Cut Me Free

by J. R. Johansson

  “Start?”

  “Figuring out who this psycho is.”

  Without hesitation, I shake my head. “No. This is my problem, not yours. I don’t need help.”

  “Right.” He nods. “And I’m sleeping on your couch until we figure it out.”

  “No,” I protest. Standing, I turn toward the door to escort him out, but he gets there first, puts his hand on it and stops me.

  “If not for you, let me do this for Sanda.” His eyes are pleading and kind. “She deserves a chance at a normal life. You saved her already. Let me be the hero for her this time.”

  The sound that comes from me is a half sigh, half groan, but he knows he’s won. With a grin, he leans against the door and reaches out to touch the tips of my fingers with his.

  “Fine,” I mutter, and jerk my hand away with a shake of my head. His grin falters a little, but not much, and I see that familiar glint of determination in his eye. I’d been keeping him at a very safe distance, and somehow in one night he’d knocked down most of the barriers I’d built to protect myself. I refuse to be left completely unguarded though, and I’m keeping that last one up with all my strength. It is the only protection I have left. “Help me clean up, then I’ll go get Sanda.”

  * * *

  As I dump the rest of the rose petals in the garbage, I hear Cam moving in my room and a scraping of metal on metal. We haven’t spoken since I agreed to let him stay, both of us working to clean up the nightmare in grim silence. I can’t face the closet again, not right now. I sit on the couch with the Piper-Puppet in my lap. Closing my eyes, I wait. After a few minutes, he sits down and rests his arm next to mine. Not touching, but close enough for me to sense his presence even with my eyes closed.

  “We’ll stop him. I don’t know how, but we will.”

  I swallow and press my head back harder into the soft couch cushion, wishing I could sink down inside it and disappear from this madness forever. I want to hide from the new horrors in my apartment and my life, but as the message said, I can’t hide from them anymore.

  In fact, I’m certain I’m the only one who can stop them.

  23

  Letting Cam sleep on the couch was the best idea ever. I don’t think I’ve slept this well since I first saw Sanda in the park. Feeling safe is a wonderful thing, an unfamiliar sensation. With my new stalker I’m probably less safe than I’ve been since I escaped the Parents, but with Cam it doesn’t seem that way. I just hope letting him stay isn’t putting him in danger, too. Not that he’d leave even if I begged him, because I tried.

  Cam ran home for a shower and to see Jessie while I dropped Sanda off with Janice. He’d called his aunt last night to tell her he was staying with a friend, but from the fact that she’d already called three times this morning, I’m pretty sure she suspects something is off. When I step out the front door, he’s waiting in fresh clothes. His hair is damp. Before I can say a word, he gets to his feet and takes off walking.

  Without a glance over his shoulder he says, “You coming?”

  I watch his back for a moment before hurrying after him. It feels backward. Usually it’s him trying to catch me, not the other way around.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “We have a lot to do.” Cam turns and walks backward so he can face me as I jog toward him.

  “Like what?”

  “I thought we’d start with the Free Library.”

  I swallow and try really hard to focus on the plan. No getting excited. A real library? I’ve only read about them in books … ironic, I know. I’ve wanted to find one since I arrived in the city, but with Sanda, I’ve never had the time. “But why?”

  He doesn’t slow down. “We’re going to check up on your parents and find out if Sanda’s villain survived your little bonfire.”

  I freeze in my tracks. “They’ll have that information in the library?”

  A sad smile crosses his face. He stops and walks the few feet back to me. “They have computers. We can search news reports. I’d offer to do it at my place, but after I didn’t come home last night, I think it might be awkward to bring you with me. Aunt Jessie didn’t give me enough room to take a breath while I was there, so the library is our best option. Lucky for you, I’m a sucker for cute girls with serious problems.” He stops a foot in front of me and leans forward, his voice lowering to a whisper. “I’m happy to help you.”

  “Thank you. I need a good friend.” I can see from his expression that he caught my not so subtle hint, but he nods without comment. Pushing back the confusion that fills me when he stands so close, I step to the side and walk next to him. I can’t afford to sort through my emotions right now, but he’s a good guy, and as much as I hate to admit it, I do need his help.

  * * *

  The Free Library at Rittenhouse Square is smaller than I expect. It takes up the bottom two floors of a high-rise apartment building, which explains how I haven’t realized it was here. Still, I love every inch of it. Each level is packed with shelf upon shelf of books. The entire place smells like books. I love it. I want to move in and live here with all the other worlds I used to escape into.

  Cam walks straight to the computers without a second glance at the shelves. I’m sure computers are useful, but next to all these warm, beautiful books they seem so cold and clinical.

  The moment Cam starts clicking away at the keyboard, I remember what he said those cold machines could tell us. I move to his side and study the screen. Before I can even begin to wonder what on earth a “Google” is, he starts firing off whispered questions like an extremely quiet machine gun.

  “Where did your parents live? State? Address? Anything you can give me will help.”

  I swallow hard. “Wyoming. The closest town was named Greenville.”

  His gaze is on me even as his fingers fly across the keyboard. “How long ago?”

  “May of last year.”

  “Can you tell me their names?”

  “Douglas and Betty Nelson.” I speak the names I’ve never uttered and stare at the floor with unseeing eyes. The only reason I even know their names is because Nana told me. I try to ignore the fear that seeps through my marrow. They shouldn’t still have this power over me. I won’t let them.

  “Betty is dead.”

  I don’t look up, but the tightness in my chest eases a bit. “How?”

  He doesn’t answer, and I wonder if he’s as afraid to tell me as I am to hear it. “Haven’t found any details yet. I’m still checking.”

  “And him?”

  Cam’s hands stop. His shoulders tense as he bends closer. I glance up at the screen and everything slows to a halt—my breathing, my blood, my heart, my brain. Every piece of me the Father tried to control. His ice-cold eyes watch me. The image dated only a month ago. He sneers at my belief that I could ever survive him. He mocks my attempt at escape.

  Sam hums so loud in my head it drowns out all sound. His scared voice echoes in my skull as it did in the attic. We are alone, Sam and I. The Father is here and no one will protect us … just as I failed to protect Sam.

  “Charlotte?” Cam’s voice sounds distant and panicked. His arm drops around my shoulders and I don’t even flinch. I’m back in the attic and everything I’ve worked for seems so unattainable, so far away. His voice is a whisper on the wind, drawing me toward him through the miles and states between us even as his warm breath moves across my ear. “Please, you have to breathe.”

  His fingers brush my chin as he turns my face toward him. His hazel eyes replace the Father’s blue ones. The warmth and concern I see there pull me back as the edges of my vision begin to dim. I gasp in a deep breath and blink a few times as he crushes me in his arms.

  “Thank God,” Cam whispers against my forehead.

  The air in my lungs is like a portal back to the present and I can’t get enough. I’m here now, in the living, breathing city of Philadelphia, not the barren woods and empty trails of Wyoming. I am free and this is my home.

&nbs
p; I pull my bolt out of my pocket and wrap it tight in my palm. Gathering the strength to stand on my own, I pull myself from under Cam’s arm and step toward the computer screen. Forcing my voice not to shake, I face this new truth. This new world seems darker and more dangerous now because I know the Father lives somewhere in it.

  “He’s alive,” I say.

  “Yes,” Cam answers. He stands behind me like a support beam inside a wall. I can’t see or feel him, but somehow his presence keeps me upright. “But he isn’t here. This isn’t him.”

  I turn from the screen, but I still shiver from the Father’s eyes on my back. “How can you know?”

  “Because he’s in jail.” Cam bends his knees slightly until I raise my eyes to his. “He’s on trial for his wife’s murder.”

  I shake my head. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. I have my fingertips on all the puzzle pieces, but I can’t turn them into the full picture. “But he didn’t…”

  “You can’t know that.” Cam shrugs. “The details of her death aren’t public yet. Maybe they both survived and he killed her in anger after you escaped. Either way, it answers our question.”

  I can see in Cam’s eyes how much he wants that possibility to be the truth, but I don’t. Deep down I need it to have been me. As terrible as it sounds, I want the end of her cruelty to have been by my hands. After everything she did, after she didn’t care that I was starving, after she took me to live with him and let him lock me in an attic—after everything the Father did and how she even supported it. She chose drugs over me and then the Father over me. Time after time, she proved that her needs, her addictions meant more to her than I did. Then—after what she let him do to Sam—I, her shield, turned into a weapon. I want to be the one that stole her life to make up for everything she’d stolen from me.

  A girl walks from the rows of shelves on one side of the room to the other. I’m suddenly very aware that we’re not alone. People quietly move up and down the aisles, studying books, typing on keyboards. They make me feel exposed. I want them to go away so I can sort all this new information into something logical, something I can understand or control.

  Only one fact matters right now—the Father may still be alive, but he’s become the prisoner I used to be. He can’t come for me, can’t hurt me and the people I care about, not anymore. And if the Father isn’t breaking into my apartment and leaving me black presents with dark messages, then who is?

  I whisper, “Check the man who had Sanda.”

  Cam gives me a grim nod. With two clicks the Father’s face disappears from the screen and I can breathe easier.

  “What can you tell me?”

  “It was on Clarion Street.”

  “Okay, and what was the date?”

  “Maybe five weeks ago?” I try to piece together the timing of the last few weeks for more specifics, but my brain refuses to cooperate and I come up empty. “His name is Steve Brothers, if that helps.”

  He types for a few moments in the computer. “Nothing under that name, but that doesn’t mean anything. Let me adjust these dates a bit.”

  After about a hundred more clicks he stops. “Is this it?”

  A black-and-white photo of Brothers’s charred building is right there on the screen. It is even creepier with the color stripped out. “Yes.”

  Cam skips through the article. I skim the words as fast as my eyes can read them, but as hard as I’ve tried to teach myself how to read quickly I still can’t keep up with Cam. I only catch a few words here and there as he flies down the page. Then suddenly the little arrow on the screen freezes over a single paragraph.

  In a stroke of luck, the fire happened during the middle of the day when none of the tenants of the building’s three apartments were home. No injuries or fatalities were reported.

  Clenching my hands by my sides, I read it again and again. Each time hoping it will say something different than the last, hoping it will say he’s dead. I remember the dark thrill in his eyes when he saw me in the mirror at his apartment. He’s alive and in the city, and that alone makes him the prime suspect.

  Cam lowers his chin and meets my eyes. I realize from his expression that he’s been speaking. I didn’t hear a thing, nothing but my heart plummeting through to the floor of the library basement below us and landing with a sickening thump at the bottom.

  “What did you say?” I ask.

  “This is a lot of information to process at once.” His brow furrows and he brushes his knuckles against my forearm. “You’re freezing. Are you okay?”

  “No. Do you expect me to be?”

  Cam shrugs out of his light jacket and drapes it across my shoulders. It’s filled with his warmth, and the smell of him. Tugging it tight around me makes me feel significantly better.

  So many things about this don’t add up. How would he know my real name or find out where I live? “Are you sure this is right? Any chance they didn’t see him in there?”

  Sam’s whimpering fills my head with images from Brothers’s apartment. He doesn’t want to admit the possibility any more than I do.

  Cam shakes his head and gives me a rueful grin. “No. Missing dead bodies in a burned-down apartment is kind of frowned upon. I’m sure they were thorough.”

  My fingers tug the jacket tighter against my neck. It’s still filled with Cam’s heat. He’s warm and I’m cold, inside and out.

  “Wow, I’m kind of terrible at killing people,” I mutter, low enough that even Cam has to strain to hear.

  “I’m not sure that’s a bad thing,” he says, and laughs.

  “It’s not looking so great right now.” When my hands tremble on the buttons of the jacket his grin fades, and he moves my hands aside and buttons it for me before turning back to the computer.

  “Let me check a couple of other things.” He glances around to make sure no one is watching and pulls a small black square out of his pocket. He pushes it into one of the holes on the front of the computer below the desk.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “It’s a flash drive.” At my blank look, he continues, “It has some programs that help me dig deeper than a normal person can for information.”

  Within a few seconds, a bunch of new boxes pop up on the screen and he is flying through them so fast it makes me dizzy. Half of them are filled with some other language that doesn’t even seem to use complete words.

  After about a minute, I stop watching the screen and watch Cam’s expression. The way his scowl keeps deepening fills me with a sense of dread. Finally he steps back, hits a few keys, and the picture returns to the one we started on. The flash drive disappears back into his pocket and he shakes his head.

  “Steve Brothers doesn’t exist.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “So he is dead?”

  “No. He never lived. At least not the Steve Brothers that was receiving mail at that address.”

  I can’t quite get my throat to release air, and my words are a whisper. “I don’t understand.”

  “I checked back through every record that exists on him: no credit cards, no cell phone contracts. The police are looking for him since they found some ‘articles of interest’ when cleaning up the fire, but everything leads to a dead end. It’s a fresh identity—a sloppy one, definitely fake. Steve Brothers is even less real than Charlotte Thompson.”

  “Then who is he?” My voice is a whisper as the implications fall into place. Who knows how long he’s been doing this under different names in different places? How many other kids has he hurt or killed? Kids like Sanda. Kids like Sam. I slip the bolt back in my pocket as anger lends me strength in its place.

  “I don’t know and neither do the cops.” He rubs a palm against his eye. “But I guess we’ve figured out who’s leaving you presents.”

  “Fine. So it’s Brothers or the guy who calls himself that. He knows where I live. He’s b-been in my home.” Staring down, I avoid Cam’s eyes. I don’t think I can take them reaching into me right now. Filled with fresh
fire, I remove his jacket and hand it to him. I straighten my spine and head toward the library doors. “Now it’s time to make sure he won’t come back.”

  24

  “Will you be able to find him?” Cam asks. “He’s obviously comfortable in hiding,” he adds, his long legs easily matching my fastest stride as we round the corner toward our destination.

  “I don’t know,” I answer, without raising my eyes. I’m afraid he’ll try to stop me if he sees me preparing to fight. Even my voice sounds grim. “But I have a good idea of where to start.”

  I can only think of one way to stop Brothers, and that’s to turn him from the hunter into the prey. It’ll at least make it a lot harder to spend so much time breaking into my apartment if he’s watching over his shoulder all the time. But none of it will matter if I can’t discover where he’s been hiding out.

  “Are you sure you want to be a part of this?” I don’t stop walking, but I’m ready in case Cam does. He should turn back now. It’s the right thing—the smart thing—to do. “I’ll understand if you don’t.”

  Cam doesn’t respond and I shiver, afraid of what he’ll say when he does. But his warm jacket drapes back around me again and I have my answer.

  * * *

  The bar is nearly empty. I guess it isn’t exactly a Sunday afternoon hot spot. Other than the bartender, there is one guy passed out on a nearby table and another playing pool by himself in the back.

  When I walk up, the bartender’s bloodshot eyes go from me to Cam. He shrugs and presents us with two highly questionable glasses. A tag with the name JIM printed in large black letters hangs diagonally off the front of his shirt. “What’ll ya have?”

  “I need to know about one of your customers. His last name is Brothers and he’s been in here more than once, sometimes with a young girl.” I keep my voice low, leaning across the bar so he can hear me.

  I swear I see a flicker of recognition in his eyes at the name, but he turns away and rubs his grimy towel over a couple of glasses. “If you ain’t payin’, you need to leave.”

  Digging in my pocket, I bring out a hundred-dollar bill and slap it on the bar. “Now do you remember him?”