone in the house and we went out to the pool.

  “Guys, I think I figured something out.” Jason paced beside the pool.

  “What?” I prompted when he didn’t say anything else.

  “You know when you opened the cupboard? Under the sink?” He stopped his pacing and looked directly at me.

  “Yeah, and there were all those hair products?”

  “Yeah, but there was something else. I just figured it out.”

  “What?” Kent was getting antsy. Jason was really drawing this out.

  “It was a specific kind of gas mask. One-time use. The miners use them across the lake. Before Dad got his promotion, he used them once in a while and he kept them under the bathroom sink. That’s how I recognized what they were.” He flopped down next to Jessica.

  “So, you’re saying the person is a miner? That would narrow down our suspect list.” Jessica looked over to him.

  “I don’t know. There aren’t many miners left across the lake. Most of the operation has been using technology for years, and now they just have people go down to collect the resources and run the machines.

  “I don’t think they’re a miner. By the sounds of it, whoever is after Mady only knows she lives here because of the blog posts. What are the odds they happen to live in the same town she ended up moving to? Most likely it’s someone from Florida who came here after they found out where she was,” I chimed in.

  “They could have got a job at the mine once they moved to town. It’s the place that employs most of the town in the first place,” Jessica said.

  “The waitlist to work in those mines is long. Dad says they have people all across the country who want to come work there, so I doubt they would have gotten hired so fast, but I can ask him if they hired any employees lately,” Jason said.

  “Yeah, just make sure you don’t straight come out and ask him. You don’t want to be too obvious about it,” I responded. We were at a dead end again. Any chance of finding something useful at the house went up in smoke.

  The security system on the front door beeped. Someone was putting in the code to unlock it. Immediately, I looked around for anything that would seem suspicious. We’d hidden the letters back in my closet after we were done with them, so that was covered. I decided no matter how this whole thing turned out, I would tell my parents everything as soon as it was over. I made me feel a little better but I still had a knot in my stomach knowing how much I was hiding from them.

  “Hello?” Dad called from the entrance. I talked to him every day, but he’d never said anything about coming home today.

  “Hey, we’re out here.”

  Moments later Dad popped his head around the corner.

  “Hey, guys.”

  Everyone said hi back in unison, and he came over and hugged me as I sat on the lawn chair. My heart missed a beat as I wondered if I got the smell of smoke totally out of my hair. “What are you all up to?”

  “Trying to find something to do,” I said quickly, before anyone else could say something and confuse the situation. Jason always cracked under pressure and the last thing I wanted him to say was ‘We just got back from town’. Dad is the kind of guy to sit on the couch after work and catch up on the news. I knew for a fact the house fire would be a major headline tonight. I didn’t want him asking questions.

  Maybe I was being paranoid. Of course, he wouldn’t suspect me of burning a house down as soon as he heard about it on the news, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  “Sounds fun. You guys should go down to the beach. It’s a real scorcher out there today.” He loosened his tie and put his briefcase down by the back door. Dad never took off his tie until he was safely in the house.

  “We might just do that.” Kent smiled at him. Dad loved Kent. Mostly because my dad loved football and Kent was one of the best football players in town.

  “Do you know if you’re going to be around tonight? I wanted to surprise your mom and make her a nice dinner, like I used to do.”

  “I don’t have any plans, but I can be out of the house if you want.” For the first time since Mady’s death it felt like I was talking to Dad normally.

  “No, that’s fine, I just need to know how much salmon to buy.” He came back over to us with his water in hand.

  “Count me in then.”

  Dad nodded and went into the house. We waited to say anything until the door clicked shut. Then we just stared at each other, overwhelmed by the thought of how much trouble we’d be in if someone connected us to the fire today. By now, the fire department had probably figured out it was arson, and it wouldn’t take long before they started asking questions. If we got connected and told the cops our story they wouldn’t believe it for a second.

  We sat around for a little bit longer, and then decided to take Dad’s idea and go to the beach. We had no other leads at the moment and had to wait for whoever to unlock the next blog post now we’d been to that stupid house. Why would Mady send us into danger? Maybe she didn’t know? I had to believe she didn’t send us there to get caught in the fire.

  We spent a couple hours at the beach, but it was hard to relax. Every time someone looked at me I thought they knew what I’d done. A couple times I saw a cop car slow down as it passed, and when the police walking patrol went by I tensed up. I kept reminding myself we didn’t leave any evidence, and hoped that anything to do with Mady burned with the house.

  Around five o’clock I got a text from Dad saying he wanted me home before Mom got there. He wanted me there when he surprised her. I texted back, saying I’d be there and was looking forward to the salmon.

  Fifteen minutes later, I gathered my stuff and asked if anyone needed a ride. They declined, and I left them laying on the sand taking in the rays. I walked to my car and drove home.

  I got back before 5:30, and walked into the house. Dad hugged me, telling me how happy he was to be home. He went away on business trips all the time, but this time he really seemed to have missed me. I know Dad hated being away, and Mom hated it even more.

  I went upstairs and changed quickly, and then waited in the kitchen until Mom got home. She rolled in the door at 6:10, and was ecstatic to see Dad. He put dinner on the table, and everything seemed to be back to normal. Both of my parents were under the same roof again, and I was happy Dad was home.

  After dinner, I helped with dishes. My parents invited me to go to the movies with them, but I thought they deserved a date night alone so I said goodbye, and went upstairs. I sat on my bed, and pulled out my phone. I hadn’t checked it since I texted Dad back, and I was waiting for some sort of clue to come my way.

  As soon as I opened it, a text from Metrix popped up.

  ‘Did you go to the house today?’

  ‘Yeah, we did.’

  ‘I tapped into the police radio channel. Mady gave me the address before she left. There was a fire there today. Did you guys burn it down?’

  ‘No, someone was in there. I think they set it on fire to hide evidence. They went out the window and ran. We ran too. Did the cops say anything about witnesses?’

  ‘No nothing over the radio about that, but I’m sure you’re fine. I’ll put the next blog post up.’

  I reached under my bed and pulled out the laptop Metrix gave me. I
t wasn’t smart to hide it under my bed like the other one, but I figured whoever stole it only wanted that particular laptop, and they didn’t know I had another one with access to the blog.

  I booted it up quickly, and logged onto the webpage. Sure enough, there was a new blog post near the bottom of the page. There was only two more after it that were still locked, and seeing that made me feel like we were getting near the end. It felt like this would all be over soon.

  Old friends, same old enemies

  Today I found someone I thought I would never see again. Remember the girl I was abducted with a few years ago? I never thought I would find her again. We were best friends, and I always felt a connection to her I never felt with anyone else. She was the kind of person that you could spend days on end with and never get sick of. Once the police found me and she disappeared, my parents moved me away, promising me I would never have to deal with anything like this again. I thought she was dead. I never had to testify, since I was too young. It didn’t seem to matter that the jury didn’t hear my side of the story, since months later the man that was behind the abduction got life in prison. The judge decided since the guy owned a toy store, and he was around young people so often, it wouldn’t be right to let him back into society. Even if he ever got out of prison for good behaviour, he would never be allowed to have access to children again. It made me feel good to hear his life was ruined forever. I know that sounds bad, but when someone forces you to uproot everything you’ve ever known, and move across a country because everything you look at triggers flashbacks, you want their life to be ruined too. I never saw that girl again, and the police assumed he killed her and buried her body in a shallow grave somewhere. Once we heard the verdict of the trial, my parents and I cut everything we once loved out of our lives. That includes news about the case. The other day I was in the library and someone said my name. I turned around, and there she was. The girl I had always assumed was dead, was standing behind me holding a stack of books. They say history repeats itself. I guess with everything going on in my life right now, the universe decided I needed the one person who could ever understand how I feel to help me through it.

  This one was dated to a month before Mady disappeared. Everything seemed to hit me all at once. It was like when you’re swimming in the ocean, and a huge wave rolls over that you weren’t expecting. The only thing your body knows how to do is swim under it and hope the undertow didn’t take you down. That was kind of how I’d been feeling for the past couple weeks. I was relieved to discover someone had been there for Mady when she was struggling, but this was big. The girl who was abducted with Mady suddenly turned up unexpectedly, but who was she? And how did she find Mady? Mady thought the girl was dead, so the news she was alive and managed to find Mady was a big deal.

  Something kind of made sense all at once. The conversation with the librarian from the night before hadn’t sat right with me all day, and all of the puzzle pieces fell into place at once. She said at the beginning of our conversation that working at the library was her summer job, but then she said she was talking to Mady about me, but Mady disappeared before the summer. Things just weren’t adding up.

  I checked my phone. It was 6:40. I wasn’t sure when the library closed, but I needed to get there. I ran down the stairs, and out of the house, on my way to the library.

  Light after light switched off inside the library as I pulled up in front of the building, ignoring the no parking sign. There was only one red jeep left in the empty lot. I saw the librarian leaving the main doors and turning around to lock them.

  “Hey!” I got out of the car and stood by the open driver’s door.

  She looked up startled, light reflecting off the glasses that had fallen partially down her nose.

  “Oh, Brian. You scared me.” She remembered me from the day before.

  “Hey, I think we might need to have a chat.”

  She looked at me confused for a second, almost like she was deciding whether or not to talk to me. Then she casually turned back towards the door, finished locking up, and walked over to where I was parked. I unlocked the door for her, and we both got in.

  “That was fast,” she said with a sidelong glance at me.

  “What do you mean?” I didn’t want to say too much until I got a read on her.

  “You figured it out, didn’t you? You know Mady and I were abducted by the creep all those years ago. And that we reconnected recently. Right?”

  It all kind of clicked for me after reading the post. Mady was never good at lying, and obviously she needs to work on hiding clues better too,” I said. I didn’t dare make eye contact with her. The sun was starting to go down over the mountain, illuminating the sky with a million colours of orange, purple, and pink. Raindrops sprinkled my windshield in a tiny shower. We both just stared, watching the setting sun illuminate the scattered droplets.

  “I guess you probably want to know how I fit into the clues and mystery Mady left,” she said after a couple minutes of silence.

  “I guess you should start at the beginning.”

  She took a deep breath and began. “Okay, you know I was abducted along with Mady a few years back. I guess through that experience, even though it only lasted a couple weeks, we learned to rely on each other. One day, the creep dragged me out of the basement and walked me to the main floor of the house. He let us out of our restraints a couple times, but he never let us upstairs since the day he took us. He walked me out the front door and explained he had decided he didn’t want me, I thought he was going to kill me right there. But he said he would give me ten minutes to run far enough that he didn’t see me before he started shooting. I was terrified, so I ran. I didn’t think I could help Mady, and I thought it was better if one of us got out, but I never forgot. He lived on some sort of farm an hour outside of Florida, and I ran like my life depended on it until I hit the main road and a car drove by and saw me. Once I got back to my parents and the police were questioning me, all I wanted to do was help Mady get out of there. My parents were worried for our family’s safety, so they made a deal with the police to enter the witness protection program until I turned eighteen. I told them where the farm was, and that night we were flown out to Houston, Texas under fake names. We were given a new house, new identities, and my parents were given jobs when we settled. I lived there for two years, and then I heard about the weird blog. Some girls were talking about it at school and I went online and checked it out when I got home. At first, I didn’t catch on, but then the stories just seemed too familiar. That whole time after Mady got rescued, I just wanted to talk to her and thank her for helping me through everything, but part of the witness protection deal was that we weren’t allowed to communicate with anyone until we were out of the program. I never in my wildest dreams assumed she thought I had been killed. I always thought the police would tell her, but for my protection they never did. The man never got charged for murder, but there was enough evidence against him to send him to prison for life without the murder charge. Once I saw the post I told my parents I had to find Mady. They said it was too dangerous, so I reached out to her and she told me where she lived. I ran away that night and came here, I managed to get a job at the library, and that’s about it,” she said. I could see tears welling up in her eyes. I couldn’t imagine how traumatizing this whole experience was for her. I gave her a moment to catch her breath, and then spoke again.

  “If that’s the case, shouldn’t you have left with her when she did?”

  “No, nobody in town knew I was here, except for her. She told me once I got here the kind of trouble she was in, and how she needed someone to watch over you and make sure you were okay after she left, as well as her parents. I agreed since I knew how dangerous it could be for her, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

  “Are you still in contact with her? Do you know where she is?” Hope flared in my chest.

  “I was, but she stopped responding to my texts and calls a little while ago. I’m wo
rried for her.”

  I didn’t know if I should trust this girl. I didn’t even know her name, for starters, and for all I knew, she could be working with NL to take Mady, if they haven’t already, but I had no other choice. At this point, the only clue I had was to come and track her down, and now that I did I didn’t know where to go from there. I was stuck, and all I could do was wait for Mady to reach out to me.

  Chapter 14

  We ended up at the local dinner. It was getting dark now, and the weird half-light between night and day made my eyes go all funny.

  “Are you getting anything to eat?” I scanned the menu for the list of milkshake flavours.

  “No, I’ll make something when I get home.”

  “Where are you staying?” I was suspicious of her story and maybe if I asked enough questions she would slip up and I’d find out she wasn’t who she said she was.

  “Mady rented me an apartment above the coffee shop just down the street. It’s nice, but it’s too big for just one person. I always hear bumps in the night and it scares me. If someone was after Mady and realized who I am, I could be in just as much danger as she is.” She put down the menu and met my gaze. I hadn’t really noticed just how beautiful she was. Behind those thick glasses, she had the most penetrating blue eyes I had ever seen.

  “Does anyone know where you are now?” I forced myself to look at the menu in hopes she would look away from me. For some reason, her attention made me nervous.

  “I called my parents to let them know that I was safe, but they don’t know where I am. I told them I’d be back soon. I guess I didn’t really hold up the second part of the deal.”

  “What’s your name?”

  She looked puzzled. “I kind of assumed knew my name from the articles I’m sure you read about Mady and me. I’m Mackenzie Jackson. I guess I tend to forget my identity was wiped out by the witness protection program. I shouldn’t even reveal that much to you, but I want to help Mady, so decided I should be honest with you. Mady trusts you, so I have to too.”