I come awake in the dark, heart pounding, and I don't know why until I feel the phone buzzing next to me. My eyes are tired, and it takes me a second to focus on the number. It's familiar.
It's the same one Melvin used to call me before.
I press the button. I don't say anything.
"Rough day?" Melvin's voice.
"Yes," I say. "You meant it to be." I slip out of the covers and turn on the light beside the bed; for a heart-stopping second I'm sure I'll see him there, sitting in the corner, but there's no one here. I move quickly to the connecting door and open my side, muting the phone as I tap lightly on the wood.
"You brought this on yourself, Gina. You keep pushing and pushing, and pretty soon you're going to end up somewhere you don't want to be. Or . . . I don't know. Maybe it's exactly where you want to be. Maybe you've got a taste for it now, too."
Sam isn't answering, and for a hollow second I think he's left me behind, changed his mind and driven off into the night . . . but then I hear the lock turn, and he opens the door. Like me, he's fully dressed. He doesn't look like he's slept, from the bruised circles under his eyes, and light silvers the rough stubble on his chin and cheeks.
"You want to end this?" I ask Melvin. I see Sam get it, and he shifts his weight, as if he's bracing for a fight. It helps, having him standing here. It pushes the gut-deep horror of Melvin's voice to arm's length, even if it's a temporary kind of relief. "Fine, let's end it. You come get me. I won't fight you. We can finish this right now. All you have to do is agree to leave our kids alone."
He's tempted. I can feel he is; it quivers in the air between us, a horrible attraction so perverse it makes me feel sick and faint. I recognize the deeper pitch of his voice when he speaks next. This is foreplay to him. "We will finish this between us," he says. "But not until I'm ready. You get to wait for it, honey. You get to wait, and watch, and worry when I'm going to come for you." There's double meanings in all of that, sexualizing and fetishizing my fear. "I want you to wait. I want you to imagine it, over and over. When you can't stand it anymore . . . that's when it'll be time."
"I'll tell you where I am right now. All you have to do is show up."
Melvin says, in a dismissive tone, "I'm not hunting you. Not yet."
"Do it or I'll find you."
"You know why I married you, Gina? Because you're the perfect wife. You're blind, deaf, and dumb to anything that doesn't concern you, and you have the spine of a worm. You're never going to come after me."
"That's Gina you're talking about," I say, low in my aching throat. "I'm Gwen. Gwen will find you, and she will put a bullet in your diseased brain. That's a promise."
"Brave when you're on the phone and Mr. Cade is nearby. But maybe I'll just pay him a visit, and leave you to clean up the mess."
"You don't kill men," I say. "And you don't have the guts to try anyone who might be a fair fight. Including me."
He's silent. I think I've made him angry, but when he finally replies, it's quiet and controlled. "First time for everything. And the firsts are exciting."
He hangs up before I can think of some other way to taunt him and keep him pointed at me, only at me. I feel like it's a failure, and that shakes me hard. I can't let him find the kids.
Sam silently takes the phone from my hand. Gets his keys.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm dumping this," he says. "A long way from here. I'll get you another one on the way back. Lock up. Shoot anybody but me who comes in."
"No! If I can keep him talking--"
Sam grabs my arm as I reach for the phone. He's gentle about it, which is at odds with the emotion I can feel rising off him like smoke. "If you keep him talking, you'll get yourself fucking killed," he says. "And me, too. We're hunting him. Not the other way around."
Then he's gone, and I have no choice but to lock the doors and go back to sit, and wait, for what comes next.
17
SAM
I can't help but wonder how Melvin Royal keeps finding her, keeps getting her phone number. It doesn't make sense. These are disposable phones, and the number has to be shared out. He can't search through records to find her; not even Absalom is that good, that fast. So how the hell is he finding her? Maybe she wants him to find her. Maybe she texted him the goddamn number and you're the biggest fool in the world for even starting to believe her.
I can believe a lot of things about Gwen. I can even believe that, once upon a time, a terrified wife might have done things that she wants to block out from her memory.
But I know she's totally sincere about wanting this man dead. So I have to write off the possibility that she's working with him.
The first time he called, that had to be Absalom providing him with the intel. But somewhere, somehow, someone else has cherry-picked her number, and it's ended up in Melvin Royal's hands again. How?
I can't solve the puzzle. I drive carefully, well aware of the slippery road conditions, the cars spun off in ditches, the hazy glitter of ice still drifting down in the glow of streetlights. I'd like to drive a hundred miles to ditch this phone, but it's too dangerous. I settle for twenty-five miles, which takes nearly two hours of tense effort. I wipe the contacts and history and texts, destroy the SIM card, pull the battery, and pitch the shell as far out into an empty field as I can throw it. It's useless junk now, and if by some weird sorcery he can still track it, let him dig for it under the ice.
I'm on my way back when my own cell phone rings, and I pause a second, then pull off into a gas station parking lot and answer. "Yeah." No name, no friendliness.
"Shut up and listen." It's a distorted electronic voice, and when I look at the number, it's blocked. "We can help you get revenge on the one responsible for your sister's death, once and for all."
I wait a second before I say, "I'm guessing this is Absalom I'm talking to."
"Yes."
"I'm not interested in anything you've got for sale. Not your porn, or your torture, or whatever other sick garbage you have--"
"We're not selling anything. Not to you. We want to offer you something for free."
I think about hanging up, but having Absalom talking seems like a victory of some kind. They're scared enough to reach out. The least I can do is keep them on the line. The longer they're engaging with me, the less they're spending protecting Gwen's ex. "Not sure I want anything from you, free or not."
"What if we offer you Melvin Royal?"
"You think I can't get him without you?"
"We know you can't." This Absalom motherfucker is coldly smug, and I want to reach through the phone and pull his guts out through his mouth. "He's always going to be faster and smarter than you. Without us, you won't get close."
I watch traffic move past on the highway. Nobody's going full speed, especially big trucks; they're all aware of the ice, the danger. "And why are you turning on him now? You were helping him before."
"He was making us money before. Now he's costing us."
That makes a weird, cold sense. "So what do you want from me?"
"Fair trade," the voice says. Flat, modulated, inhuman. "You give us the wife, we give you the husband."
"Why do you want her? Don't give me any bullshit about good deeds and punishing the wicked. We both know that's not who you are."
The voice of Absalom--and I'm eerily convinced that I'd know this voice without that digital filter--says, "You don't need to know why we want her. All you need to know is that she'll get what's coming to her. You've seen the videos. You know she earned it."
I'm silent. When I blink, I can see that terrible, normal smile on Gina Royal's face in the video as she's handing her husband a knife to cut his victim. I can imagine that same smile when it's my sister hanging there, helpless. Those videos might be fake, and God, I pray they are, but they feel true, and that's hard to fight. They appeal to all my buried hate and rage, the same anger that pushed me into online harassment, into stalking, into planning Gwen's death. I never acted
on any of it.
But I can't deny that those feelings are still there, still bubbling under the surface.
What I say is, "How can I be sure you're going to give me anything at all?"
"Half a mile up, there's an exit to Willow Road. Take it. Turn right. There's a coffee shop on the corner two blocks up. Tell the barista you left your tablet there. There's one waiting under your name."
Shit. The phone feels hot in my hand, and I'm shaken more than I should be. Of course they can track me. They've got this number. I'll have to ditch my phone, too. I should have already done it, but I was so worried about Gwen that I didn't consider both our phones would have been compromised.
"Okay," I tell the voice. "I'll look. Where do I call you back?"
"You don't." The voice remains flat, expressionless, but I can imagine the man on the other end is smiling now. Grinning, maybe. "Just watch what's on it. The password is 1-2-3-4."
The cold's creeping into the cab of the SUV now, or maybe that's the shock finally taking hold; either way, my down jacket doesn't feel warm enough anymore.
I hang up, drop the phone on the seat next to me, and pull out into traffic, heading for Willow Road.
At the coffee shop--a local place, nothing nationally branded, and nearly empty in the poor weather--I order a coffee and ask for the tablet. It's behind the counter with a sticky note on it. When I ask who found it, I get an indifferent shrug.
It powers on when I hit the button, and I enter the password the voice gave me. I've taken the precaution of taking a seat in the corner of the shop, at an angle where no passersby or bored baristas can take a look at what I'm seeing. Not that anyone seems remotely interested.
There's a file that comes up immediately. It's video; I pause it to dig out earphones and plug in. The figure on the screen is shrouded in a black robe with a hood, and there's a red devil mask concealing the face. Blank white wall behind it. The lighting's poor, and the sound isn't much better, but it's clear enough.
"If you're seeing this, you know what we're offering. You know who this is. We will give you location upon agreement."
It's a brief intro, designed not to give anything up if anybody else watched the video by accident . . . but I know the context.
The scene changes in a jump cut. I recognize Melvin Royal immediately. He's facing the camera, but it's clear he doesn't know he's being filmed. He's got on a ball cap and sunglasses, and he's grown a scruffy beard. He blends well: jeans, a flannel shirt, a down jacket that's a dead ringer for the one on my back. He doesn't look like a man on the run. He looks, if not like a local, then someone who might be a casual visitor.
He's standing near a corner, looking through a rack of postcards under what probably is an awning. The sun's out, so it isn't anywhere around here, but it's cold enough that everyone passing is wearing something heavier than a sweater.
He isn't postcard shopping. He's watching people. I see as a young woman passes that she catches his attention. He pulls a card from the rack and pretends to study it, but behind the sunglasses, he's following her. Assessing her.
He puts the card back in the slot and steps out in pursuit. Casual. Natural. A hunter in his environment.
It's fucking awful to watch, and I can't help but think, That girl's dead now. It brings back dark nightmares of my sister walking oblivious into the darkness of a parking lot, then vanishing forever. Snatched away by a predator as fast and ruthless as a praying mantis.
I can't tell where he is, not from this narrow-focus video. I try blowing up the postcard rack to see details, but nothing's clear enough. Could be anywhere winter chill has taken hold, but likely still somewhere south and west of here; I can't see any snow or ice on the ground.
Of course, I don't know when it was filmed. I try the metadata for the file, but it's clean. Not Absalom's first ride.
A chat window opens on the tablet. The contact name is Abs, for Absalom.
I watch as a message appears: we give you location if you give us Gina.
Give her to you how exactly? I'm just killing time, trying to think. Struggling against a tidal wave of memory and sickness and the feeling that if I don't do something, more women are going to die, sure as sunrise.
Motel address and room number, the next message says. Stay out of the way. Let us have her.
What are you going to do with her?
What you wanted. The answer comes fast, and in the next second, another window opens, piling documents one on another, faster and faster. Screenshots, and with a sick jolt I recognize what they are.
My words. Posts on message boards. E-mails I sent to Gina Royal. Letters I wrote to her mailbox, every time she moved and tried to hide. The hate is right there, in pixels and pages.
. . . helped slaughter my sister like an animal . . .
. . . never be done with you. You have no hiding place . . .
. . . guilty as sin and I will never forget, never forgive . . .
. . . hope you suffer the same torture she did . . .
It's me. It's my sick fury captured and on display. Nightmare made real. I wrote those things. I meant them.
She's guilty as sin, Absalom says, quoting my own rage. She deserves to pay for the girls who died.
Fuck you, I type back with shaking fingers. You're helping Melvin Royal.
Now we're helping you. Everything has a price. She's yours. We'll give you Melvin. You give us Gina.
I take a long moment of silence. I stare at all the evidence of my madness, and I know it's still in me; I still half believe those videos of Gina Royal. I wish to hell I didn't. I want to rip that part of myself up by the roots, but I can't; it's the part that holds the memories of my lost little sister, too. It might be toxic, but it's important.
I think. My coffee sits undrunk, cooling, as the sleet hisses against the windows and the night grows darker. I remember Gina Royal saying she never helped her husband. Swearing it under oath. I remember the video, fake or not, that says she lied.
I remember Gwen screaming into the cold wind while I held her back from plunging into traffic.
And then I type two words.
I'm in.
18
CONNOR
Dad said that Javier and Kezia would never figure out what I did, and he was right about that. He sent me all the instructions: how to download the video onto his phone, how to transfer it to the one Mom gave me, how to take off the parental lock that kept me from using the Internet so I could pretend I found it on a message board. He even posted a fake message there so Javier could find a broken link when he went looking. I already knew Mom's code to take the lock off. It wasn't hard to figure out.
Dad told me to do all that and hide his phone before I watched the video on the one Mom gave me.
He knew it would hurt. He said me it would, and that he was sorry.
Dad's been right about everything.
He proved it.
I'm texting him regularly, whenever I can. I'm sitting in my bedroom now with the door locked in case Lanny decides to check on me, reading his latest message. I wrote to you, kiddo. I sent you letters, birthday cards, presents. Did you get any of them?
There's only one answer to that. No.
Because she was determined to poison you against me, son. I'm sorry. I should have tried harder.
Were there really presents? Cards? Letters? I don't know, but I remember Lanny saying that she'd seen one he sent to Mom. Not to us. But it talked about us. Mom never intended to show us any of it.
Maybe she kept everything from us. Everything Dad said, wrote, sent.
It makes sense to me. Everything he says disturbs me, and everything makes sense.
But I still don't know whether or not to trust him. Mom lied to us. Maybe he's lying now. I don't know how to trust anybody, not anymore. So I don't text back. I just keep rereading his apology.
After another minute, another text pops up. Well, think about it, Brady. You can ask me anything you want, remember that. This is Dad, s
igning off.
I text back Bye and shut down the phone. Then I take out the battery. I'm still careful about that. I don't want anybody hurt. Especially Lanny.
I should stop texting him, I know that. I know it's wrong. Lanny would be furious. Mom--I don't want to think about what Mom would do. Mom doesn't matter anymore, and I can't pretend I ever even knew her. At least Dad hasn't lied to me. Dad says she helped him. He has evidence. All Mom has is Please believe me, and I don't anymore.
The phone from Dad is like a secret promise, an escape hatch, and I keep it on me constantly now; I only put it on charge when I'm asleep, and I shove it under the pillow.
I'm living a double life now. Brady has a cell phone. Connor has one. But I'm almost two different people.
Dad only ever texts back. He doesn't text me first, and we've never spoken, not yet. He told me it was my choice, and if I never wanted to call, that was fine, too. He wasn't going to push me, and he hasn't. Not like everybody else does.
He lets me make up my own mind.
I'm holding the phone, thinking about turning it on and calling Dad, when I see Lanny slipping over the fence. She's not leaving; she's coming back. I didn't even know she'd been gone. She's quick and good at it, but Boot still barks and chases after her, as if he's arguing with her. She picks up a stick and tosses it for him to chase, which I guess is a pretty good excuse in case Javier looks out the window.
Dad doesn't sound crazy in these messages. He sounds like a father. He asks how I'm doing, what I'm feeling. What I'm reading. He lets me tell him the stories of the books I really like. He tells me stories, too--nothing weird, which I guess people would expect. He tells me about growing up and looking for arrowheads, catching frogs, fishing. Normal stuff that I don't do. I'm not the one who runs and jumps. That's Lanny's job. I live mostly in quiet, and I watch things happen. Maybe that's bad, I don't know. It's just how I like it.
Dad hasn't once asked me about Mom, or where we are. I wouldn't tell him that; I know I can't really trust him that far. But sometimes I wish he would ask, which is weird, and I wonder why I want that. I guess I have this fantasy that he's going to come in and take me away, and somehow, we'll be . . . better. He'll be a good dad, and we'll go on adventures. I even imagine what kind of car he'll be driving, what he'll be wearing, what kind of music will be on the radio. Dad liked weird oldies from the 1980s. So probably that stuff. I sometimes listen to it, too, not because I like it, but because I wonder why he does. I could teach him to like new music. I could make him a playlist.