Follow Me

by Kathleen Barber

  I grabbed at the entry table to steady myself and forced myself to think pragmatically. Audrey dying like this, on my floor and at Max’s hand, would lead to questions I didn’t want to answer. I would have to explain how Max had come to have the keys to my apartment, and it would be impossible to explain my connection to Max without Camp Blackwood coming up. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed the parallels between Audrey’s unfortunate demise and what happened that summer. It wasn’t the same, of course, it wasn’t my fault, but would anyone believe that? My future with the firm, already on thin ice after that morning’s dismal performance, would be destroyed. I would be lucky if I escaped with my law license intact. Everything I had worked so hard for, gone. All because of Audrey.

  Audrey had ruined too many things for me already; I couldn’t let her take my career, too. I had to do something. Think, Cat, think. How could I prevent the truth about Emily Snow from emerging?

  Hiding Audrey’s body was out of the question. I wasn’t a criminal lawyer, but I had watched enough Law & Order to know I would never be able to completely rid my apartment of the evidence. A murder investigation would begin and end at the base of those stairs.

  But what if it was just an accident? It was plausible. Those stairs were a hazard under the best of conditions, and Audrey had been wet. I glanced around the room and noticed a half-empty wine bottle on the kitchen counter. Of course. Audrey had been drinking, she was in the bath, and she had fallen. It was tragic, but sometimes life was.

  It would have been a perfect explanation, if not for Max. He couldn’t be here. He was unpredictable, and, more than that, he was the connection to what had happened at camp, the reason that Audrey’s accident would seem like something more sinister. My only shot at salvaging this awful state of affairs hinged on extracting Max from the situation before anyone learned he was there.

  “When did this happen?” I asked. “Have you called an ambulance?”

  “I just wanted to talk to her,” he said, still stroking Audrey’s face.

  “That’s a nonresponsive answer,” I snapped. “Tell me: Have you called 911?”

  “No,” he said hollowly. “I was trying to stop the bleeding. My hands were … But you. You can call. Now.”

  I looked down at Audrey, so pale and still in his arms. There was so much blood, even more blood than … I had to turn away, a lump forming in my throat.

  “Max, it’s too late.”

  “What?” he said blearily. “No. No, it can’t be. We can save her. We just have to—”

  He began shifting Audrey’s body in his arms, reaching one bloody hand into his jeans pocket for what I assumed was his phone. Panic leaped in my chest. I couldn’t let him make that call, not until we were on the same page.

  “Max,” I said as sternly as possible. “No.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” he demanded, looking at me incredulously.

  “Look at her,” I commanded. “No one could recover from a head wound like that.”

  His expression turning vicious, he snarled, “And you know something about head wounds, don’t you?”

  “Now is not the time—”

  “I know what you did,” he growled, leaning forward while still clutching Audrey to his chest. “Emily Snow didn’t just happen to fall off that trail. She didn’t stumble and wind up brain damaged. You pushed her.”

  I shook my head quickly, automatically. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I saw you, Cathy. I saw you.”

  Something snapped rubber band–like in my brain, and I struggled to keep my voice level as I said, “That’s impossible.”

  He laughed coldly. “Is it? Because I twisted my ankle at the start of that hike and had to wait for the rest of you to finish. Do you remember?”

  My stomach dropped because I did remember. We had only been a couple of yards out when Max had tripped over a root and fallen to the ground with a sharp cry of pain. Emily Snow had tossed her white-blonde hair and laughed, saying, Walk much, Max? I’d felt bad for him as he limped back to the trailhead with one of the counselors.

  “I was resting in the picnic area,” he continued. “Do you remember where those picnic tables were? Level with the parking lot, above the trail. There was this great view of the river, and I was sitting on one of the tables taking pictures. I heard you all below, so I hopped to the edge with the idea I would get some shots of everyone. I was doing that when I noticed Emily stop to tie her shoe. You hung back with her, which I thought was weird because you two weren’t friends. And then you pushed her.”

  The edges of my vision faded, and for the briefest of seconds, I could feel the fabric of Emily’s camp T-shirt beneath my palms, the sharpness of her shoulder blades as I gave her a quick shove. She hadn’t screamed, hadn’t even shouted. There had only been a sudden, shocked inhalation as she fell wordlessly off the trail and tumbled down toward the riverbank.

  I hadn’t meant to cause permanent injury. I hadn’t even meant to cause minor injury. At most, I thought she would roll down the slope and into the river, emerging wet, muddy, and embarrassed.

  Which was what she deserved. She should know humiliation for once. Emily Snow had spent the first part of the summer tormenting me, calling me “freak” and “loser,” yanking chairs out from underneath me and slamming doors in my face. As camp wore on, I’d grown numb to her abuse, and so, like the pretty little sociopath she was, she’d changed her tactics. She’d started pouring on the sugar, lending me her fashion magazines and inviting me to play truth or dare with her group of similarly pretty friends.

  I fell for it. When she offered to do my makeup one afternoon, I sat eagerly on her lower bunk, thrilled to be welcomed into her inner circle. As she dusted pink blush across my cheeks, she’d told me that Dylan Carter, the cute camper from Texas, had a crush on me. In retrospect, I could hear how she was swallowing her laughter, could see her friends hiding smirks behind their hands. But I’d been oblivious, and had taken her advice to approach Dylan that evening in the cafeteria.

  He had laughed in my overly made-up face. Everyone had. I spun around, vision blurring with tears, and discovered, to my ultimate mortification, that even the camp counselors were laughing.

  Four days later, that humiliation still fresh in my mind, Emily had paused on the trail to tie her shoe. I was lagging behind the group, wanting to fade into the forest, and when she saw me, she asked in a singsong voice how Dylan was.

  All I wanted was for people to laugh at her for a change. Instead, she cracked her head open on a jagged rock, and then she proceeded to strike more rocks as she rolled down toward the riverbank, leaving a bloody trail behind her. Freak accident, everyone said. What a tragedy. One-in-a-million chance that she ended up brain damaged, but that’s what happened.

  Emily’s friends accused me of pushing her. It’s the weirdo’s fault! they screamed, pointing pink-polished fingernails as mascara-blackened tears stained their cheeks. Everyone else shifted their eyes away when I insisted she had tripped and fallen. The same counselors who had laughed when Emily tricked me watched me warily and wouldn’t let me be alone with anyone else. Even my father, when I opened my mouth to tell him my side of the story, had shushed me with the admonishment “Some things are better left unsaid.” I knew that everyone thought I pushed her, but no one knew for certain.

  Except, apparently, Max.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I said. “Just like I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt Audrey. These were both just accidents. Unfortunate, tragic accidents.”

  “They’re not the same at all,” he protested. “You pushed Emily. Audrey fell.”

  “Think about how this looks, Max. You were stalking her, and—”

  “I wasn’t stalking her.”

  “No? Explain those photographs. Explain how she’s dead in your arms, with you covered in her blood. No one will ever believe you.” I paused to allow the weight of my words to sink in and then pointed to the open bottle of wine on the kitchen counter
. “But maybe it was an accident. Maybe she was drinking and fell. Maybe you were never here, and she died alone.”

  “She’s not dead!” he shouted, yanking his phone free from his pocket. “Fuck, Cathy, what is wrong with you?”

  I couldn’t let him make that call. I couldn’t have the police coming here before I’d convinced him to leave, couldn’t have them finding him blood-soaked, manic, and babbling about Emily Snow. I would do anything to stop him.

  I lunged for him, managing to smack the phone from his hands before slipping on the blood-splattered floor and landing hard on my back. Sharp pain radiated from my spine and I struggled to catch my breath. Before I could gather myself, Max threw his body over mine, pinning me against the floor while he reached for the phone, which remained just out of his grasp.

  “Get off me!” I grunted, struggling.

  “She trusted you,” he barked, saliva flying from his mouth and landing on my face. A vein bulged in his forehead as he stared down at me, his expression one of twisted rage, and then he grabbed a fistful of my hair, painfully yanking my head up before smashing it down against the floor. Stars burst in my vision, and I cried out.

  He made another grab for the phone, and despite the mind-bending pain in my head and the room swirling around me, I forced myself to take advantage of his momentary distraction. I threw my body weight at him like Audrey and I had learned to do in self-defense class, knocking him off balance, and then scrambled atop him, using my knees to hold him down. He spluttered with fury, fingers grasping at the edges of the cell phone, sending it spinning out of his grasp.

  “You bitch,” he growled, turning on me. Clawed hands shot at my face, scratching my skin and reaching for my eyes. I looked around desperately for something that could subdue him. The wine bottle. It would mean releasing him, but at least then I would have a weapon.

  I slapped him hard across the face to distract him, and then jumped to my feet and snatched the bottle from the counter. I whirled around and brought it down on Max’s head with all of my strength. The bottle didn’t shatter as I had envisioned, but it did make a satisfying thump as it connected with his skull. He collapsed, blood trickling from the contact point.

  I sagged against the counter. With the scratches on my face and the bloody scene at the base of my stairs, no one would question me if I claimed I hit him in self-defense. He murdered my best friend, and then he came for me. I had no choice. The partners might be displeased with the attention it brought to the firm, but they wouldn’t fire me over it. I was the victim, after all. And there would be no one to tell them about Emily Snow.

  I turned my attention to Audrey’s motionless body. My heart twisted, and I was surprised to feel a flicker of relief. I would never find myself under Audrey’s manicured thumb again.

  “Rest in peace,” I whispered.

  Then I saw her chest rise shallowly. I blinked. So Max hadn’t been delusional; she was still alive. I crept closer to her and peered down at her waxy face, shockingly pale and surrounded by blood. Her lungs were still working, but what about the rest of her? How could she ever be the same after a head wound like that? I knew Audrey. She wouldn’t want to be a vegetable, to have to be spoon-fed and wear diapers for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t want to live like Emily Snow.

  Killing her would be a mercy, the last thing I could do for her as a friend.

  In a daze, I crossed to my couch and selected one of my plumpest throw pillows. I remembered how Audrey had admired the gray-and-cream-striped fabric, had complimented me on it. I returned to her body and knelt over it, holding the pillow in my lap.

  Even smeared with blood, she was beautiful.

  Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and dull. She rasped, “Help me.”

  My throat closed. God, she was awake. How long had she been conscious? Had she heard me telling Max not to call for help? Had she heard the truth about Emily Snow? Had she seen the scuffle between Max and me, seen me crack him over the head to stop him from calling 911?

  I fingered the fringe on the edge of the pillow. I could still end this. I could still walk away a victim.

  “I need your help, Cat,” she whispered. “Please.”

  I need your help.

  How many times had Audrey said that to me before? How many times had Audrey asked for my assistance with no regard for how it would impact me? Hadn’t she done that that very morning? Hadn’t she ruined my career prospects without a second thought? The truth was that Audrey wasn’t a very good friend. She never had been. She had hurt me, casually and without remorse, time and time again, and I knew she would never stop.

  Unless someone stopped her.

  “I can’t help you,” I said quietly, and pressed the pillow down over her face. “Not anymore.”

  She struggled weakly, her pale limbs barely moving. My stomach shifted queasily. Was this really how Audrey Miller, the most sparkling, vivacious woman I had ever known, was going to go out? Not with a bang, but with a whimper? I closed my eyes, telling myself it would all be over soon. Then I could start putting the pieces of my life back together. I would make myself a priority, much like Audrey had always made herself a priority.

  Dimly, I heard a scraping noise behind me. Still holding the pillow over Audrey, I opened my eyes and turned toward the sound just in time to see the bottom of the wine bottle swinging at my face.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  AUDREY

  Nick set a cardboard box bursting with my clothing down in the center of the empty floor and looked around. “This is a nice place. Much better than that hole in the ground you used to call home.”

  I set down my own box and surveyed the space, happiness flooding my body. My new apartment in a recently constructed building on the waterfront had floor-to-ceiling windows, which were a welcome change from the small, ground-level, bar-covered windows at my old place. More important, these windows were on the fourth floor—meaning no aspirational stalkers could be peering through them, watching me sleep.

  “I know,” I said. “I should have held out for something like this the first time around. The doorman alone is going to be worth the cost of rent.”

  “Just getting out of that basement is worth it. I always hated staying over there, and that was before I knew that nutjob was hiding in the shadows.”

  I glanced at him. “I didn’t know you hated staying over.”

  “It was the location, not the company,” he said, tousling my hair.

  “Careful,” I said, bringing a hand up to protect the still-tender spot on my scalp.

  “Sorry, babe,” he said, wincing. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “But … hey, Nick, are we okay? I feel like we’ve been waltzing around the elephant in the room.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said, suddenly very interested in the toe of his sneaker. “I mean, if you can forgive me for calling you a bitch and all that other stuff I said, then, yeah, we’re okay.”

  “I’ll forgive you for that if you forgive me for thinking you broke into my apartment.”

  He looked up and laughed. “I don’t know, Aud. That was pretty fucked up.”

  “Leave me alone,” I protested, pinching him. “I was really scared.”

  “I know,” he said, catching my hands and looking at me seriously. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I got caught up in my own bullshit jealousy. But you can count on me from now on, I promise.”

  “Thanks, Nicky,” I said, stretching up on my tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “I missed you.”

  “And now that all your new DC friends are in jail, you need me, huh?”

  “Max isn’t in jail,” I corrected him. “Cat, on the other hand … well, let’s hope she’s not getting out anytime soon.”

  “Good riddance,” Nick said with an elaborate shudder. “That chick always gave me the creeps. I hated the way she used to follow you around all the time in college.”

  “I thought Cat was sweet,” I said, my voice catching as I remembered our de
cade-long friendship, all the fun we’d had together, the secrets we’d shared. When I thought of all the nights we’d slept together under the same roof, I got chills. Had she ever stood beside my bed, pillow in hand, before? When she said she’d heard me talking in my sleep—had that made her want to smother me? How many other times and other ways had Cat wished me harm over the years? And how had I never known how she really felt about me?

  “Christ, Audrey, the bitch tried to murder you. She wasn’t sweet.”

  “I said I thought she was sweet. Listening comprehension, babe. Try it.”

  “Whatever. You sure can pick ’em. Her and that psychopath you were sleeping with.”

  I flinched, getting the same strange feeling in the pit of my stomach that I always did when I thought about Max: a mixture of fear, disgust, and pity. The extent and dedication of his fixation with me was alarming, and I still felt like throwing up when I thought about him standing in my apartment that night, watching me while I was completely vulnerable. But there was something sad about it. Max had truly believed he loved me. His feelings had been real—and, for a time at least, so had mine. It felt insane to admit, but a part of me actually missed Max.

  “Be fair,” I said softly. “Max isn’t a psychopath. He’s … well, he’s not wired right, that’s for sure, but he’s not a psychopath. It’s not like he was going to hurt me.”

  “You don’t know that. Just because he didn’t hurt you doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have.”

  “He never would have hurt me,” I said with certainty. “He’s not violent. And he loved me too much.”

  “I worry about you, Audrey. You’re too trusting.”

  “Not so trusting I didn’t get a restraining order.”

  “The first smart thing you did since moving to this town,” Nick said, shaking his head. “But, seriously, I’m glad you’re sticking around. I was worried you were going to pack it up and head back to the Big Apple. I wouldn’t have blamed you, but I would have missed you.”