Authors: Melody Johnson
He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “He had some questions about my time in the city, about you, and how you survived when you didn’t have other night bloods at your back.”
“It certainly hasn’t been easy, especially these last few weeks. I can’t remember the last time I felt safe,” I admitted.
“You can feel safe here.” He said, but his smile was a little deflated.
Walker stepped out of the bathroom. As I turned with him, a shard of sunlight pierced through the window next to the shower. Dawn. The longest stretch of safety we ever had in a day was the moment the sun broke the horizon.
I narrowed my eyes on the window. The sunlight dabbled on the bathroom floor as it shone through the lacy white curtain, but the corner of the curtain was caught in the window and fluttered outside.
I smiled silently to myself, thanking God for the fearless spontaneity of teenage boys.
Of course Walker knows everything I know about fallout shelters. He taught me.
I was lying on my bed in the guest bedroom, staring at the twirling overhead fan. Keagan’s words replayed over and over in my mind. Walker had taught Keagan about fallout shelters, but he hadn’t taught me. We’d pondered the smeared blood across the doorways of Ronnie’s abandoned house, but he’d recognized the blood for what it was all along.
And once again, he hadn’t told me.
I’d confided in Walker several times over the last three weeks about how violated I felt in my apartment. I told him how excited I was to see him, to get away from the city and escape the invasion of privacy I felt from Dominic’s constant presence. Granted, Dominic hadn’t taken advantage of the privilege. He often requested entrance, and lately, he even knocked, but we both knew the truth. His politeness was an act. He’d call it something less conniving, like a concession, but a spade is a spade whether it’s a seven or an ace. Dominic had access to my home, and he’d utilize that access if necessary whenever he wanted. He simply hadn’t found it necessary to break our tremulous truce, but there would be a day—and I suspected it would be sooner rather than later—when he would break that truce and break into my home. When he did, I wanted the arsenal stockpiled and prepared to fire. I’d thought Walker was the biggest asset to loading my arsenal.
Obviously, I’d thought wrong.
A commotion was brewing downstairs. If I wasn’t mistaken, a conversation between Ronnie, Walker, and Logan had turned heated. Their shouts had woken me after only an hour of restless sleep and had kept me awake for the past fifteen minutes.
A door slammed, and a minute later, Walker’s motorcycle rumbled to life. I peeked out the window just in time to catch the tail end of his bumper disappear into the woody trail between his house and Ronnie’s.
Curiosity finally got the best of me. I climbed out of bed, changed into a fresh, fitted t-shirt and jeans, masked the bruises on my throat with makeup, and ventured downstairs to do what I did best: snoop into things that were none of my business. Except when I reached the kitchen, the only person still there was Ronnie, and she was sobbing hysterically.
She was doubled over with her elbows on the counter, a hand over her mouth, and tears poured from her eyes like geysers. I’d never seen someone with tears so physically large. They rolled out of her eyes and down her cheeks the size of dimes to splatter onto an expanding puddle on the counter.
I stomped on the last step to make her aware of my presence, but she didn’t notice. She continued sobbing, her eyes fixated on the space of countertop in front of her.
“Ronnie?” I ask softly. “Are you OK?”
She let loose a particularly loud sob.
“Ronnie!” I said, a little louder.
Her head jerked up, and she blinked at me in shock, the tears still flowing.
“I heard the commotion a few minutes ago,” I said, gently this time. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
She breathed in a shaky breath. “No. I’m not all right.” She grabbed the bowl of pancake batter and the whisk next to her and started beating the mixture furiously. “I… they….” She stuttered, her chin quivering, and the twin geysers erupted again in fresh sobs.
I looked around, feeling awkwardly self-conscious by her emotional display, but for the first time since arriving, no one else was in the kitchen or living room. We were alone. “Do you need me to get Walker? I could call—”
“No!” Ronnie shouted.
She reached out as if to stop me, and then realizing her outburst, she covered her mouth again with her hand. But at least she had stopped crying. She turned her back to me, her spine ramrod straight, and poured little blobs of batter onto the steaming griddle.
“I hope you’re hungry. You’re the only person in this house who hasn’t tried my banana nut pancakes, and you can’t avoid it this time. You’re the only one here to eat them.”
I raised my eyebrows at
her
avoidance. “Why don’t you want me calling Walker?”
“Ian doesn’t like being interrupted during an investigation. Besides, I wouldn’t want him seeing me like this.”
“I’m sure he’d want to know why you’re this upset, investigation or not.”
Ronnie looked away. “He knows why I’m upset. It’s fine. I’m fine. I just needed to let it out.”
I shook my head, wondering why Ronnie had suddenly changed her tune. “No.”
She met my eyes. “What?”
“Something horrible happened, and Walker left you here alone to deal with it. That’s not fine.”
“He had to,” she defended. She waved a hand at me, dismissing Walker as she scrutinized the hole-pocked pancakes. “Ian didn’t want to leave, but he was needed at the scene.”
I narrowed my eyes on her. “What scene? I thought you said he went to work on the investigation?”
Ronnie snapped her mouth shut. “He did,” she gritted from between clenched teeth.
“No, you just said he left for a scene. A new crime scene? Another murder?” I let that sink in before I whipped out my cannon. “I saw him ride through the trail to your parents’ house.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and looked away to flip the pancakes. “You’re twisting my words.”
“I’m not twisting anything. I’m just telling you what I saw.”
“It’s personal.” Ronnie pursed her lips. “Do you take syrup with your pancakes?”
“Will you stop cooking for one second and focus on this conversation?” I snapped. “What does it matter if I take syrup with anything? There’s a crime scene at your parents’ house.”
Ronnie met my gaze. “Do you take syrup with your pancakes or not?”
I stared at her, taken aback by her tone. She was not budging until I made a decision on the syrup.
I sighed. “Yes, I take syrup.”
She turned, snatched the syrup from the shelf, and pounded it onto the counter in front of me.
“Why did Walker leave you while you were so upset?” I pushed.
“Ian warned me that you might press me for information. I don’t have to answer your questions if I don’t want to.”
“I’m not asking you questions as a reporter. I’m asking you questions as Walker’s friend. I thought you two were close, like brother and sister?”
Her face tightened into a knot. “We are.”
“Then why did he leave? Doesn’t he care that you were so upset?”
“Ian left because he had to, not because he wanted to,” Ronnie snapped.
“What was so urgent that he had to leave before taking the time to comfort you?”
“He didn’t know I needed comforting!” she shouted. “I don’t let him see how much it kills me when he leaves!”
“What was so important that he left?” I repeated.
“I don’t know the details of his investigation. I don’t like being involved.”
“No, you like to hide behind the safety of these four walls and let everyone else risk their lives for your safety.”
Ronnie snapped her eyes to meet mine. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you haven’t left this house after dark since you were a little girl. I know that you let Walker leave every night to fight your battles alone, and that he hasn’t had someone to watch his back in years.” I waited a moment to let that sink in before I hooked her. “Until me.”
“I’m glad he has a friend in you. He needs backup,” Ronnie said magnanimously, but her lips trembled while she said it.
“I don’t think that’s altogether true. You want someone to have his back, so you tolerate me. But you wish that backup could be you.”
Ronnie clenched her teeth, staring daggers at me.
I pushed harder. “I think you wish you had the courage to leave this house, to be at his side when he needs you most, but you don’t.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. I could tell she was fighting to keep them, but eventually she blinked, and those abnormally large drops streamed down her cheeks.
“It’s daylight, though. It’s safe to leave and be his backup, so why aren’t you there beside him, helping him now?”
She crossed her arms, but instead of a power stance, it looked like she was holding herself together.
“He doesn’t want your help, does he?” I pushed as hard as I could, pressing all her buttons. I knew that my questions were cruel, but I needed to confirm if there was another murder scene and where. I needed to know why the hell he’d left without me. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered. “I could have gone with him if I wanted to!”
“Are you afraid to leave, even during the day?” I scoffed. “You’re worse off than I thought, and I didn’t think your agoraphobia could be much worse.”
“My fears are not unfounded!”
“But they
have
consumed your life, haven’t they?”
“He left you out of the investigation, too! He left you behind just like he left me!”
“Where did the murderer attack this time?” I asked softly. “It was close to home, wasn’t it? That’s why you’re so upset.”
Ronnie’s eyes welled, and like a burst damn, she broke. “It was my home. They were killed in
my
home!”
“Who are ‘they’?” I asked, sickened by the thought of more victims. “Who was killed?”
“Ian warned them against leaving the house after dark! Logan sat them down and forbade them from playing in my parents’ house. I told them that the woods was off limits,” Ronnie said between sobs. “I promised Logan I’d watch them more closely while he was at work.”
“Who was killed, Ronnie?” I asked softly. I suspected I already knew the answer, but I needed her to say it. It wasn’t real unless she said it.
“Logan’s youngest sons,” Ronnie whispered. “William and Douglas are dead.”
She blinked in a sudden flurry, the smell of burned batter startling her from her grief. “Shit, I’m burning the pancakes!” She scooped them off the griddle and onto a plate, but only the first was burned. The rest were golden brown, fluffy, and perfect.
I looked away from the pancakes and took a deep breath, letting her words settle in a heavy lump at the bottom of my gut. I remembered Walker and Ian lecturing the boys yesterday. They must have been the ones to smear blood across the entrance of her house. They thought they’d made her house into a fallout shelter. They probably thought they’d been safe.
I felt sick. “What about Colin?”
Ronnie sniffed. “What about him?”
“You said William and Douglas were killed, but Colin was playing at your house with William and Douglas, wasn’t he?”
Ronnie nodded.
“So where was Colin?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. The police didn’t mention him. They’d only identified William and Douglas.”
Identified,
she said. I swallowed, remembering the other scenes. I didn’t want to imagine William and Douglas in the same state as the other victims, but I didn’t have to imagine. I was about to find out.
“Where’s Keagan?” I asked.
“At school. Logan wanted to identify the bodies, to know for sure that they—” Ronnie’s voice trembled. “To know for sure before he pulled Keagan out of school.”
“We need to find Colin. He might be our only surviving witness.”
“How are we going to find Colin? We don’t know where he is.”
“We don’t, but Keagan might.” I strode passed Ronnie toward the front door. “Come on.”
“Where are you going?”
“We’re going to talk to Keagan, and then we’re going to your parents’ house.”
“We?” Ronnie squeaked.
“Yes, we. I can’t pull Keagan from school, but as his babysitter, you can.”
“I most certainly cannot!”
“Do you want to help find Colin?”
“Well, yes, but Ian said I should stay here. He said—”
“It’s daylight, and I’m going to need backup,” I interrupted, thinking,
Screw Walker.
“Do you want to help catch the monster who killed Douglas and William? Do you want to help stop the monster from killing again? It could be you or Keagan or
Ian
next on this psycho’s hit list.” I leaned forward. “Are you in or out?”
Ronnie met my eyes. “I’m in. But only if you eat these pancakes. You really don’t eat enough.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s quite a statement considering I’ve only ever seen you cook in this kitchen. When was the last time
you
ate?”
She blushed.
“We’ll eat them together.”
“And then we’ll pick up Keagan?”
I nodded. “And find Colin.”
“All right then.” Ronnie handed me a fork, slathered butter on the plate, and drizzled long pools of syrup over the pancakes, and I discovered what all the fuss was about in Ronnie’s kitchen every morning.
Her banana nut pancakes were to die for.
* * * *
“What the hell are you doing here?” Walker whispered. He didn’t want to draw the attention of the cops at the scene, but by the throbbing vein in his forehead and the clenching tightness of his jaw, I knew that if he could, he would have shouted.
Keagan and Ronnie were waiting in Walker’s pick-up around the bend in the road, so Walker could see them, but for the moment, the officers processing the scene hadn’t noticed their presence. If I were still in the city, I’d have skirted the perimeter until Greta, Harroway, or someone else from the department recognized me and let me through. But I wasn’t in the city. Walker was my only connection, so I had to play nice since Ronnie and I hadn’t exactly played by the rules.