by Alana Terry
“Hey, Mom,” he replied, leaning down to kiss her cheek. Jordan had said his mother owned the diner. They had the same blue eyes, and I could see the similarities in their smiles as her lips curved warmly when she looked up at him.
“What brings you in today?” she asked as she drew back. “Apple pie and ice cream? I made both fresh this morning.”
Jordan returned her smile. “No. I thought I might start with a Jolly sundae and then maybe some lunch.”
Something shifted in her expression, and her voice took on the soft and soothing cadence of a mother speaking to a wounded child. “One of those days?”
Jordan shook his head. “Not exactly.” He nodded in my direction. His mother’s eyes slid my way and she looked me over, seeming to notice me for the first time. Recognition sparked in her eyes. “Don’t tell Dad.”
Looking mildly affronted, she patted his chest. “Don’t worry. I know how your father is. He could be blind and mute on an island by himself and still find a way to tell somebody a secret.”
She sat down on the edge of my bench, which caught me by surprise, and just looked at me for a long, silent moment before shaking her head. “It’s just so hard to believe.” She stretched out a hand toward me, and I tensed as she brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. She bit her bottom lip. “It’s so good to see you all grown up. We all thought . . .” Tears gathered in her eyes, and she drew herself up with a sharp breath. “I better get those sundaes.” She dashed back into the kitchen without another word, and I watched her go, curious about her abrupt exit.
Jordan was giving me another one of those odd looks as he sat back down. “She cries sometimes when she’s happy, and she doesn’t like crying in front of people.”
That I could understand.
“Nervous habit?” he asked, and I looked at him in confusion. He nodded to my hands, and I realized I was shredding my napkin into confetti.
I forced myself to stop. “Not a fan of crowded spaces.” I brushed the small pieces off to the side. “Or people watching me,” I added when I felt his attention following my nervous movements.
“Sorry.” A moment of silence stretched between us before he said, “I know you don’t like questions, but can I ask you something?”
I hesitated. “Um . . . you can ask, but I don’t promise an answer.”
He considered his question carefully before putting it into words. “I guess I was under the impression that you don’t really like to be touched, but you seemed fine shaking Georgetta’s hand and letting my mom touch you. And you seem pretty comfortable with Marx.”
“That’s not a question,” I pointed out. “It’s an inaccurate observation.” None of those actions came naturally to me. My first instinct was always to flinch away, and when someone offered their hand, my mind tripped over my instincts and warnings, and I had to make a conscious effort to stretch out my hand.
He tilted his head curiously. “Inaccurate, huh?”
“Completely.” I shot him a narrow-eyed look as I shredded the rest of my napkin, daring him to comment. It was a small outlet for my growing nervous energy, and it was better than bolting out the door.
Speaking of doors . . . I did a quick visual check for exits. Front door, bathroom door—I peered over the back of the booth into the kitchen—rear kitchen door. Windows . . .
“Are you scoping out the exits?” Jordan asked with interest.
“Are you watching me scope out the exits? Because I thought we just discussed that I don’t like that.”
He grinned. “My bad.”
Jordan’s mother returned with a tray of food. She set a massive bowl of ice cream in the center of the table, a bottle of chocolate syrup, a bowl of sprinkles, and two small metal bowls of miniature marshmallows. “Enjoy, and try not to hit any of the other patrons.”
I looked between the different bowls in confusion, and it took a moment for the memory to find its way to the surface:
Jordan sat on the kitchen stool on the opposite side of the island, watching with wide blue eyes as I squeezed the chocolate syrup from the bottle into the bowl of ice cream. There was more chocolate than ice cream.
“It’s gonna overflow!” he shouted.
The bottle made an empty sucking sound, and I tossed it in the trash. I scampered to the far end of the counter with my bowl of miniature marshmallows and smacked the counter. “Go!”
Jordan and I began flicking marshmallows as fast as we could, aiming for the bowl. Tiny white marshmallows plopped into the chocolate river. Gin laughed and chased the ones that overshot the counter and bounced across the floor.
“Don’t eat them, Gin!” I shouted. “They’re dirty!”
She looked like a chipmunk with her cheeks stuffed full of tiny marshmallows. She mumbled something that sounded like “the bore is queen. Nuns wept.”
“The floor is clean, Mom swept?” I asked.
She nodded emphatically and chased a few more that landed on the floor.
“Stop missing so much and she won’t eat them!” Jordan announced. He shot his last marshmallow into the bowl and declared with his arms raised, “I’m the winner! I got twenty-five in the bowl!”
I crinkled my nose at him and threw my last handful of marshmallows at his head. He laughed and tried to catch them with his mouth.
“All right, Tinker Bell. Time for fairy dust,” I announced.
Gin clapped her hands excitedly as she skipped over and climbed on the stool beside me. She had on her sparkly blue dress and strap-on fairy wings that she’d worn for Halloween last year. I grabbed her legs to balance her when she wobbled.
She dumped a handful of sprinkles into her hand and then dusted the bowl of ice cream. “I love fairy dust!” she declared. “It’s so pretty!” She licked the last few sprinkles from her palm and added, “and tasty!”
I took her hand and helped her off the chair. I grabbed three spoons and handed them out. “And go.” We shoveled our spoons into the heaping bowl of deliciousness.
“Holly Marie!” Mom’s furious voice called from the doorway, freezing everyone mid-bite. “Jordan Bartholomew Radcliffe!” Jordan’s eyes widened to the size of saucers, and he almost spit the ice cream all over the counter. I covered my mouth as I giggled around a mouthful of marshmallows and chocolate. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Jordan turned as red as a tomato as he swallowed and looked up at my mother. “Sorry, Mrs. Cross. We were just . . .”
“Having a snack!” I finished for him. I shoved a spoon at my frowning mother. “Want some?’’
The memory faded and I found myself staring down into the small bowl of marshmallows. “This was our sundae.”
“Yeah,” Jordan grinned. “We made it a few times. Your mom always threatened to stop buying ingredients for it, but she never did, which made me think it didn’t bother her as much as she wanted us to believe.”
“How did it end up here at the diner?”
“When I was having a particularly hard day after losing you and Gin, I would come here and Mom would make this for me. We called it the Jolly sundae. It wasn’t the same without the two of you, but it helped remind me of better days,” he explained.
Jolly. Jordan and Holly. He’d named it after the two of us.
“The syrup is all you,” he prompted.
I bit the corner of my lip and smiled as I picked up the bottle of chocolate syrup and started squeezing it into the bowl of ice cream. “I still love chocolate and marshmallows,” I admitted as I filled the bowl to the rim with chocolate and then set the bottle aside. I dipped one of my marshmallows into the chocolate ocean, popped it into my mouth, and licked the sticky sweetness from my fingers.
Jordan grinned. “Yeah, marshmallow hot chocolate was always one of your favorites. I kept some around in case you ever decided to come back. Do you remember the rules?”
He really had believed I was still alive somewhere in the world for all those years. That took a remarkable amount of faith.
“I
think so.”
He glanced at my hand. Oh, he wanted me to do the thing...
I hovered one hand close to the table, drawing out the anticipation, and then tapped it lightly. “Um . . . go.”
Jordan lined his marshmallows up on the table and flicked them one at a time, sending them soaring into the bowl.
The first marshmallow I tried to flick into the bowl hit him square in the forehead. I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh. “I’m so sorry.” The stunned expression on his face was priceless.
He picked up the offending marshmallow and ate it before flicking one at me. I squeaked and ducked, and it bounced harmlessly off the back of the bench. I picked it up and tossed it back at him.
I tried to flick a few marshmallows into the bowl, but I had horrendous aim. I spotted Marx out of the corner of my eye, and a sneaky idea popped into my head.
I squinted and lined up a marshmallow. I flicked it and it flew across the room and bounced across his table. I snapped back into my seat before he could see me, but I was pretty sure he heard the mischievous laugh I tried to muffle with my hand.
“Are you flickin’ marshmallows at me?” I heard him ask.
I leaned forward and peered at him with a barely contained smile. I sent another marshmallow across the room, and through no skill of my own, it plopped into his mug of coffee. How did that even happen?
Jordan grinned. “Score.”
Marx looked from his coffee to me with a puzzled but amused expression. “How on earth did you make that?” He shook his head and gulped down the coffee, marshmallow and all. “At least it wasn’t my chocolate milk.”
“Okay, time for the fairy dust,’’ Jordan announced. It seemed wrong to do it without Gin. He scooped up a handful of sprinkles and slid the rest of the bowl to me. “I think we should do it together.”
“Okay. To Gin.”
“Gin,” he repeated solemnly. We coated the top of the sundae in sprinkles.
“Excuse me,” a woman said, and I smelled the fresh stench of cigarette smoke on her clothes before I even saw her. Her dark hair was coiled in a bun on top of her head, and she wore an apron over her orange waitress uniform. “I was told to give this to the redhead.” She smiled. “You’re the only redhead in the room.”
She set a glass of red liquid on the table that smelled nauseatingly like fruit punch. My heart thumped a little faster just looking at it sitting on the table in front of me.
“Who . . .” I cleared my throat uneasily and tried again. “Who sent this?” My gaze flitted around the room, taking in the faces. It couldn’t be a coincidence, not after my last fruit punch had been drugged.
“He wanted to remain anonymous. But he did tell me it was to remind you that red is a beautiful color for your skin, and asked me to give you this.” She held out a folded napkin, and I took it after a second of hesitation.
I unfolded it and choked on the fear that constricted my throat. Written in black capital letters were three terrifying words: WELCOME HOME, HOLLY.
Chapter 37
I LIFTED MY EYES FROM the napkin to Marx across the room, and he was out of his chair in an instant. He took the napkin from my frozen, slack fingers and read it.
Anger tightened his features. “Who gave this to you?” he demanded from the waitress, and his tone was sharp enough to make her flinch.
She sputtered nonsensical sounds before managing, “I don’t know. A man. Tall. Really tall. Out back while I was smoking.”
“How long ago?”
“Um . . .” She glanced at the thin watch on her wrist and shook her head. “I don’t know. Five minutes maybe?”
Marx tossed the napkin on the table in front of Jordan, who had risen to his feet at the urgency in Marx’s voice. Jordan picked it up and looked it over before glancing at me.
“Stay with Holly,” Marx instructed as he drew his gun.
He didn’t give me a chance to object before weaving through the kitchen and out the rear door. Jordan pulled out his cell phone and called the sheriff’s department for backup. I stared after Marx as frantic thoughts tumbled through my mind.
This man had killed more people than I could count; the list of names Jordan had given us was proof of that, and he’d killed four people in the two months that he’d been haunting my footsteps. One of them a cop.
“How many people has this man killed?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. Jordan hesitated to answer, and I snapped impatiently, “How many?”
He pressed a button on the screen of his cell phone and answered grimly, “Including your family, the two men in the park, the officer in New York, and the landlord Marx mentioned: fifty-one, that we know of.”
Fifty-one people.
I didn’t want Marx to go after this man alone, because I wasn’t sure he would come back. “You have to go help him.”
Jordan shook his head. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
“No. That’s a really bad idea. Backup is on the way.”
On the way wasn’t good enough. I sprang off the bench and darted for the back door, pausing just long enough to grab a knife off the counter. I heard Jordan call after me before the door slammed shut.
The rear door spat me out into a parking lot with a large dumpster. I gripped the knife tightly as I crept around the dumpster and peered down the alleyway that bridged the diner with the barbershop next door. Except for a few crushed boxes and crates, it was empty.
I spun in a quick circle as I tried to decide whether to go left or right. Right. I sprinted through the connected parking lots, checking the narrow alleyways as I went. There was nothing in them but debris and garbage cans.
“Holly! Stop!” Jordan bellowed from somewhere behind me.
I guess he decided to come after all. But I wasn’t stopping so he could force me back inside the diner. Marx couldn’t have vanished unless he ran into one of the buildings or into the woods.
The killer was too intelligent to trap himself inside a building; the woods were the most likely option. But if Marx had followed the killer into the trees, we would have a very difficult time finding him.
I came to a stop along the tree line and pulled out my cell phone. No bars. Seriously? What kind of backwater, uncivilized town was this? Jordan had used his cell phone in the diner . . . maybe it was just my phone. I smacked it. It didn’t help.
I cast Jordan a wary glance as he plodded to a stop beside me and then looked back at the trees.
“It’s not safe for you out here, Holly. We need to get you back inside.”
“We have to go look for him. He’s out there somewhere with a psychotic serial killer, and—”
“No, that’s not a good idea.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t get to tell me no.”
If he thought he could prevent me from looking for Marx, he was delusional. I started toward the trees.
“Holly, please don’t make me stop you,” he pleaded as he kept pace with me. He was clearly wrestling with whether or not to physically restrain me before I got to the woods.
I pointed the knife in his direction, letting the sharp tip communicate the unspoken threat. “Don’t touch me.”
He clenched his jaw as his eyes flickered to the blade. “He doesn’t want you looking for him. He wants you safe inside.”
“I make my own decisions.”
Something stirred in the woods to our left, and we both stopped. Jordan drew his gun, and I gripped my knife with both hands.
Marx stepped out of the woods with a frustrated expression on his face, which quickly gave way to fury when he saw the two of us standing in the bar parking lot.
I exhaled a breath of relief. He was okay.
Marx’s eyes focused on Jordan as he closed the distance between us. “I told you to stay with her, not bring her outside where the killer can get to her.”
“It was my choice,” I explained.
“Of course it was,” he grumbled with a reprimandi
ng glance my way. “And I’m pretty sure we just had this knife conversation.” He plucked the knife from my hands, and I stumbled forward a step as I tried to hold onto it.
“It was either that or a spoon,” I snapped defensively.
“Or, instead of runnin’ around with weapons you don’t even know how to hold properly, you stay where I tell you to for once.”
Yeah, that was going to happen. “I’m not the one who marched off into the woods by myself after a serial killer who’s murdered fifty-one people,” I shot back.
“Any luck tracking him?” Jordan asked.
“Trackin’ is not my forte. Maybe your men will have better luck.”
Jordan holstered his gun and nodded before stepping away to place a call. His phone worked just fine out here, I noticed, as I listened to him direct reinforcements to search the woods.
Marx frowned at me. “What were you thinkin’ runnin’ after me?” I offered him a stubborn scowl. I hadn’t done anything wrong. When Jordan hung up, Marx suggested, “Let’s get her back to the department. I want her locked down so there’s no chance of him gettin’ near her again.”
“I don’t want—”
“Holly,” he said sharply, cutting me off. “This is that moment that if you fight me on matters of your safety, I will pick you up and carry you.”
I stiffened. “You wouldn’t really—”
“Try me.”
I looked at Jordan for help, and he shook his head apologetically. “I’m with him on this one.” Great. They were agreeing with each other now, which left me the odd one out. I think I preferred it when they argued.
I sighed. “Fine.”
We swung by the diner to pick up my book and a few takeaway containers of food for lunch before returning to the car.
The sheriff’s department was a standalone building about a seven-minute drive from town, and it didn’t look nearly as eerie as it had when we first arrived last night. We followed Jordan into the quiet building.
“Since we’re staying here for the night, we’ll need to figure out the sleeping arrangements. There are cots downstairs in the cells and the chairs aren’t terribly uncomfortable. I’m sure we can scrounge up a few extra blankets and pillows.”