Authors: Melissa Marr
We’ll need to stop at my house for my suitcase first. I think about the busy day ahead of me as Madison stops moving, and I let her go. I set her free in the water.
I’ve done it. I did what Eva said to do, so now she’ll be mine. This was it: my test. I passed, too. I know it. My heartbeat feels like I just finished a workout, and I worry that I’m too dirty and wet. I can’t stop though. She’ll forgive me for not looking my best. She’s probably there waiting, as excited as I am.
I wipe my face on my shirt, and then I get in the car to go to Eva’s house. Today is the day we’ll finally be together. My Eva will be in my arms where she belongs.
I obey all the traffic rules as I drive.
When I arrive at her house, I see that her mother is still home, and Bouchet’s truck is in the drive. I’m glad I came straight over; I don’t like him being around her. I put a button-up shirt on over my T-shirt, so I can hide the scratches on my throat. I don’t think Mrs. Tilling would understand. It’s better to be presentable anyhow. I button my shirt, which is already wet from my soaked T-shirt under it.
My hands are damp when I walk up to the door, so I wipe them on my trousers before I ring the bell. It doesn’t really help. My trousers are soaked.
“Mrs. Tilling,” I say. “I’m here to see Eva.”
My future mother-in-law seems startled, and I bet it’s because I’m still wet and muddy. It’s foolish, but I couldn’t wait. Eva is probably sitting inside wondering when I’ll get here. I didn’t tell her
when
this morning I’d talk to Madison, and she didn’t pick a time. She might even be surprised at how fast I was. I smile at Mrs. Tilling and tell her, “I got stuck, and I had nothing in the trunk. I usually have a gym bag. My house was rekeyed, so I came here to see if I could clean up and check on Eva.”
“Eva’s in the media room with Nate. Why don’t I get you a towel and something of Mr. Tilling’s?”
I don’t want to stand in the foyer. I want to see Eva. “Not to be indelicate, but I’d really like to use your bathroom. I’ll use the towel in there if it’s okay.” I give her a reassuring smile and add, “Please?”
She shakes her head, but says, “Of course, Reid.”
I keep my smile in place and slip out of my shoes. I don’t run to the media room even though I want to. I walk, maybe a bit faster than normal, but it’s not a run.
As I pass the doorway to the media room, I see Eva. Nate Bouchet is in there too, but he’s not helping her. He’s not doing his job. He’s
kissing
her. He’s touching
Eva
.
“What are you doing?” I watch them as he stands up and puts himself between us. She doesn’t tell him to move, doesn’t apologize to me. Nothing.
“How
could
you?”
“Reid?” Eva frowns as she stares back at me. There’s no guilt in her expression, and I realize that she’s become too much like Amy.
“I won’t share you the way I did with Amy,” I tell her, hoping she’ll understand. “I can’t. I love you.”
“What?”
“It was one thing for her to be with Robert and me, but you? You’re special. I did everything right. I did what you said.” I realize that this might be the last chance I have to explain. I pull out my phone and hit send. “Look! I did what you asked.”
She looks at Nate and then at me. “What do you mean?”
Her phone chimes, and she pulls it out.
I realize that her mother is standing behind me now. “Reid, I think you should leave.”
Eva is staring at her phone. Her mouth is open, but she isn’t speaking. As I watch, her phone drops to the ground.
This is wrong. All wrong.
I turn and shove Mrs. Tilling aside. She hits something and stumbles, but doesn’t fall. I don’t stop. I run. I leave the door open behind me, and I jump in the car. I’m not sure if Mrs. Tilling called the police while I was yelling at Eva, but I need to get out of here just in case.
I feel like my heart was just shredded. I did
everything
for her. How could Eva do this to me, especially now?
I need to get help.
Grace
W
HEN
I
LOOK THROUGH
the peephole and see Reid standing on my porch with tears in his eyes, I know that something bad has happened.
“Grace!” He pounds on the door. “I need your help.
Please
, Yeung. It’s Eva.”
I yank the door open. He’s muddy and wet. I’ve never seen him this emotional.
“What happened?”
“Eva,” he says. “It’s Eva. She’s hurt.”
“What? Where? Is she okay?”
“You need to come with me.” He looks frantic, and I suddenly feel like I’m back in the hospital watching her lying there motionless in her bed. “Now. We need to go
now
before it’s too late!”
I grab my phone and my shoes, not bothering to put them on, and follow him to the car. “She just texted me a little while ago.” I glance at my phone as I reach the car; it’s not working. “There are no new texts.”
“Hold on.” He stops at the trunk and pops it open. “The seat’s all wet.”
When I try the car door, it won’t open. “It’s locked.”
“I know,” he says, and then I feel something hit me. I start to fall, and that’s the last thing I know.
W
HEN
I
OPEN MY
eyes, I am in the dark. I try to sit up and thunk my head. I feel around, hoping I’m wrong, but between the low barrier over my head and the sense of movement, I realize that I am in a car trunk. Worse yet, I am in Reid’s trunk.
Reid.
Reid
is the killer.
I’m trapped in the
killer’s
trunk.
I think back to Eva’s death visions, and I remember her saying that I was at the library and then shoved in a trunk. Obviously, something changed, but I was still shoved in a trunk.
Does that mean that I’m going to die? Was part of the vision—the trunk part—accurate, but not the rest? I don’t know how much stock I put in her visions. I cannot believe that this is the start of my death. I
won’t
believe that. I can’t.
I search the darkness around me for a weapon. I’ll fight him with whatever I can. I don’t find anything at first and then I feel my phone.
“Thank you. Thank you.”
I try to dial 911, but nothing happens. The phone works; the battery is good. There’s no signal, though.
I keep trying, hoping we were just passing through a dead zone, but nothing changes. I can’t make a call or send a text or email.
I have no cell signal, no weapon, and I’m trapped in a sweltering car trunk. Air conditioning apparently doesn’t blow into the trunk, and the mix of fear, heat, and motion makes me wonder if I’m going to throw up.
I hear the change and feel the thump as the car leaves the road. I’m jostled around as we go over what is either a dirt road, or no road at all. The realization that we’re leaving the road terrifies me. North Carolina is a state full of thick growth. Kudzu—a seemingly beautiful but incredibly destructive ivy-like vine—covers whole trees and buildings, drapes from utility poles, and it’s far from the only plant gone wild in this state. Whatever fate awaits me at the end of a dirt road isn’t one I want.
When the car stops, I still haven’t found anything to use as a weapon, and I feel increasingly horrible. The dizziness and headache are the least of my problems though. I opened the door to a killer, one who is now opening the trunk and looking at me.
I try to kick him, but he grabs my leg and says, “Don’t make me hurt you.”
“You . . . you’re him.” I know it’s true, but I need him to confirm it. “You killed them.”
“I
sacrificed
Amy, but yeah, I killed Micki and Madison.” Reid motions me out of the trunk.
I thought I couldn’t get any more afraid, but I was wrong. His words make me unable to breathe. I didn’t know Madison was dead. She was alive yesterday. I
saw
her yesterday. That means he killed someone today, someone I
knew
, someone he’s known his whole life. Sometime between driving me home yesterday afternoon and kidnapping me this morning, Reid killed Madison.
“Come on, Yeung. I haven’t got all day.”
As soon as my feet touch the ground, I start to run. My odds aren’t great, but they’re better than they will be if he locks me up somewhere. I
have
to try. I don’t get very far before he tackles me from behind. I’m pinned facedown in the dirt under him.
“Please don’t do that,” he says, his mouth next to my ear.
I fill with the same fear that I’m sure every girl has felt trapped under a boy. This sense of helplessness makes me start to twist and squirm to get away. I don’t scream at first, trying to save my breath for fighting, but when I can’t get him off my back, I open my mouth to scream, too.
Reid clamps a hand over my mouth. “Don’t do
that
either.”
I remember the detective—and the picture she showed us. Amy had words carved into her skin. She was killed. I try to scream again, even though his hand is on my mouth.
“No!” Reid’s hand tightens over my mouth. He shoves his other arm under me, wrapping it around my waist. He hauls me to my feet. I try to go limp, to use my body weight to throw him off balance and get free.
It doesn’t work. He pulls me tighter up against him. I try to squirm out of his hold, to kick my legs back at him, but it makes no difference.
I’m not sure what he’s going to do, but I’m certain it’s not something I want to find out either. I’m tired, and my head hurts, and I don’t know how to escape.
Then he drags me back toward the car, and I realize that he’s parked outside a falling-down building that was hidden by trees and plants. It’s a cabin, the sort that I’ve been to for a few parties. It doesn’t look big; the size of the whole thing is more like a one-car garage than a house. The windows are covered with plywood, and the outside looks like no one has been here in years. Kudzu covers the whole of it so densely that I’m not sure how we’ll get inside.
“Now, if you don’t try to run again, I won’t hurt you,” Reid says. “If you do, I
will
hurt you. Eva wouldn’t like that, so I’m trying not to do it. Do you understand?”
I can feel his breath on my ear, and I whimper despite myself.
“Nod if you understand.”
I’m not sure I could get free to run, and I realize that no one is near to hear my screams. I nod. I don’t know what else to do.
Reid uncovers my mouth, but he doesn’t release me.
He pushes aside the thick vines and reveals a metal door. With one arm still wrapped around my waist, he holds me against him as he fishes a key out of his trouser pocket. Then he unlocks a padlock that’s been shoved through a makeshift hinge someone—possibly Reid—welded onto the door.
When he opens the door, I gasp. It’s not what I expected at all. Inside, the little house is decorated almost like a home. I look around, hoping to find something I can use as a weapon against him. In the main room, there is a daybed with a pretty yellow duvet on it. I see a coffee table, rocking chair, and a few crates that serve as side tables. On the crates and table are camping lanterns. To the left is a kitchenette with a mini fridge, and an old-fashioned combination sink and stove.
More plywood covers the windows from the inside, but there are pictures on this side of it. My mouth falls open as I look at them. They’re all of Eva. I’m in some of them. Robert is, too. There are others that are of groups. Some have been altered so that Reid is beside Eva even though I know he wasn’t really at her side there. He’s cut and pasted them or in some cases altered them digitally before printing them.
“Do you think she’ll like it?” His voice is still against my ear and neck because he has kept me in front of him. It’s like an embrace, and it’s adding to my steadily mounting fear.
I’m silent as he closes the door and puts the padlock on this side, locking us in together. Luckily, the increased darkness hides my expression. I don’t want to anger him by telling him that Eva—or anyone else in their right mind—would be horrified, so I reply, “I can’t imagine what she’ll say.”
“I don’t think she’d mind you being here. You’re special to her.” He pulls me toward the daybed and spins me around, so I am facing him. “Sit.”
Obeying him makes me want to scream, but being hip-to-hip with him seems awful, too. I sit. I sit on the daybed facing the killer who has kidnapped me and brought me God knows where. He hasn’t stepped back, so I’m eye level with his crotch.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” I half whisper.
“Don’t!” He leans forward, reaching past me, and pulls a length of chain from beside the daybed. At the end of it is a leather dog collar. “Stay still.”
I can’t stop the tears that fall as he fastens it around my throat. He tucks a finger between the collar and my throat. “Is that too tight? Can you swallow?”
“Reid, you don’t have to—”
“Stop.” He holds up a smaller padlock so I can see it. “I’m going to put this through the rings. I bought this collar because it works with the lock.”
“Please,” I beg. “Just let me go.”
“I can’t. You’re how I’m going to get Eva to come to me.” Reid snaps the padlock onto the collar. I hear the click. Then he straightens and looks at me. “Now, if you need to puke, there’s a bucket for that or bathroom needs.” He motions to an old-fashioned wooden privacy screen that has cracks and a few small holes in it. “Your chain reaches. I planned this for Eva, so I thought of everything.”
I don’t move. I can’t. I don’t know what I’m to do here. I’m chained up in a cabin with a crazy person who is obsessed with my best friend. I look around the rest of the room. It’s easier to make out a few other details when Reid lights some camping lanterns. A water heater with rust-covered pipes sits in the far corner where the privacy screen is. I see that the chain snakes toward it, and is attached to a thick pipe that extends into the ceiling. A doorway to at least one other room is to my right. I wonder what’s in there.
After a moment, I ask, “What are you going to do to me?”
“Nothing, I hope . . . unless you mean you want to do something? I looked up some people you went to school with in Philadelphia and emailed them. I know your secrets, Grace. You’re more like Amy than most people in Jessup know.”