TEN DAYS

by Jenna Mills

  "Because I told her he would not. I promised her."

  Outside the sun shone. Inside, the chandelier cast the foyer in soft light. But the shadows, they fell darker.

  "There is only one question that matters," Dauphine said quietly. "Which is worse? For you to walk away—or for you to end up like the others? Which would hurt Nicky more?"

  The chill was automatic, the answer a knife to my heart.

  "If you really care about him..." Dauphine said, and I looked at her, the woman who raised him, and knew she believed what she was saying. "I can take you to the airport now, while he is gone. You can write a note, explaining you had to leave early."

  And deep inside, I knew. I knew what I had to do. And what would then happen. "He'll hate me."

  Dauphine reached for my hand, and squeezed. "Nothing is forever, child. Now is only now."

  #

  I never got a chance to pack.

  Within minutes of me going upstairs, the doorbell echoed through the house, and I hurried back down to find two uniformed officers on the porch, an older man and a middle-aged female.

  "Are you Kendall Lawrence?" the female asked.

  Beyond the wide porch, the wind whipped through the trees, sending Spanish moss into a frenzy. But I stood there, so very, very still. "I am."

  "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this," the female replied, "but there's been an accident...."

  Into the Unknown

  We drove. We drove south of town, paved roads and strip centers giving way to two-lane highways and towering cypress trees. We drove as traffic dwindled, leaving us one of only a handful of cars.

  Ahead, fat white clouds bubbled up from the Gulf of Mexico, muting the sun. A few drops of rain fell, but nothing steady enough to be a drizzle.

  "How much further?" I asked.

  Dauphine studied the navigation open on her phone. "Twenty-three miles."

  I pressed the accelerator, zipping around a slow moving pickup.

  "He was only following up a lead," I murmured, trying to make sense of what the deputies told us. "I don't understand what happened."

  Dauphine continued fingering the beads wrapped around her fingers, black like the ones she'd given me, but shaped like an actual rosary. She'd been quietly chanting since we left Aidan's house almost an hour before.

  "The cold," she said in that oddly melodic voice of hers. "I felt it the very first day he brought you to me, like someone walking on his grave."

  I swerved around a bend in the road, careful to avoid the rough shoulder separating blacktop from murky canal.

  "But Aidan—Nicky—he is not one to listen to others."

  Another time I might have laughed at the understatement. Aidan Cross—Nicky Ramirez—was not a man to step aside and let someone else lead.

  "Has he always been like that?" I asked. "Or did it get worse after Laurel?"

  Dauphine brought a bead to her mouth for a kiss. "Always, but yes, more after Laurel. He was so broken, poisoned with guilt for a weakness that was not his own."

  My heart squeezed.

  "He punished himself," she said. "He punished himself as brutally as if he truly had forced those pills into her mouth, and held her face beneath the water."

  The road narrowed, angling toward a drawbridge over a wide canal. Beyond, the tree line thickened. There were no signs of a town.

  "I don't know how to leave him," I whispered. It's what everyone had done, his entire life. "I don't know how to just walk away."

  "Isn't that what you were planning anyway?" Dauphine asked. "Come into his life, dig it up, then go back to yours?"

  She made it sound cold and ugly. Premeditated. That my goal was to tear Aidan to shreds, then leave.

  "Not like that," I said. "I didn't know. I thought I'd get to know him—"

  "Then walk away," she said. "That was the plan, and it is what you must do."

  The policewoman's words played through me. There'd been an accident. Aidan was hurt. In the hospital. Too easily I could see him, see him lying on a small sterile bed, his eyes closed.

  Alone.

  Always alone.

  Go to him, was all I could think. Reach for him, touch him. Be there.

  Stay.

  Up ahead, a crow hovered over the remains of some kind of carcass. "I have to tell him," I said, swerving to my right. "About the doll. He needs to know—"

  "Why?" Dauphine swung to look at me, her disapproval so strong I didn't need to glance back to feel the sting. "How's that going to help him? What is him knowing going to change?"

  "Everything," I said, but the word fizzled on the way out. He was already consumed by guilt.

  "Yourself. You will be making yourself feel better," she said as we sped over the rickety drawbridge. "But Aidan—how will he feel, knowing someone has come after you...because of him?"

  The memory slipped through me, the way he'd reached for me the night before, held me through the darkness. I'd seen the turmoil in his eyes, the remnants of the nightmare from which he'd never fully awakened.

  I thought it was happening again.

  "There is only one way to avoid the darkness," Dauphine said more quietly. "I think you know that."

  A car whizzed by. Another. "You said the others came to you," I said, pressing the car to its limits. "That they were scared, too."

  Four of them.

  Four women who entered Aidan's life.

  Four women carried away.

  Dauphine's fingers kept working the beads. "They thought I could make it stop. They thought I could give them potions or spells..."

  Like she'd given me.

  "—to make everything better."

  Ahead, a green highway sign told me fifteen more miles to the small town where Aidan had gone in search of Ashley.

  But where someone had found him, first.

  Found him, and hurt him.

  "But what is inside people," Dauphine murmured, "cannot be changed."

  My heart was beating so fast.

  "What if it was never about them?" I asked. All along I'd seen the pattern through one lens, the lens that incriminated Aidan, the common denominator among the four women.

  But just because Aidan was the common denominator did not automatically make him the instigator.

  "What if it was never about hurting them?" I asked as my phone started to ring. "What if all along it was about Aidan?"

  Dauphine twisted toward me.

  I squeezed the wheel tighter, ignoring the repetitive ringing. "Making him hurt, suffer...."

  Sloan.

  My phone started ringing again.

  It was all so clear now. The game. The game they both admitted playing.

  Everyone else was just a pawn.

  Laurel committed suicide. Danielle vanished. Taylor was in an accident. Ashley...she disappeared, as well.

  Sloan had access to them all.

  "Betrayal and disappointment," Dauphine said, "they lead to dark places."

  The phone kept ringing. Over and over. It would ring five times, then stop. Ring, stop. And I realized it then, the persistence with which someone was trying to reach me. And everything inside me went cold.

  Keeping my eyes on the road, I fumbled for my purse and fished out the phone, glancing down—

  The sight of Aidan's name made everything inside me start to shake.

  "Hello," I rushed as dark possibilities stabbed through me. It was the hospital. They were calling. Something bad had happened—

  "What are you doing?"

  His voice. It was his voice, harsh and urgent. "Aidan?"

  "I asked you to wait for me at the house," he said. "Where are you going?"

  Dauphine grabbed my arm.

  "To you," I said. "I'm going to you. They told me about the accident—"

  "No."

  "What?"

  "Who told you?" he barked. "What accident?"

  Everything was spinning, faster, faster. "Two deputies." I was there on the road, trees whizzing by, clouds g
athering. "They came to your house. They told me you were hurt, that I needed to come right away—"

  He swore viciously. "Kendall. Turn around. Turn around right now, and go back to the house—"

  Dauphine's fingers dug into my arms. I glanced at her, saw the dark pools of her eyes. "No," I said. "I'm almost there."

  "I wasn't in an accident."

  Five words. That's all they were. But they closed around me with horrifying force, locking me there, in the moment, the car. "What?"

  "There was no accident," he said precisely. "And no Ashley either. It was all a set-up to get me away from you. None of it was real."

  Slow motion. I went from racing fast down the highway to moments that stretched forever.

  "I need you to turn around," he said, his voice full of quiet command. "Now. I can see where you are—"

  Because he was still tracking me, with the GPS in my purse.

  "And I'm coming. But I want you to turn around and go back to my house."

  The pieces fell together with horrifying reality.

  You were warned.

  You should have listened.

  Slowing the car, I veered onto the uneven shoulder and turned, backing up to complete the u-turn. "Okay," I said. "I turned around."

  "I'm going to stay on the phone until I'm there," he said as I raced past a truck going the opposite direction. "Now I need you to look around. Do you see other cars?"

  "No—" I rechecked the rearview mirror—just in time to see the pickup I'd passed moments before execute a sharp u-turn. "Wait," I breathed. "Yes."

  Dauphine twisted around.

  Aidan swore. "Listen carefully. I want you to go to the nearest town. Find people. The police station if you can—"

  "They're gaining on me," I said, alternating between the rearview mirror and the narrow road ahead of me.

  "How close?"

  I gunned the engine. "I don't know. I'm going faster—"

  "No—"

  I clenched the steering wheel. "I won't let them catch me—"

  "No!" he said again, but this time it was a shout. "The road is too dangerous."

  The truck ate up the blacktop behind me.

  "You have to slow down, Kendall. If they try to run you off the road, you can't be going fast—"

  The pickup slammed into us from behind.

  "They're behind me!" I shouted over Dauphine's scream. "They hit me—"

  "I'm coming—"

  The second impact was from the side, and it shoved my car onto the shoulder, the phone from my hands. I clung to the wheel and pressed my foot to the accelerator—then saw the truck veer toward me again, and remembered what Aidan said.

  I braked hard, but the impact of metal against metal knocked us off the road anyway—and straight into a wall of cypress trees. I braked as hard as I could—then everything stopped.

  Went white.

  Then dark.

  The Seduction of Darkness

  Heat. Wave after wave washed over me, each searing deeper than the one before. A low buzz. A crackle. Vaguely I was aware of both, but a numbing cocoon wrapped me tight, promising to never let go.

  Voices. Maybe I heard them. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I only dreamed. Imagined. A siren. Shouting. Everything swirling into a monotonous hum, leaving only the feel of hands on my face, the body against mine.

  Safe. It was all I could think. I was safe, and I didn't ever want to leave.

  Something soft then, featherlight against the side of my face. And warmth, not heat, warmth that came from inside me.

  Please.

  The word. It hovered there, nudging against the veil of reality.

  Wake up, Kendall. Wake up!

  I didn't want to. I didn't want to wake up, and I didn't want to move, only to stay there, in the dreamlike sanctuary—

  "I'm here," he promised. "I'm here, and so help me God you're okay."

  His voice. Dark and drugging, ragged, it was close but far away, and I found myself reaching for it, reaching for him—

  Except I didn't need to reach. I only needed to open my eyes. I found him there, crouched over me, the blue of his eyes as dark and fathomless as his voice.

  "Aidan," I whispered, and then I started to cough.

  He gathered me against him, held me close. "Sh-h-h." It was only then that I realized I was in his lap, and we were on the ground, against a tree, while around us, the world burned.

  "I don't understand," I whispered, but the memories hit me then, of the car and the tree, the collision, and I did. I understood. I remembered. "Oh, God—Dauphine?"

  "She's okay." His hands on my face, soft, steady. "And so are you."

  Breathing hurt. The acrid air burned. I glanced around and found her sitting against another tree with a deputy kneeling in front of her. By the road, a small crowd gathered. Further away, my rental car burned.

  "I got here as fast as I could," Aidan said hoarsely. "The deputy was already here. He had you out."

  Memories played, hazy, disjointed. "I tried to stay on the road," I told him, and then he was pulling me to him again, and holding me tight. "I tried to get away."

  "I know." In the distance, sirens sounded. "My fault," he ground out. "I should have realized it was a set-up."

  "No," I tried to tell him. "There was no way you could have."

  "Yes." His voice was dead cold. "I should never have left you. I should have sent someone else. I should have realized..."

  His voice trailed off, the unspoken hovering between us.

  "I didn't believe he'd actually try to hurt me," I said quietly. The realization that he had, that Sloan had pretended to be my friend, my ally and protector, only to turn around and run my car off the road, rocked me.

  "It's not about hurting you," Aidan said.

  Him. Aidan. It was all about him. Hurting him. Punishing. Stripping any happiness from his life.

  No matter what the collateral damage.

  No matter who.

  "You have to go to the police," I said, eyeing the deputy with Dauphine. As if sensing my gaze, she looked over, her eyes dark and shell-shocked. "You have to tell them it's Sloan."

  A rough sound broke from Aidan. "I'll take care of it."

  There was something ominous about his voice, chillingly vague about his choice of words. "Aidan," I whispered as the sirens grew louder. "Nicky."

  The blue of his eyes glowed.

  "I'm okay," I said, and then his hands were back on my body, skimming gently.

  "You took a bad hit to your head."

  Mechanically, I lifted a hand to the side of my face, where pain throbbed and blood was already scabbing over. "Nothing serious."

  Violence flashed through his eyes. "But it could have been."

  I looked away, to the smoke billowing from the car up to the steely grey sky.

  "Kendall," he said, as two firetrucks finally sped into sight, followed by an ambulance. "There's something I don't understand."

  My mouth twisted all by itself. "Just one thing?"

  But he didn't smile, and the dark glitter in his eyes didn't soften. "Mama Dauphine—why was she with you?"

  Night 8

  Endless Shades of Cold

  The doll's head lay against the grey comforter, frizzy blond hair tangled, eyes open and unseeing. Her arms and legs lay in a pile. Her torso lay naked, charred.

  Aidan sat there, on the edge of his bed, for a long, long time. Silence breathed between us. Silence screamed. I wanted him to say something. Anything to break the awful vacuum of nothingness. But I didn't. I didn't say anything. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the look in his eyes, the same dead cold I'd heard in his voice. Or maybe it was the unnatural stillness, the way he sat without moving, without even seeming to breathe, chained there, chained by the darkness Dauphine warned about.

  The paramedics had insisted on taking me to the hospital for a thorough exam. They wanted to make sure I wasn't bleeding internally, that my organs weren't damaged.

  After the all-clear, the
police had questions, and I gave what answers I could. Yes, there was a truck. Yes, the driver ran me off the road. Yes, it was intentional. But no...I didn't catch the make of the pickup, only that it was dirty and white. And I didn't get a visual on the driver, had no idea if it was a man or a woman. The windows were too dark, the moments fracturing too fast.

  Dauphine remembered nothing from the time of impact until she awoke in the grass several feet away, with a pair of worried fishermen hovering over her.

  By the time Aidan and I returned to his house, afternoon had fallen into evening, the sky had opened, then closed, leaving the muggy blanket of night.

  Sitting next to him on the edge of his bed, I watched him, not sure whether I should try to tear away the chains—or if they were all that held him together.

  "Aidan," I finally said, because I had to say something before the silence smothered us both. The wall was back, the one between us, the one I'd been working to tear down. "Talk to me."

  His eyes met mine. The edges of trauma remained. "It's late and you need to sleep—"

  "No." That was not what I meant—or wanted. "Tell me what you're thinking," I said, edging closer. "I can see something in your eyes."

  His mouth twisted. "You don't want to know."

  "Yes, I do."

  He reached for me then, his hands to my shoulders. "I'm going to take care of this. I'm going to take care of everything."

  My throat tightened. "You mean you're going to call Edwards."

  He stiffened, and I had my answer.

  No.

  "Aidan," I said. "This has gone too far. It's not a game anymore. People have gotten hurt."

  He ripped away from me, surging to his feet. "You think I don't know that?"

  I stood, but did not approach him. "There's only one way to stop him—you have to turn him in." Call Detective Edwards, and tell him everything. Give him new information, a new angle.

  If Aidan didn't, I would.

  But instinct, or maybe something else, caution, warned me not to lay down the ultimatum.

  "You can't let Sloan get away with what he's done," I said instead.

  Aidan's shoulders rose, fell. "Trust me, no one is getting away with anything."