Deanna Madden #1 The Girl in 6E (17 page)

IT SOUNDS RIDICULOUS,
but I was scared to press that stairwell exit handle. Scared that my dark side would go apeshit when presented with the unlimited opportunities the outside world offered. Scared that a little girl would have to listen to the words I’ve heard for the past two weeks. Scared that she would be afraid and alone while I am out killing strangers, mutilating the body of the gorgeous delivery driver who now stands just a few feet away. I don’t even crack the exterior vent in my apartment, worried about the triggers that might exist, the sounds and smells of normalcy that might awaken my psychosis or, even worse, my memories of what normal feels like. And that is my biggest fear when I step out this stairwell door. That I will taste normal, step on its street, ride in a truck and smile on its face, and not be able to resist. That I will psychologically paint over my situation and convince myself that I can handle it. Lie to myself because I want so badly to return to the world. And then,
snap
.

After I appropriately freaked myself out, I pushed on the exit handle and stepped into the light.

The sensation of being outdoors surprises me, even with my mental preparation. You don’t realize how much damn activity there is, all the noise and smells that assault your senses, when you do something as simple as stand on a public street.
I have been shut away too long.
The gritty feel of pavement beneath my shoes, the weight of actually wearing shoes—my feet feel heavy and hot. My nose recoils from the smell of car exhaust, my skin prickles from the feeling of warmth and nonartificial light from the sun, harsh and powerful to my raw senses. My eyes squint and I look around, wanting the cover and protection of a vehicle. Jeremy’s truck is at the curb, and I step unsteadily toward it.

He beats me to the passenger side, pushing a jacket and box off the seat, flashing me an embarrassed grin. I move past him, climbing onto the truck, and sit on the warm vinyl seat. The outdoor world distracts me briefly, a rainbow of colors and sights before me as the beauty of everyday life beckons. Images and memories—
rolling on the grass with Summer
—hit me, a wave of nostalgia interrupting my focus. Jeremy climbs into the driver’s seat, starts the truck, and a roar fills the air, the truck shaking briefly before settling into a constant vibration. The lack of protection in the truck unnerves me; the missing doors and loud engine are strange to my sheltered senses. I focus, pulling out my laptop and logging into Ralph’s hard drive to look for anything that I might have missed. Jeremy is saying something, a garble of words in the background that I tune out. All of my thoughts and focus center on finding Annie and getting to her as soon as I can. I feel something jabbing me, and I look at my shoulder, following the finger, to the hand, to Jeremy’s irritated face.

“Pay attention—I’m trying to talk to you.”

“Don’t touch me,” I snap, scrolling through files, opening occasional documents.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to visit someone. It is very important that I get there as soon as possible.”

“Why don’t you have your own car?”

“I don’t leave the apartment. A car is an unneeded expense.”

“Why don’t you leave the apartment?”

“This is all a waste of time. Please focus on driving to your car as quickly as possible.”

“I’m not letting you take my truck.”

My eyes snap away from the laptop, alighting on his face.
Fuck. This might be a problem.
“Why not?”

“Can you even drive?”

“Yes. I’m an excellent driver. I haven’t had a ticket or accident in over three years.” I say the words with a straight face, while my mind rolls hysterically with laughter, clapping myself on the back for my wit. “What do you want?”

“Want?”

God, it was like talking to a parrot.
“What do you
want
in exchange for letting me use your truck?”

His face twists in frustration. “I want to know what’s going on!”

“I don’t have time to explain what’s going on; I
can
tell you that I need your help. If you won’t let me use your truck, then drop me off at a car rental place. I’ll pull one up on my phone.”

“Let me come with you.”

“Absolutely not. It’s hard enough for me to sit next to you right now.”

The wide smile that crosses his face makes me realize the error of my words. “Not for that reason, Fabio.”

“Oh.” His face falls. “You’re still on that kick about hurting me?”

I grin, despite my irritation. “Yeah. I’m still on ‘that kick.’”

“I can defend myself.”

“Whether that is the truth or not, I don’t have the time or the energy to fight you. I have something else I need to take care of.”

“A date.”

“What date?” I find a folder titled “Annie” and open it, seeing hundreds of photos, the most recent candid ones of a blond girl who in one image wears a pink boa and crown and sits in front of a cake.
Annie.
My joy at finding her is instantly dampened by the idea that someone would want to hurt this perfect little individual.

“You asked what I wanted. If you take my truck, I want to take you on a date.”

“Not gonna happen.”

We pull into an empty parking lot, clones of our UPS vehicle lining spots to our right. Jeremy focuses on driving, pulling forward and then backing into a spot on the far right. He shuts off the engine and turns to me, his eyes studying mine.

I fight the urge to fidget, my eyes flitting from his to his keys.
GO.
The command pounds in my head. “Please,” I manage, the word awkward on my lips. It is a word frequented in my cam chats but neglected entirely when the camera is off.

“A kiss.”

I scowl, understanding the negotiation behind the words. A kiss is the last thing I want to do right now. “Four hundred dollars. That should more than cover the use of your truck.”

“No,” he says softly, his eyes on mine—pale green eyes that remind me of a dress I wore in high school. My gaze travels down from those incredible eyes and rests on his mouth, remembering him above me, mouth on mine, hands on my naked skin.
GO.
I lean forward and sigh, closing my eyes and pursing my lips stiffly.

He clears the hurdle that is my resistance with the first touch of his lips. My body melts, forgetting everything but the feel of his hand on my neck, gripping my hair and pulling my mouth tight on his—his mouth taking everything in smooth, perfect movements. He disorients my world, captures my spirit, and heals a little of my soul, all in the course of seconds—my mouth responding to his, hands releasing my bag and traveling into his hair, greedily pulling and grasping, unable to get enough.

GO.
I push him away, my hands lingering on his strong shoulders as we separate, his cloudy green eyes concerned. I breathe hard, my eyes fighting to not look at his mouth. “Please,” I whisper. “I have to go.”

He nods, stretching out his legs, pulling out a key ring, and holding it out to me.

“My truck is the gray Ford, in the back of this building.”

A wave of relief floods me, and I smile, reaching out and grabbing his keys. “Thanks. I owe you one.” I grab my bag and turn, my escape stopped by his firm hand on my knee. I turn questioningly.

He holds out a business card. “The date. Think about it. My cell is on the card.”

I hesitate and then nod, grabbing the card and hopping out. I round the bumper of the truck, flash a quick smile to Jeremy, then take off at a run toward the back of the building.

Jeremy watches her go, her stumbling steps of before gone—urgency now making them strong. His initial diagnosis echoes in his head.
She’s hiding from something.
It doesn’t look as if she’s hiding. It looks as if she’s running full force to tackle confrontation and eat it for dinner.

He shouldn’t have given in, shouldn’t have handed over his vehicle in exchange for, of all things, a kiss. But she needed it, the urgency spilling out of her, panic interlaced with determination in her eyes. Wherever she is headed, if it is from someone, or to something, it is important. It is certainly more important than the inconvenience of him finding a ride home.

He frowns, thinking about their initial meeting, the madness in her eyes, her bloodthirsty quest for violence. In the course of the last hour, he has overlooked that part of her, pushing it to the side in his excitement at being near her, being acknowledged, included. She had seemed, in this interaction, normal. Sane. Was it a trick? A new take on the sexual deception that she had tried at their first meeting? There is the sound of his truck engine, the rip of tread against asphalt as she leaves the parking lot and turns north, headed to parts unknown. And he hopes, a knot of dread growing in his stomach, that he hasn’t just enabled a madwoman.

THE LAST RELATIONSHIP
I had was Jesse Howell. I met him when I was eighteen, at Taco Bell, when he offered to pay for my eighty-nine-cent taco. He had shaggy hair under a backward cap and a loose Abercrombie tank top over lean, tan muscles. We dated for four weeks, enough time for him to realize I wasn’t gonna put out, then he moved on. It was for the best: we weren’t going to work out. He didn’t understand my obsession with slasher movies, and I liked how his skin fit so perfectly on his face. It seemed like a waste to rearrange his features, to ruin a perfectly good face in the name of bloodshed. He woke up one night and found me above him, my hands wrapped around a knife I had taken from the kitchen. I was in the middle of trying to decide where to stab him first, in the neck or the chest, when his eyes flipped open. It was easier when his eyes were closed, when I couldn’t see into his soul. When he was just a blank canvas, ready for the splatter of wet blood.

I froze when I saw his open eyes, the confusion present as his brain tried to wade through the layers of sleep and decipher what was before him. In the dark room, I wasn’t sure what he could see, and I tossed the knife to the ground, leaning forward and distracting him with a kiss. He pushed me off, accusing me of trying to cut off his luscious locks.

I stuck my toothbrush in my purse the next morning, deciding that sleepovers were something I obviously couldn’t handle. Thank God he woke up. His face was too beautiful to be mutilated.

Carolyn stands in the hall of the station, filling a plastic cup with water from the fountain. She watches the flow of clear liquid, the cup getting heavier and heavier. Something enters her peripheral vision, and a hand reaches out, takes the cup from her.

“Carolyn. Let me take that for you.”

She looks up, meeting John Watkins’s eyes. “John. Thank you.”

He leans in, lowering his voice. “I called around this morning. Spoke to Screven and Evans County. They’ve both had a girl disappear that was around Annie’s age, Screven seven years ago, Evans three. The girls were never found. I’m waiting on a callback from Effingham County to see if they’ve had any similar disappearances in the last decade. We may be looking at a serial—”

“John. Please don’t use that word with me. I just…can’t take it right now.”

His eyes soften. “Shit, Carolyn. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” He pauses, looking at the floor. “I’m just not used to this sort of thing around here. You know us—we normally go after missing cows and abusive husbands.” His southern drawl is soothing, bringing back so many memories of easier times. “Carolyn, can we step outside? I’m dying for a cigarette and could use the company.”

She looks over at the office that has been their prison for the last six hours, the edges of Henry’s wheelchair visible. “Just for a bit. I could use some fresh air, but I don’t want to leave Henry too long.”

He smiles, the gesture not reaching his eyes. “Great.” He pushes on the exit bar and opens the door, holding it for her. She steps out, the sun harsh on her unprotected eyes.

The police station sits on an unassuming corner of Brooklet, at the far end of Main Street. The small size of the town means that only a handful of stores line the one-block street, and she can see a number of people on the town’s only street of commerce. Out here, life is ordinary; people are going about their everyday business, seemingly oblivious to her situation. To a woman who has every aspect of her life crumbling, the proof of normal life seems painfully unfair. She leans against the building, folding her arms and turning her face to John. “What is it? Did they find her?”

He looks over, surprised. “What?”

“You quit smoking six years ago. Bitched and moaned enough that folks in Savannah probably heard the news. So you brought me out here, away from my husband, for something. What is it?”

“I almost don’t even want to mention it…” He looks down at the dirt, spits a wad of something to the side. “The Feds called. They’ve gotten a bunch of calls on the hotline number. Most of them are useless, but one of them, a young girl, she called about Michael.”

Carolyn stiffens, her back leaving the white brick. “Michael? My brother?”

“Yeah. Only this girl didn’t call him Michael—she called him Ralph. The AMBER Alert doesn’t say where Annie disappeared from, just says the vicinity of Savannah. So for this girl to call and mention Michael, it’s strange, you know?” He studies her face, sitting back against the hood of the closest car, an old black-and-white cruiser.

She clenches and unclenches her hands, taking measured breaths. “What did this girl say?”

“That he’s had a bunch of phone calls with her—sexual ones. That the calls always center on fantasies he has with a young girl. One named Annie.”

The world closes in on her with one black swoop that darkens her vision and has her legs collapsing beneath her. He steps forward, catches her arms, and pulls her to her feet. “Carolyn, Carolyn. Be strong. Stand up. I need you with me.”

She pushes against him, moving to the car and sitting on the hood, her hands shaking and gripping her dress, scrunching the fabric and then smoothing it out. “Jesus. Did you ask Junior about this? He’s Mike’s son, he might…” she raises a hand to cover her mouth, the words dying on her lips. Junior, a nineteen-year-old kid…images of him as a child flash before her. She closes her eyes and sends a small prayer upward.

“I haven’t asked anyone about this. You know this kind of thing, Carolyn. Once you throw it out there, the thoughts, the suspicion, never goes away. The call might be bogus. Could be some girl with a grudge. Do you think…do you know anything about him that we need to know? About his sexual preferences?”

She shakes her head rapidly. “I don’t know. I was older…he never…not that I ever knew. No. I would never suspect Michael of that. Never. Christ, he’s spent time with her. Alone! It can’t—”

“Carolyn.” His voice is strong, and she holds on to it with all of her remaining sanity. “It could be nothing. Don’t worry just yet. But we have to check it out. You know that. It’s nothing against you or your family—”

“Enough!” She jerks to her feet, surprising him, and he takes a step back. She holds up a hand. “Don’t insult me, John. Annie is the focus here. I could give two shits about any inconvenience or offense that is put on my family. If Michael is responsible for this, I’ll be the only person you’ll need to arrest, because I will kill him myself. And I mean that, with every fiber of my being.”