He nods. Mrs. Shum rips the tape from my mouth and slips the plastic bag over my head. Pulling it tight over my face, she peers into my eyes. “Goodnight,” she says.
I suck in air, and plastic seals off my nostrils. My legs strike out. Even though I know I shouldn’t, I take a deep breath. The plastic crinkles and molds to my face. I suck harder, desperate now. The plastic melts over my face, a warm, moist second skin. I can’t breathe, but I can’t stop trying. A thousand dancing black dots fill my vision. I’m dizzy. My mouth opens. My legs kick, but there’s no strength in them. I think of Jalen, want his face to be the last thing I see, but it’s the Shums who fill my blurred vision. They watch me intensely with no compassion or doubt—only a cruel sort of waiting.
The black dots connect. My lungs explode and there’s nothing at all.
FORTY-ONE
Jalen
She could be anywhere. Anywhere at all. How am I going to find her?
But what if I’m overreacting? She could be at a restaurant having dinner, or even at her father’s house packing her things. I’m going to look like an idiot bursting in on her with nothing to say something’s wrong but the fact that she hasn’t picked up her cell.
Next to me in the car, Uncle Billy has a bottle of wine in one hand and my cell in the other. He calls Paige’s cell periodically and then hangs up when it rings into voicemail. Clutching the steering wheel tightly in my hands, I run a light more red than yellow. Someone leans on his horn, and Uncle Billy says mildly, “What’s his problem?”
It takes us fifteen minutes to get across town and then turn into Dr. Shum’s neighborhood. I’m suddenly thankful for the times I came here to help Mrs. Shum load and unload supplies so I make no wrong turns. But will I be fast enough?
I leave the truck idling and run to the house. The lights are on, but nobody comes when I ring the bell. I peer through the glass panels flanking the door. The place looks empty. Circling around, I find a side gate, but it’s locked. Through the wrought-iron bars, I see the translucent glow of the pool lights, and more lights shining through the windows of a barn-like structure.
It takes me less than fifteen seconds to climb the gate and drop into the Shums’ backyard. They’re probably going to think I’m crazy, barging in on them like this, looking for Paige, but then Dr. Shum has always seemed like a fair man. He’ll listen to me. He has to.
The door to the studio isn’t fully closed, and calling out Paige’s name, I push it open and step into the cool interior. The room looks empty, abandoned with its sheets draped over the easels. I’m about to leave when my gaze falls on an overturned chair. It’s the only thing out of a place in a spotless room, but the sight of it draws me closer.
I walk deeper into the room, and then see what I couldn’t from the back.
The cracked pieces of a sculpture lie scattered on the floor. Kneeling, I pick up one of the larger pieces and find myself staring into half the face of a girl. Emily Linton.
A sick feeling spreads through me as I sort through the fragments. A man—Dr. Patterson? No, the nose is wrong. But then I find a finger and I see the wedding band. Dr. Shum.
Fear clouds my brain, panic overriding reason. All I can think about is how the Shums must have killed Emily, and Paige must have figured it out. Now they have her. It’s going to happen just like my uncle said it would. She’ll die, and it’ll be my fault. I kick myself for letting my pride get between us.
I have to stop them, but how? Trust your instincts, Uncle Billy’s voice says in my head, but all my instincts scream that time is running out.
Adrenaline courses through my system, putting me in motion before I even know what I’m doing. Heart racing, I scramble over the gate and race to the truck. “Call 9-1-1,” I yell at Uncle Billy, who hastily puts the wine bottle down. “Tell them Paige Patterson has been kidnapped by the Shums. Ask them to meet us at the ruins.”
I don’t know that she’s there, but it’s the only place I can think of.
Uncle Billy makes the call as I jerk the truck into reverse. The tires spin on the pavement as I accelerate onto the road. As we race through the quiet neighborhood, I hear Uncle Billy say, “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask my nephew that,” and hands me the phone.
I know they’re just doing their job, but it feels like they’re idiots asking me to repeat information over and over, to explain things in such detail that I want to scream. The best I can talk them into doing is transferring me to Detective Rodriquez, and then I have to go through everything all over again. When I’m finished, there’s a long period of silence. And then she seizes on the one irrelevant detail that I’ve told her.
“So you had a fight with your girlfriend. Is it possible that she’s fine and just not speaking to you?”
“No,” I shout and then slam the cell down.
I push the old truck to its limit when we hit the highway and hope that the engine won’t shake itself apart before we get to the park. When we exit onto the dirt road, I’m going so fast the truck skids and I can barely hit the brakes before we crash into the long, metal arm of the gate that runs the width of the road. I careen around it, the belly of the truck scraping the ground. For a few seconds, we lean hard to the side, but then somehow we’re on the road again.
The wide, open expanse of the parking lot lies ahead. It’s dark, but through the moonlight and the beams of my headlights I see it’s empty. Where is the Shums’ car? If they haven’t brought Paige here, then where is she? Jerking to a stop near the main gate, I turn to my uncle. “I thought they’d be here. But I don’t see their car. What do I do?”
My uncle’s hooded eyes regard me intently. “What you came here to do,” he says calmly, and in his hands are the bolt cutters we bought at Walmart.
For just a second, I hesitate. Once I cut the fence, I’m vandalizing government property and there’s no going back. I could go to jail. I could end up exactly like Uncle Billy.
I’m probably crazy, but I take the bolt cutters from his hands.
It takes seconds to cut through the chain link fence and slip inside the park. Uncle Billy follows. As he straightens, I turn to him. “Uncle, you need to wait here. Give me an hour, and if I’m not back, call the police.”
“No,” he says. “I’m going with you.”
I look at his frail body, the wine bottle he clutches in his hands. “Uncle, you’re not climbing the cliff.”
His shoulders straighten. “You’re wasting time,” he says calmly. “Coyote will want to hide the blue corn maiden. We need to go. Now.”
“Uncle,” I say, forcing patience into my voice. “I can’t save Paige and make sure you make it safely up the cliff. Please don’t make me choose.”
“You can’t go up there alone.”
“We don’t even know she’s up there.”
My uncle looks at me for a long moment. “You know she’s up there,” he says. “And so is Coyote.” He takes his bottle of wine and turns it upside-down, emptying the contents onto the packed earth. “Take this. You’ll need it.”
“What I need is for you to promise to stay at the bottom of the cliffs.”
He nods, but his chin lifts as he thrusts the wine bottle into my hands. “Tuck it into the back of your shorts. And, Jalen,” he says. “Be careful.”
I scramble up the cliffs faster than I have ever climbed before. The moon has shifted, leaving the side of the mountain so dark the ladders are barely more than black scratches on the surface. It doesn’t matter that I’m almost climbing blind; it’s like something else has come awake in me and I give myself to it.
A faint glow of light illuminates a chamber in the ruins. The skin on the back of my neck prickles, and my heart beats faster as get nearer. Voices – a man’s and a woman’s drift through the darkness. It’s the Shums and he’s saying something about his lovely corn maiden.
My blood roars through my ears as I turn sideways, squeezing myself through the T-shaped entrance. Immediately, I see the Shums standing with their b
acks to me. They’re blocking me from seeing something, and with a terrible certainty, I know it’s Paige.
Uncle Billy’s terrible prophesy flashes through my head. “You won’t help her and she’s going to die.” With a bellow of rage, I charge forward, pulling them off Paige. They scatter like rats at my attack and I drop to my knees, see the plastic bag covering Paige’s head. Her eyes are closed and I can’t tell if she’s breathing.
I try to rip it off, but my fingers fumble with the tape and then both Shums are on me, hitting and clawing at my hands. Someone punches me hard enough to make my ear ring, and a kick to my spine makes me grunt in pain. I ignore the blows and focus on getting the bag off Paige’s head.
Beside me, something falls to the ground with a low clunk. It’s the wine bottle. The one Uncle Billy insisted I bring. I fumble for it, grab it by the neck and swing it blindly.
It connects with one of them and breaks. There’s a scream of pain, and the series of blows raining on my head stop, Mrs. Shum cries, “Ray?”
“Hold on, Julia. I’m bleeding.”
“What?”
“My eye! I have to make sure there’s no glass in it!”
While they’re distracted I grab a shard and cut the plastic bag off her head. “Paige,” I say loudly, “wake up!”
She lies limp, doll-like and boneless. I shake her lightly. “Wake up!”
I know there’s only a few moments before the Shums attack again. “C’mon Paige,” I say and shake slightly harder. “Wake up!”
“Don’t be such a baby!” Mrs. Shum snaps. “Get him!”
Paige isn’t waking up. I lean closer, trying to tell if she’s even breathing. There’s no time to be sure. Placing the heels of my hands on her chest, I begin the compressions, pausing to blow into her mouth. C’mon, C’mon, C’mon. I will her to wake up. Moments pass, the panic rises in me. I push harder on her chest wanting to reach all the way into her and force her heart to start beating. Live. Oh, shit. Please Live.
My arms ache; salty sweat stings my eyes. I’m going to break her ribs if I push any harder, but I can’t help it. I blow more air into her lungs, and then she stirs. Her whole body seems to hiccup and her eyes open wide, locking onto mine with desperation and something like surprise.
“Welcome back,” I start to say, but then something hard smacks into the back of my head and the ground rushes up to meet me.
FORTY-TWO
Paige
I am nothing. There is nothing. And then suddenly, I am.
I open my eyes, try to figure out where I am and what’s happening. Jalen kneels over me, hollow-eyed and breathing hard. “Welcome back,” he says.
From where? My head aches, and my throat feels ringed with fire. I’m lying down as if I’ve been sleeping, but I’m not in my bed. And then in a flash it all comes back. Mrs. Shum’s face through the plastic—her eyes catlike and cold, watching me die.
Suddenly Jalen topples forward, landing on top of me. In the dim light of a lantern, Mrs. Shum is illuminated, standing over me with the tire iron in her hand. “There,” she says with satisfaction. “That ought to slow him down a little.”
I instinctively close my eyes and play dead. I feel the brush of Mrs. Shum’s leg as she moves closer, pulls him off me. I pray she hasn’t killed him.
“She must have texted him somehow, told him how to find her.” Dr. Shum says. “Check her cell.”
“The damn cell,” Mrs. Shum mutters. “We’ll have to get rid of it.” She nudges me with the toe of her shoe. “Why is it that you girls always turn out to be such colossal pains in the neck?” There’s a moment of silence, and then she says, “You ought to finish him now, Ray. I don’t think I hit him hard enough.”
My heart races, and I know that I have to do something, but what?
“Finish him?” Dr. Shum repeats. “That’s your area, not mine.”
“You think your hands are clean?” Mrs. Shum says. “You disgust me. You and your needs. Look what they’ve brought you.”
As they argue, I open my eyes a crack. Jalen lies on his back next to me. Barely visible is Dr. Shum, near my feet. My head pounds. All I want to do is close my eyes and sleep.
Lie still, Paige, Emily’s voice says in my head. Don’t be scared. This is just another game like the ones we played growing up. We played dead, but we always brought each other back to life, remember?
“Don’t you see,” Dr. Shum says patiently, “how ridiculous this is? For Christ’s sake, Julia, we’re getting a body count.” He sighs. “Emily was an accident, and Paige an unfortunate necessity. But Jalen? How are we going to explain it when he goes missing?”
“So we should just give ourselves up? It’s a little too late for that, Ray, isn’t it?”
“What other choice do we have? We have to stop. We have to stop now.”
“For a man who makes his living piecing together the past, you have remarkably little imagination.” Mrs. Shum says. “But I forgive you that, Ray, because that’s what married people do—they forgive each other. Our faults cancel each other out in the end. You don’t see it, but having young Jalen come here is actually the very thing that’s going to save us.”
There’s a pause. “You see that broken wine bottle over there? It tells a story. Two lovers who were about to be separated and decided to meet one final time here in the ruins. They’re drinking, fooling around, and things get out of hand.”
“We suffocated Paige with a plastic bag, Julia,” Dr. Shum says wearily. “How are you going to explain that?”
I nudge Jalen, but he doesn’t move. Wake up, I scream at him in my head. Wake up.
“That’s the best part,” Mrs. Shum says. “It was part of a terrible game teenagers play—a sex game—where they choke themselves on purpose to heighten their experience. Only this time it went too far, and Paige died. Jalen, out of remorse, threw himself off the cliff.” She pauses. “Don’t you see how perfect that is, Ray? We can testify to Paige’s state of mind. Even if they tie the plastic bag to us, it won’t matter. Paige has been in my studio. She could have taken it herself. All we need to do is make sure Jalen’s and Paige’s prints are on that plastic bag.”
“Julia…really?” He pauses. I can almost imagine him shaking his head. “The bump on her head…I don’t think…”
“And that’s the problem,” Mrs. Shum snaps. “You really don’t think. Do you have a better idea? I didn’t think so. Hurry, Ray, get his prints on the bag. We haven’t got all night.”
I hear the shuffle of Dr. Shum’s footsteps and then the rustle of the plastic bag. Opening my eyes a tiny slit, I can just make out Dr. Shum’s dark body bent over, pressing Jalen’s fingers into the plastic bag. I try to gather my strength, but my body feels like a marionette lying in a puddle of its own strings and parts.
“Maybe we should put the bag back over Paige’s head just to make sure his fingerprints are in the right place.” She pauses and then gives a tiny laugh. “You know, I’m beginning to frighten myself just how good I am at this. You best remember this, Ray, the next time another little girl catches your eye.”
“What’s left of my eye,” Dr. Shum says glumly. “It stings like shit.” Suddenly he gasps in surprise. “Let go. Julia, he’s got my arm. I can’t—”
I open my eyes as Mrs. Shum lifts the tire iron high and swings it at Jalen’s head. I open my mouth and force a primitive, guttural sound to come out. It’s enough to distract Mrs. Shum and the blow lands on Jalen’s shoulder. He grunts and releases Dr. Shum, who begins punching him in the face.
Mrs. Shum swings the tire iron at me, but I see it coming and roll to the side. It strikes the ground near my head with a heavy clunk. I struggle to my knees but then a wave of dizziness hits me and I fight hard not to pass out.
To the side, I glimpse Dr. Shum and Jalen locked together into one dark shape, struggling on the ground. I hear the sickening sound of fists striking flesh, and then they knock the flashlight into the hole in the floor and the room goes dark.
Something whines. Instinctively I block my head with my arm. There’s a cracking sound, like two rocks smacking together, as the tire iron connects with my forearm. Intense pain shoots up my arm, so strong it drops me to my knees. Something hot trickles down my arm. Blood.
“Will you just stay dead, you little bitch?” Mrs. Shum screams. I brace myself for another blow, but then she topples forward as Jalen tackles her from behind.
As Jalen knocks Mrs. Shum to the ground, I struggle to wrestle the tire iron from her hands, but she clings to it. Blood streams down my arm, and I use it like a weapon, letting it drip into her face, hoping it’ll blind her or gross her out or do something to loosen her grip on the tire iron…
Suddenly Jalen grunts and releases Mrs. Shum. There are more sounds of flesh striking flesh.
Without Jalen to stop her, Mrs. Shum gathers herself into a crouching position, shifts the tire iron in her hands, and then rises to her feet. In the beam of moonlight, her hair hangs wild and loose to her shoulders. As she stands over me, she seems gigantic, stretched like a macabre shadow. I wiggle feebly away from her, my knees scraping the stone ground with every step. She follows me with the unhurried steps of someone who knows that escape is impossible.
I know a moment of hope when Dr. Shum cries out in pain. Maybe Jalen will get away. At least one of us will live.
“Jalen,” Mrs. Shum says sharply. “Let Dr. Shum go before I bash in your girlfriend’s head.”
“Jalen,” I yell, “don’t! She’s going to do it anyway!”
“It’s over, Paige,” Mrs. Shum says gently. “Just hold still for a moment. I won’t miss again. I promise.”
“No,” Jalen yells.
I manage to move another few inches. The rock slices my skin. More blood—more evidence, I think, for the police. I feel Mrs. Shum’s shadow draw closer and look around in the darkness for Jalen, for one last look.
Suddenly Dr. Shum says, “Good God.”
I look around. Framed in the moonlight, a man stands in the entranceway. He’s naked except for a white loin cloth wrapped around his gaunt frame. His hair is long, very straight and silver. Where his eyes should be are two black holes. He lifts his arms and says something in Navajo. He clicks on a flashlight, illuminating the room, and then opens his mouth and gives a primitive, bird-like screech.
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