Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  Jordan pressed his hand to the driver’s window and said with a calm he was clearly struggling to hold onto, “Open the door, Holly.”

  “No! I’m going to find him.” It took me two tries to fit the key into the ignition. I turned it and the car purred to life. I looked around, trying to figure out what to do next. Was there a manual? A colored pamphlet with three-step directions?

  “It’s not safe for you to do this. I need you to come back inside,” Jordan persisted. He walked around the car, tugging on all the handles. I ignored him as I searched the car for an instruction manual. “Holly, unlock the door.”

  Driving didn’t require a college degree. I had seen people do it. I could figure it out. There were pedals on the floor, and I slouched in the seat to touch my feet to both of them. The engine revved. Okay, that meant I should be going somewhere, right?

  Why wasn’t I moving?

  I glanced at the stick thing in the middle with the letters on it that people usually messed with before driving: P for . . . park. R for . . . rewind. No, reverse. D for . . .

  “Do you even know how to drive?” Jordan demanded as he came around the front of the car.

  Drive! That was it. I pushed the stick to Drive and sat up in the seat so I could see better. The car started to roll backwards down the sloping parking lot. Okay. That wasn’t what I expected. I thought it would go forward. I twisted around in the seat to see another parked car directly behind me.

  “The brake, Holly! Hit the brake!” Jordan shouted.

  Which one was the brake? I slid back down in the seat and stomped on the right one. I let out a yip of terror when the car lunged forward. Apparently, that wasn’t the brake. I stomped on the other one and the car jerked to a stop.

  I peered over the dashboard to see Jordan standing in front of the car with his hands on the hood. Good grief. I had nearly run him over.

  “Okay!” he said, breathing a little heavier than he had been a moment ago. “I’ll drive you. I promise I will drive you wherever you wanna go. Just please don’t do that again. Okay?”

  “I don’t believe you!” I sat up in the seat, and my foot slipped from the pedal. The car immediately started rolling backwards again.

  “Park. Park!” Jordan shouted. “Put it in park!”

  I winced as the rear end of the car banged into the car behind me and came to a jolting stop. At least it stopped. I pushed the stick back up to the “P” and puffed out a breath. I was going to kill myself if I tried to drive this thing; I couldn’t even get it out of the parking lot.

  Jordan hung his head between his shoulders as he rested his hands on the hood of the car. I had dented his car. “Please, unlock the door and let me in,” he said with strained patience.

  I glared warningly at him through the window. “If you’re lying about driving me to get me to open the door so you can carry me back inside, I will pepper spray you.”

  He dropped his head to the hood of the car and groaned quietly. It took him a second to pull himself back together and look at me. “I promise I’m not gonna carry you back inside.”

  “Or drag me?” Because I certainly wouldn’t walk back inside. That didn’t leave him many options.

  He squinted at me. “I wouldn’t do that. I promise I’m not gonna touch you. Now open the door and scoot over.”

  I hoped he was telling the truth. I unlocked the driver’s door and moved into the passenger seat. I sat as close to the door as I could and gripped the canister of pepper spray in my jacket pocket.

  Jordan opened the door and slid into the car. His legs fit perfectly into the space that had been too long for me. He didn’t have to slouch to touch the pedals. He cast me a look of pure frustration as he closed his door.

  “You realize Marx is gonna kill me,” he grumbled.

  “Tell him I forced you to do it.”

  One blond eyebrow crept up. “Yeah, he’ll believe that.” He pulled out of the parking lot with infinite ease—nothing like my jerky driving style. He glanced over at me. “You can be kind of terrifying, you know that?”

  “It’s a talent.”

  We drove toward the town in silence. I watched out the side window for any sign of Marx. The road branched into a “Y” as we came closer to town. Jordan started to veer toward the left when I pointed and asked, “What’s that way?”

  “It leads to the other end of town or out of town. I doubt he would’ve taken that way.”

  “Can we take a look anyway?”

  He swung the car back and took the right branch. The headlights glinted off something in the trees ahead of us, and fear made me straighten up in my seat. We rolled to a stop along the road, and I peered out through the window. A dark-colored car was stranded in the ditch with the front end folded around a tree.

  “Geez,” Jordan gasped. “Stay in the car. Lock the doors.” I flung my door open and hopped out. “Holly!” He grumbled something beneath his breath as he slammed his door and walked around the car.

  The maroon color of the vehicle was muted by the darkness, but I recognized Marx’s car. I slid down the slippery bank into the ditch with as much grace as I could manage and stumbled through the weeds. I slipped and fell once, but managed to get my feet beneath me.

  “Be careful, Holly.”

  My heart was pounding too heavily in my head as I rounded the car. I was so afraid I would find Marx inside the car—dead. I didn’t think I could handle any more dead bodies. Jacob had been difficult enough to come to terms with, and I hadn’t cared for him nearly as much as I cared for Marx.

  The passenger door was hanging open, and the glass from the window sparkled across the ground and passenger seat in the headlights of Jordan’s car. I grabbed the door frame to steady myself and looked inside the car. I saw Jordan peering in the other side with a flashlight. The beam danced over the empty vehicle, landing on the streak of red that was smeared across both seat cushions.

  My throat constricted with dread. The blood stretched across the fabric like drag marks, as if someone had pulled Marx from the car.

  “Somebody drove him off the road,” Jordan pointed out. “There are white paint marks on the side of the car.”

  “Could he be in the hospital?” I asked.

  Jordan shook his head. “I would’ve heard it over the radio.”

  I ran my shaking hands through my hair. As I looked around the interior of the car, my eyes snagged on the shiny silver ring sitting on top of the dashboard. There was no way it had landed there during the crash. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. Inscribed on the inside of the ring was a small message: Shannon <3 Richard.

  His wedding ring. He never took this off his finger. None of this had been accident. Someone had purposefully driven him off the road and then dragged him from the car. And they had left his ring as a message for me to find. I suddenly remembered Marx telling me that Cambel had been dumped off at the café by a white vehicle.

  The killer had him.

  I swayed a little on my feet. The killer took him.

  Familiar ringing pierced the quiet night, and Jordan and I both looked up. It wasn’t either of our phones. Jordan tracked the sound to somewhere on the other side of the road. “Is that Marx’s phone?”

  “Yeah.” But if neither of us were calling it, who was?

  “I want you to get back in the car and lock the doors. I’m gonna be less than ten feet away, and backup is coming, but I don’t want you standing out here in the dark. There are too many things that could happen, and this wasn’t an accident.”

  “Okay.”

  He climbed up the embankment as I rounded the car. I paused when I saw something out of place in the woods: a shoe. I glanced at Jordan’s receding back as he crossed the street in search of the phone, and then backtracked to the shoe lying on the ground. I slid the wedding ring into the pocket of my jeans as I crouched down. It was one of Marx’s haphazardly tied shoes.

  The killer had dragged him this way.

  I lifted my gaze a
nd stared into the ominous stretch of dark woods. Familiarity trickled through me. I knew these trees. I had passed between them before, but I couldn’t remember why or when.

  I stood and took a few steps forward. Fear weighted my footsteps, but I pushed forward in the hopes that I would remember why these particular trees called out to me from my memory. I ran my hand over the rough bark of the trees as I ventured deeper. I couldn’t see anything more than twisted, gnarled shadows in the moonlight that filtered down through the limbs.

  Although my eyes had no idea where I was going, my feet recognized the well-traveled path. Memories came back with every step. I used to walk these woods every day on my way to Jordan’s house, and he’d done the same on his way to mine. This was the path I had taken the night the killer hunted me through the woods.

  I paused with my hand on the tree that I remembered hiding behind. I had been so terrified I could barely breathe, and I had hunkered down behind this tree to pray, and to try to wipe my mother’s blood from my hands.

  If I looked back, I wouldn’t be able to see the road I’d run across to escape from the killer all those years ago, but I knew Jordan was standing there now. I could hear his distant, worried voice calling out for me.

  It wasn’t a coincidence that we found Marx’s car in the same spot where Izzy and Paul had found me. I’d been taken from the killer that night, so he’d driven Marx off the road and taken him from me.

  I was pretty sure I knew where the killer had taken him. If I kept walking, I would find him, but I would also find a monster I wasn’t strong enough to fight alone.

  I needed to get help.

  I turned to go back when a crack of a twig made me freeze. I looked around the dark trees warily as I slid my hand into the pocket of my jacket. My fingers curled nervously around the canister of pepper spray. Maybe it had just been an animal.

  I took a step forward and another sharp crack to my right brought me up short. I saw the dark figure lunge an instant too late. He barreled into me, and I flew forward a few steps from the force of the impact, but my scream was cut short when a cloth-covered hand closed over my mouth.

  I inhaled a sickeningly sweet chemical smell that made my head spin. Oh, God please no, not again. The world faded around me, and the last thing I heard was a man’s voice whispering in my ear, “Mine.”

  Chapter 39

  I BECAME AWARE OF A cold, soft surface beneath me as the heavy fog began to lift. My mind felt lethargic, like I was pulling every thought through a layer of tar.

  I shouldn’t have been lying down. The last thing I remembered was the scent of old pages, leather bindings, and yellow brick roads.

  I cracked open my eyes and tried to focus, but the walls were nothing but a meld of shifting shadows and flickering lights. Nausea swept over me, and I let my eyelids slip shut again.

  I lay there on my back on the soft surface as awareness dripped slowly back into my mind and body. My head throbbed painfully with the strangely slow beat of my heart, and I was so cold.

  I tried to move my arms, but something metal jingled and my wrists snagged above my head. I peeled my heavy eyelids open, wincing at the overwhelming light and tipped my head back to look up. There was something shiny around my wrists that bound them above my head to a piece of wood. It took my sluggish mind a moment to find the right word: handcuffs.

  Panic scorched through me, tightening my airway until I could barely breathe and burning away the disorienting fog. I drew my legs into my body as I struggled into a sitting position and sagged back against the wall.

  I pinched my eyes shut as the pounding of my own heartbeat felt like a jackhammer going off inside my skull. This was as bad as the morning I’d woken up in the hospital after being drugged.

  Drugged . . .

  I’d been searching the woods after Marx went missing, and someone had clamped a sweet-smelling cloth over my mouth and nose. I couldn’t help but breathe it in, and it had made the world around me tip and slide into darkness. The last thing I remembered was his voice whispering in my ear, “Mine.”

  I released a shuddering breath. The killer had found me.

  I forced my eyes open and took in my blurry surroundings with little attention to detail: four walls, boarded windows, broken furniture. One open door. No one else in the room with me.

  I wasn’t in immediate danger.

  I took in the smaller details next, hoping to glean something helpful from them. There was a candle burning on the remnants of a dresser in the corner, casting dancing shadows across the walls in the otherwise dark room.

  Graffiti and water stains disfigured the lavender walls, and there was a crack stretching from the ceiling to a three-inch hole in the wall. The bed across the room lay in shambles. I knew this room. Even in such a despairing state, I recognized the room I had shared with Gin for nine years. The killer had brought me home.

  The bed frame I was handcuffed to was my own. I looked down at myself—something I had been avoiding since I awoke—and realized why I was shivering as I leaned against the wall. It couldn’t have been more than thirty degrees in the house and half of my clothes were missing: my socks and shoes, my jacket, and all my layered T-shirts. I was left in my jeans and my thin white tank top.

  The fact that I’d been unconscious while the killer stripped away some of my clothes and then handcuffed me to a bed catapulted me to the brink of panic. I twisted violently in the handcuffs, trying to pull free, but only succeeded in slicing open my wrists. The chain clanked against the wood but refused to give.

  I choked on a sob and pressed my forehead to the wall. Wrenching and twisting like a snared animal wasn’t going to free me. I needed to get myself under control.

  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid, I recited silently. “Do not be afraid.”

  I sucked in a few regulated breaths through my nose and counted to four as I released them.

  Breathe . . . just . . . breathe . . .

  I focused on counting my breaths until the panic ebbed enough that I was able to think beyond the desperate urge to escape.

  I still had some of my clothes on, and there was no pain aside from the throbbing in my head, which I was pretty sure was a side effect of the drug he’d knocked me unconscious with. He hadn’t hurt me—yet. If I could just keep my thoughts straight, I might be able to find a way out of this.

  Handcuffs. I wondered vaguely if they belonged to Marx; he carried his with him everywhere, just as he did his gun. I looked around the room for any sign that he’d been there. Maybe he was just in a different room. Maybe he wasn’t dead.

  Lord, please let him be alive.

  I was in no way strong enough to break the handcuffs, but if I could slip my hands out of them, I would at least have a fraction of a chance. I gritted my teeth and twisted my wrists slowly, but I couldn’t get my thumb joint through the hole.

  If I couldn’t pull my hands free, then maybe I could loosen the board the handcuffs were looped through. I wrapped my fingers around the edges of the board and tugged on it. It creaked, and I froze, my eyes snapping to the doorway.

  I held my breath and listened, but if the killer heard the noise, he wasn’t coming. I pulled harder, but the board refused to give. I tried applying my weight to it and pushing on it, but that was even less effective.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Of all the cheap pieces of junk furniture in the world, you have to be the durable one.” I peered behind the bed and groaned inwardly at the sight of screws. What was I going to do with screws?

  I looked at my fingernails. I didn’t have anything else. I shifted on the bed and tried to reach the screws with my fingers. My fingertips grazed one of the two screws and I tried to slide my fingernail into the groove. The angle wasn’t quite right; it would break my nail.

  I picked at the wood around the head of the screw with my fingernails, carving out small gouges in the wood. I created a small furrow around the screw head an
d then tried to grip the screw with my fingertips and twist. It didn’t budge.

  A strange sound—like someone punching their fist into their palm—accompanied by a strangled groan came from somewhere down the hall, and I stilled. Someone coughed and wheezed.

  “Wake up,” an eerie voice demanded.

  “Oh, it’s just you again,” a familiar Southern voice replied, but it sounded breathless and pained. He coughed again. Marx. He was alive. “So what’s the plan then? Are you just gonna beat me until I stop breathin’?”

  “Tempting, but no,” the killer replied in a velvety soft voice. “I’m going to let you watch—helplessly—while I enjoy my time with her. And then I’ll kill you.”

  There was a long pause before Marx asked worriedly, “Enjoy your time with whom?” He didn’t know I was here. What a way to find out all his efforts at protection had been for nothing.

  I could hear the smugness dripping from the killer’s voice even from down the hall. “She has an uncanny ability to walk right into harm’s way. I found her in the woods looking for you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “This is hers. Her sister had one just like it. She never takes it off. Very much like your wedding ring,” the killer explained.

  I looked at my left wrist and realized for the first time that my bracelet was gone. He’d taken it. Why? As a trophy, or so he could taunt Marx with it the way he’d taunted me with his wedding ring? I wanted that back.

  “I was planning on just putting you out of my misery, but . . . the two of you have grown so fond of each other. It’ll be so much more enjoyable this way,” the killer said.

  “You leave her alone,” Marx growled angrily.

  “Mmm, no. I don’t think I’ll do that. In fact, she’s probably waking up now.”

  My spine went completely rigid when I heard his heavy footsteps coming down the hallway. That same childhood terror flooded through me as I listened to the ominous sound of his impending arrival. I couldn’t climb out the window this time. There was no running away.