The Dead List (4 page)

“Ella,” whispered Mom, placing a trembling hand on my arm as Dad squeezed my foot. “Are you okay?”

I nodded as I raised my gaze to the trooper. “When he first grabbed me, he pulled me back against him.” I bit down on my lip as my Dad let go off my foot and shifted away. Tension coursed through his body, pouring into the stuffy room. “I didn’t feel any… you know…”

Boobs. Breasts. Chests. Tits. Tatas. Boobies. I couldn’t bring myself to say any of those words in front of Dad, especially when he looked like he was about to dive-bomb under the bed.

Thankfully the trooper nodded in understanding, and I wasn’t forced to elaborate. He asked a couple of more questions and then one that totally caught me off guard. “You’ve been seeing Dr. Oliver. Is that correct?”

“Yeah.” I glanced at my parents, but the question didn’t seem like a big concern to them.

“May I ask why you’re seeing a therapist?”

Heat flooded my cheeks. It seemed stupid to be embarrassed about something like that considering I almost died on a back road, but I didn’t like the look creeping across the trooper’s face. Like he was wondering what was wrong with me that forced me to see a psychologist.

“We insisted that she see one after the divorce,” Mom answered, and well, that was kind of not a lie.
Kind of
. “It’s just something she’s stuck with.”

“Okay.” Trooper Ritter glanced over at one of his coworkers. His green uniform stretched against his broad shoulders. “I just have one more question for you, all right?” When I nodded gingerly, he gave me what I guessed was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but it made me shift uncomfortably. “Were you close with Vee Bartol?”

Dad stiffened at the foot of the bed. He turned to the trooper, his face paling. “Isn’t that the girl who went missing?”

“Two weeks ago,” I whispered, reaching up and gently touching my neck with my fingertips. “I didn’t know her very well. I mean, we kind of grew up together, but we weren’t friends beyond saying hello to one another.”

Mom’s forehead wrinkled as she leaned back, idly brushing the strands of my hair back. “I heard on the news that the authorities believe she may have run away. So what does she have to do with this?”

“We do believe that she ran away,” Trooper Ritter answered evenly. “But in these situations, we have to look at every possible… situation. Her disappearance and this attack, while it is most likely not related, we still have to check it out.”

“Understandable,” Dad said, shaking his head. “My daughter is safe. Right?”

My body seemed to freeze up while the trooper answered the question and my thoughts whirled around Vee Bartol. Did the police suspect something else had happened to her, but weren’t being entirely truthful when it came to what they were telling the public? I didn’t know and I also couldn’t see how anything with Vee could be related to what had happened to me.

“There’s still some people we need to talk to—those who were at the party and were leaving while you were,” Trooper Ritter continued.

A different kind of stillness settled over me as I remembered the voice—
his
voice.
I’ve got you
. My chest squeezed. I imagined they had already talked to
him
. I looked at the door, for some reason expecting to see
him
standing out in the hallway, too, but he wasn’t.

“If you can think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to call us.” Trooper Ritter handed a small white card to my mom. He turned and then stopped at the door, looking back at me. “You are a very lucky young lady.”

My breath caught as I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t need him to tell me that. I already knew it. I was officially a small percentage of those who
luckily
escaped their attacker.

I was lucky.

#

“Have you seen the news?” Linds’ voice travelled from my bedroom. “You’re all over it. They even got ahold of last year’s school picture. The one where you thought it was a good idea to wear pigtails? You looked like you’re twelve.”

My reflection winced and then I groaned. The skin along my right cheek looked like I’d unloaded a compact of blush on it. Worse yet, upon closer inspection, my cheek resembled a strawberry.

I pulled back, picking up a tube of mascara. Even without the giant red mark, my face couldn’t handle a lot of makeup. Anything more than some lip-gloss and mascara, I looked like a clo—

I couldn’t finish the thought.

For the most part, everything about my face was too large. My eyes. My cheekbones. My mouth. By the grace of God or my father’s DNA, I had a small nose. Not up to doing anything special with my hair this morning, it fell in blonde waves around my face.

Placing the lip-gloss back, I frowned when my hand shook. I sternly told myself that I was ready to go to school, that I didn’t need any time off and as I stared at my pale face, I told myself I was okay. I was fine.

I was alive.

A shudder rolled through me as the gaping, dark empty black holes where eyes appeared like a ghost in my thoughts. My throat ached as I swallowed hard. I glanced at the open bathroom door and Linds’ voice travelled. She was still talking about the news. Last night, I barely slept. My body ached and throbbed in places I didn’t know it could. And there…. there was a teeny, tiny part of me that didn’t want to go to school.

That didn’t want to leave the house.

Cold fear balled in the pit of my stomach. What haunted me the most was the fact I hadn’t been able to defend myself. I had fought the attacker a cornered animal about to be slaughtered. I hadn’t been able to defend myself, and if luck hadn’t been on my side Saturday night…

I needed to stop thinking about it.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed off the sink and hurried out of the bathroom attached to my bedroom. Our house on Rosemont Avenue was old, like potentially standing during the Civil War old and maybe a little haunted kind of old, but before the divorce and before the housing market collapsed and before… well, before
everything
changed, Mom and Dad had gutted the entire house, which turned the small useless bedroom next to mine into a bathroom.

Linds was sitting on my bed, her legs tucked under her while she held an old blue Care Bear I’d never had the heart to get rid of even though I had no idea which one it was.

She smiled slightly. “Oh, Ella…”

“What? It looks bad, right? My face?” I sighed, tugging the hem of my shirt down. Linds was wearing a cute dress, but I was in jeans and a t-shirt. She made me feel like I needed to put more effort into the first day of school dressing.

“It’s not your face.” She bit down on her lower lip as her gaze dipped.

To my neck.

I had done everything to not look or think about it, because the first time I’d seen it in the hospital room, it made my knees go weak. Bruises covered both sides of my neck, mottling into a deep purplish-red, a painful reminder of the hands clenching tight, cutting off the air.

Shaking my head, I let my hair fall forward. The edges reached past my chest. “How does this look? It’s too warm to wear a scarf.”

“Better.” Placing the Care Bear aside, she unfolded her legs and hopped to her feet. “It really doesn’t matter. You look great.”

“And the fact that everyone in the entire county knows that someone strangled me, right?” I forced a casual shrug. “There’s no reason to even worry about hiding it.”

Linds’ tight curls bounced as she bopped over to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, careful to avoid my ribs even though they really didn’t hurt anymore. “God, Ella, I’m so happy that you’re okay.” She squeezed me as her voice thickened. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. The whole thing is just so damn crazy and scary.”

I folded my arms around her. “It really is.” And that was the God’s honest truth. Trooper Ritter had stopped by Sunday evening, checking in. The young officer believed that whoever had been responsible for the attack had probably skipped town, that I didn’t have anything to worry about, but on the news last night, another officer—a deputy—had stressed that people, especially young women, needed to be on the lookout and keep aware of their surroundings.

Statistically, I should be safe. Who ended up being attacked twice by the same maniac? But the cold ball of fear still rested like a stone in my stomach.

“Are you doing okay?” she whispered, hanging onto me like cling wrap.

“Yeah.” I was doing okay by not thinking about what could’ve happened if those headlights hadn’t flicked on. Last night had been hard, though. As I laid awake staring at the ceiling, all I could think about was those too long moments when I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything to defend myself.

A shiver coursed through me and I pulled back before Linds could feel it. I took a deep breath. “There is something I’ve been thinking about.”

“What?” She picked up her bag.

I grabbed mine off the floor. “I’ll tell you on the way to school. We’ll be late if we don’t leave now.”

Mom was in the kitchen, pouring her coffee into her mug. Dressed in black slacks and a white blouse, the frazzled woman from the night in the hospital was gone as she turned to me. Being the branch manager at a local bank meant Mom kept her own hours and was always home before I left for school. Wednesdays were rough, though. She had to be in Huntington on Thursday mornings, so she always left after work Wednesday to make the drive and returned home late Thursday night.

Otherwise, the morning meet and greet was a tradition that started after Dad left.

She reached behind her and handed over a toasted Pop Tart wrapped in a napkin. One for me. And one for Linds. “You ready for everything?” she asked.

“For anything,” I replied, taking the sugary goodness. “Thank you.”

Linds leaned over, kissing my mom’s cheek. “You’re the bomb. Toasted Pop Tarts. My mom hands me a cup of coffee.”

Mom laughed. “Ah, hold off on the coffee as long as you can.” She propped her hip against the counter as she turned to me. “You sure about today? I know the school would understand if you didn’t go, and I can call the bank. They’d understand, too.”

She had hovered over me all day yesterday like a momma bear. As much as I appreciated being waited on hand and foot and all, there was no way I could miss the first day of school. “I’m okay. Seriously. I want to go to school.”

Linds passed by me, making a face.

“Look, we’ve got to go.” I told her, backing away. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Her chest rose in a deep breath as she plucked her suit jacket off the back of the kitchen chair. “Text me when you get to school and when you’re leaving, okay?”

I nodded, figuring I was going to be doing a lot of check ins during the upcoming months.

Out in the early morning sunlight, I slipped on my sunglasses and went down the porch steps, two at a time. When my feet hit the sidewalk, an odd sensation curled around my spine. Tiny hairs on my arms rose. The feeling….

I tightened my hold on my messenger bag. In spite of the strong glare of the sun, I suddenly felt like I’d been encased in ice. The breath I took lodged in my sore throat.

Linds stopped next to me, frowning. “What?”

Turning around, I expected to find Mom at the door, watching us, but it was empty. So was the porch. The old wooden swing swayed at the end of the porch in the light breeze. Facing the front, I scanned the yard and sidewalk in front of the house. I could see the hood of my Jetta from where I stood.

The icy feeling remained, but I forced myself to draw in a breath and to take a step forward, chalking it up to paranoia. Which had to be totally understandable. Less than forty-eight hours ago, I’d faced something I never in my life thought I would. Of course I’d be a wee bit paranoid.

I smiled as Linds started to shift nervously. “Nothing.”

Eyeing me closely, she hesitated for a moment and then started forward. Shaking off the weird sensation, I inhaled the scent of freshly cut grass as I crossed the front yard and hit the sidewalk. I drew up short, stopping at where my car was parked along the curb.

Son-of-a-basket weaver.

There was a demonic, brown stinkbug on my windshield.

Squealing like a little girl, I darted around the front of the Jetta and yanked open the door. I lurched into the car and slammed the door shut just in case the stinkbug was ninja stealth, which most were.

I turned the car on and hit the windshield wipers, grinning like a Mad Hatter as the wipers flung the bug into next week.

Linds raised a brow from where she waited on the sidewalk.

“Sorry!” I hit the unlock button.

She climbed in, casting me a long look. “It was just a small, harmless bug.”

“They are not harmless,” I told her, easing away from the curb. “They are the scourges of the Earth.”

In reality, I could walk to school if I was feeling, I don’t know, active, which was something I hadn’t really felt in a while. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far—whatever—I used to love running. It was something I looked forward to every morning or after school, and I used to plan on joining the track or cross country team, but I hadn’t ran in almost four years.

As I drove down the street, I did something I always did. Three blocks down, I looked to my left, to the large brick house so much like my own. The glance was short, but the impact lasted far too long.

I gripped the steering wheel as I sped up. The narrow streets of Martinsburg were crowded with cars. The town was small, with a town square that was literally just a square with flowers, but the population was booming every month it seemed, making travel equivalent to getting your eyelashes plucked out.

“Everyone is going to stare at me,” I blurted out as we waited at a red light in front of the library. “Aren’t they?”

She didn’t answer immediately. “Do you want me to lie?”

Little knots formed in my belly. “No. Okay. Probably. Yes, please.”

“No one is going to stare at you,” she said solemnly. “And if they do, I’ll kick their asses. How about that?”

The corners of my lips rose up. “That would be awesome. Thank you.” I paused, twisting my fingers around a lock of hair as I kept my other hand on the steering wheel. “I…”