Was I going to be a good girl? Was he serious?
Adrenaline rushed through me, and I let out a feral scream. I saw the startled look in his eyes just before I hit him, like he hadn’t expected me to fight. Like he’d thought I was just some meek girl who’d gotten lucky back in New Jersey. Like I would just accept that he’d murdered my family, that he’d taken all I had left like it was no more meaningful than snuffing out a candle. Like I was going to be his fifteenth girl after all.
Sixteenth, a mechanical voice in my head said. He’d already taken Darcy.
My knee knocked into his hip with a loud crack. He let out a cry of pain, but I didn’t feel anything except the rage that flowed through me like molten lava. The knife slipped from his hand, landing with a soft thud on the ground at our feet. He grabbed for my shoulder, but I ducked, taking an elbow to his stomach.
He gasped, heaving a loud oof, and went down.
Before I could move, his hand wrapped around my ankle. He gave it a hard tug, and I felt myself falling backward. I kicked hard, flailing my limbs, and my left foot connected with something just as my back hit the ground. I heard a crunch and looked up to see Mr. Nell crouching with his hands over his face. With grim satisfaction, I realized that I’d rebroken his nose.
“You bitch,” he sputtered, blood streaming down his face. I tried to kick him again, but he caught my foot and twisted it, hard. I felt something pop in my leg, and pain exploded through my body. He pinned me down and thrust his knee against my ribs, pressing me against the ground. A moment later, two rough hands closed around my neck and squeezed.
I gasped and strained, my hands pulling at his to try to free myself from his grip, but he was too powerful. His blue eyes bored into mine, and a drop of blood from his broken nose dripped onto my cheek.
“I told you I’d have you,” he said with a smile. His words were warm and sickly loving. “I told you.” He squeezed harder.
Gray spots formed at the edge of my vision. I clutched at the ground, trying to hold on, and my hand felt something cold, metallic.
The knife. My fingers closed around the handle. Summoning all my remaining strength, I arced the knife up and thrust the blade into his back.
He let out a loud roar and flew off me.
Oxygen rushed into my lungs, and I rolled over onto my side, gulping greedily. Mr. Nell contorted his body and pulled the knife from his back. Only the tip was red. The wound wasn’t deep—my fading strength hadn’t allowed for it.
Pain tore through me as I lay there, staring up at my would-be killer. My leg throbbed, my neck was tender, and each inhale sent needles through my chest; Mr. Nell had broken my ribs when he knelt on me.
But I still had one good leg, my arms, and my rage.
When Steven charged me again, knife in hand, I was ready for him. A second before he reached me, I swung my right leg out and tripped him, then trapped my legs in his. It was agony, but I held on.
The move was something Darcy and I had done when we used to play Crocodile in our backyard when we were little. Our legs were the snapping jaws, and we’d bring down each other and our friends when they tried to jump over us.
And just like our friends had, Steven tumbled over me, his legs trapped in mine. He twisted, trying to stay upright, but went down, landing hard on his back, his right hand pummeling down on my stomach while his left flopped uselessly against the ground. I gasped at the impact, and he let out a low groan, the wind knocked out of him.
“I told you I’d get you,” he rasped once more, a small smile flitting across his bloody lips.
I blinked, confused. But as I struggled to sit up, a sharp pain tore through my abdomen. It was then that I realized that the knife was still in Steven’s hand—and that the blade was buried in my stomach. Only the hilt was visible, and all around it bloomed a dark, growing stain. I noticed with an odd detachment that it was the exact same hue as the red rose Steven had left on my bed.
He was right. He had gotten me. He’d gotten my dad, then Darcy, and now me. This time, as I lay there with the evergreen trees circling me, my life did pass before my eyes. I saw my mom’s laughing face as we sat at the dinner table. My dad’s proud grin when I got first place at the science fair. Darcy’s flashing green eyes as she snuck an extra scoop of ice cream. Christopher’s sweet smile before he kissed me.
Mr. Nell had won.
Or had he? I wrapped my hands around the knife’s handle, my entire body on fire. I’d taken enough biology to know that the only thing keeping me from bleeding out was the knife, and that removing it would be the last thing I did.
The second to last, I vowed.
I stared at Steven, his legs trapped in mine, his torso splayed out on the muddy forest floor. His eyes were closed behind his cracked, wire-rimmed glasses, and he was lying on his back, taking rattling breaths through his broken teeth. His tan corduroy jacket was stained with dirt and blood, the flaps open, exposing his ripped flannel shirt—and his heart.
Gritting my teeth, I pulled the knife from my stomach. I registered the pain dimly, but I was too close to the end to feel anything but my need for revenge.
Steven’s eyes flicked open. His pupils were huge and as black as his soul. Then the moon came out again, spilling bright light over us, and all I could see was my own reflection in the lenses of his glasses. My hands lifting the knife. My blood dripping from the metal blade. The grim set of my lips as I swung down hard, right over Steven’s heart.
When it was done, I lay back, spent, staring up at the black sky.
“Rory!” a voice yelled from somewhere. “Rory!”
Suddenly, I woke up in the backseat of our new SUV, a scream wedged in my throat. Darcy’s hand gripped the front of my sweatshirt.
“Shhh! Dad’s sleeping,” she hissed, releasing me and twisting back into her seat next to my father. “You were having a nightmare.”
“A nightmare?”
I shook my head, my heart pounding wildly. My shirt clung to my back in patches of sweat and my neck was wet under my braid. I ran my hands over the seat and over my body, touching anything real to prove that what I’d just experienced was nothing but a dream. My body was whole. My sister, very much alive, was staring at me, and on my lap was the envelope containing the story of Nick, Darcy, and Rory Thayer, which wasn’t all that different than our real story. Except for the fact that we came from Manhattan and that my father was a private tutor instead of a literature professor at Princeton.
I breathed in and out slowly, trying to calm myself down and get my bearings.
“Where are we now?” I pressed my forehead against the window, the cool glass bringing me fully back to reality. The car was surrounded by fog, and my father was snoring behind the wheel. A foghorn sounded and I realized the engine wasn’t even running. I squinted out the window and saw another car’s side mirror just inches away, not moving. We were on a ferry, just like the one we’d taken when we went to my cousin Talia’s wedding up in Massachusetts.
Darcy shrugged. “No clue. I just woke up because you were yelling.”
“Have we stopped since the crash?” I asked.
“What crash?” Darcy asked, her forehead wrinkling in confusion.
I balked. “The crash at the exit in Virginia.”
Darcy stared at me like I was a crazy person. “Rory, you passed out in Virginia. There was no crash.”
There was no crash. As Darcy’s words washed over me, I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Okay, if you’re done freaking out I’m going to sleep some more.”
I nodded weakly, pulling out my iPad and clicking over to my copy of The Emperor of All Maladies. I was too scared to go back to sleep in case I started dreaming again. But as I stared at the glowing screen, a faint smile flitted across my lips. We were on a ferry to a safe house. We were alive. And we were far, far away from Steven Nell.
My father and Darcy stirred just as the fog started to lift. To my right was dark blue w
ater and whitecaps as far as the eye could see. There was a clatter and a shouted directive, answered by another and another. The ferry was docking.
“Are we there?” Darcy asked with a yawn, looking out the window.
My father blinked the sleep from his eyes and reached for the GPS. It let out a loud double beep and flashed to life. The white screen displayed the message no one ever wants to see: NO SIGNAL.
Ahead of us, the car ramp was lowered. A man in a blue polo shirt with a white swan embroidered onto the breast pocket waved us ahead. My dad started the engine and sat up, clearing his throat.
“Guess we’re about to find out.”
He drove us off the ferry, bumping onto the ramp and into a small parking lot, where a man was handing out maps. My dad cracked his window to take one, and a warm, salty sea breeze tickled my skin. I pushed the button for my own window, too, breathing in as the fresh air surrounded me. Outside, seagulls cawed and a bell on a buoy sounded.
As my dad angled into a parking spot to look at the map, I watched the passengers disembarking onto the pedestrian walkway. It was mostly kids my age and younger adults, with a few middle-aged and elderly people peppered in. I saw two guys holding hands, the definition of opposites attract. The taller guy had dark skin and dark hair and wore a tight graphic tee and a funky straw fedora, while his boyfriend had white-blond hair and freckles, and sported a green polo shirt over shorts. But almost everyone else seemed to be alone, lost in their own thoughts. I sat up a little straighter as I noticed a carved wooden sign that was painted dark blue on the background, the words spelled out in raised white letters:
WELCOME TO JUNIPER LANDING
Above the message was a wooden swan, puffing its chest out proudly, its wings back and its head held high.
“Rory, do the pamphlets Messenger gave us have an address?” my dad asked, turning the map over.
I riffled through the papers on my lap and found a little card in the folder pocket with a house key taped to it. “Yep. Ninety-nine Magnolia Street.”
My dad dropped a finger on the map. “Got it,” he said. “Right on the beach.”
“Nice,” Darcy commented, slipping on a pair of sunglasses.
My dad pulled out of the parking lot and drove slowly into town.
The buildings were crowded close together, their wooden shingles weathered and gray, the white trim around their windows splintered in places. There were wide-plank porches; bright, beach-themed wind socks tossed by the breeze; and surfboards leaned up against doorways. At least a dozen bikes were parked all over, none of them locked up, and as we rolled by a butcher shop, I heard kitschy fifties music playing through a crackly old speaker. Every window had a flower box, and every business had a hand-painted sign and a colorful awning.
We passed everything from a bakery to a bathing-suit shop to a corner stand selling sunglasses. It actually reminded me of Ocean City, where we rented a house for a week every August. Definitely a vacation destination, which would explain all the young singles on the ferry. They probably came out from the mainland every morning to work. A place like this had to be booming in the summer.
The road opened up onto a town square and a pretty park with a stone swan fountain that spouted water into the air. A guy with long dreads and a knit cap stood in the center of one of the crisscrossing walkways, singing “One Love.” He had a red, yellow, and green guitar strap that looked like it had seen better days, and his guitar case was open on the ground in front of him. He kept time by tapping his bare foot.
“Way to embrace the stereotype, dude,” Darcy said under her breath.
Over his head, strung from lamppost to lamppost, was a big blue sign that read JUNIPER LANDING ANNUAL FIREWORKS DISPLAY! FRIDAY AT SUNDOWN!
I turned around as we passed the Juniper Landing Police Department, wanting to solidify the location of the small brick building in my memory, just in case. In the distance, I could just make out the top two points of a bridge above the wafting white clouds of the fog, which still hovered over the water.
“Why didn’t we take the bridge?” I asked, sitting forward again.
Pausing at a stop sign, my dad glanced in the side mirror, then turned to look over his shoulder.
“Because the GPS took us to the ferry,” he said impatiently.
My face burned. I was so sick of my dad’s demeaning tone I could have screamed. But, of course, I said nothing. As always.
We started moving again. A couple of girls strolled by on the sidewalk and stared at our car like they were trying to see if there was anyone famous inside. One of them, a tall, solid-looking girl with curly red hair, caught my eye and didn’t look away. She held my gaze until I finally felt so uncomfortable I turned my head and pretended to cough.
“Oh my god, check out the tall-dark-and-handsome!” Darcy hissed.
She sat forward in her seat as we passed the Juniper Landing General Store, which had a blue-and-white striped awning, a couple of white wire tables set up outside, and a big sign in the window advertising breakfast and lunch service as well as THE BEST HOMEMADE ICE CREAM ON THE ISLAND. A dark-haired, broad-shouldered, square-jawed guy leaned against the window with one foot pressed back into the glass. He was casually flipping a quarter that glinted in the sun, which gave it the appearance of gold or bronze, and laughing at something the blond girl next to him had said. His laughter carried across the road.
On the other side of him was a guy with longish blond hair, sharp cheekbones, and blue eyes so striking I could see them even from this distance. His hands were crossed behind his back, his elbows out, and he was staring at our car. As I watched, he nudged the dark-haired boy, and he looked up, too. Then the blond girl did, then the petite Asian girl next to her, then the three other kids sitting at a table nearby. They simply stopped talking and stared.
Darcy instantly sat back and looked straight ahead, trying to appear cool, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the blond guy. His gaze was locked on mine, much like the redhead on the sidewalk’s had been. But somehow, this was different. He was looking at me as if he knew me. As if we knew each other. But also as if he was sad to see me.
My heart started to pound in a whole new way. Like I was on the edge of something, but I didn’t know whether it was something good or something bad.
“God. He is literally the hottest guy I’ve ever seen,” Darcy said as my father pulled the car toward a dip in the road. “Maybe this whole running from Princeton thing wasn’t the worst idea ever.”
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I turned in my seat to look back at the crowd once more. They were still staring. And they kept right on staring until we finally dipped down the hill and out of sight.
Perfection. This place was perfection. A vacation town. Residents of vacation towns were blasé by nature. They never took note of a strange face, because every face was strange. And places like this were notorious for their bumbling police forces—lackadaisical, poorly trained individuals who had no idea how to deal with anything more pressing than lost children and drunken fights on the beach. Not to mention the fact that it was an island. An island with, as far as he was able to discern, only two possible routes back to the mainland—a ferry with a sporadic schedule and a bridge at the far north end, a good half-hour drive from town.
She would not escape him. She was as good as trapped. He couldn’t have asked the FBI to send Rory Miller and her family to a more opportune location.
He would have to remember to send a thank-you card when it was over.
I gazed out the window as my dad pulled up in front of a beautiful white house with blue shutters, a huge front porch, and a white picket fence. A weeping willow hung over the sidewalk, and the garden was bursting with orange daylilies and purple coneflowers. Behind the house, the ocean stretched out toward the distant horizon. The water was a brilliant aqua near the sandy shore and deepened to navy blue beyond the breakers.
“This is it?” I said dubiously. I had been imagining a depressing gray building wi
th three cots and one shower. Maybe the government had more empathy than I’d thought. Maybe they figured if you were on a run from a serial killer, you deserved a little pampering.
“It’s number ninety-nine,” Darcy sang happily, popping open her car door.
I got out and tipped my head back, relishing the warm sun on my face. A pungent, floral scent prickled my nose in a pleasant way. I breathed it in, hoping that one good inhale would soothe my frayed nerves and stop the erratic pounding in my chest. I held the air inside my lungs for as long as it took Darcy to unlatch the gate and stroll onto the porch, where a large swing creaked back and forth in the breeze. Then I finally let it go.
My heart slammed against my rib cage. Nope. Still terrified. But at least the sun was out, the breeze was cool, and there were no serial killers in sight. For the moment.
“Door’s locked,” Darcy announced, rattling the handle.
My father strode over to join her as I brought up the rear.
“Here,” I said, tossing the key from the packet to him.
He caught it easily. Darcy bounced up and down on her toes as my dad opened the door. Spotting some hot surfer boys had clearly buoyed her mood.
The door squealed loudly, as if it hadn’t been moved in years. Inside, the house was bright and sunny, and everything was polished to a gleam. Darcy ran right up the stairs, no doubt intent on getting the best bedroom. My father and I just stood there for a moment, taking in the faded antique rugs, the dark wood floors, the antique furniture. A pastel fifties-style kitchen loomed at the back of the house.
My mother would have loved it.
“I guess we should unpack,” my father said, looking tired and sounding exhausted.
“Okay. I’ll go check out the—”
But he was already moving away from me back to the car. I climbed the rickety wooden staircase, my limbs feeling suddenly heavy. Darcy barreled out of the first room on the right, nearly mowing me down.