Brooke

Chelsea and I step out of the hushed warmth of the Franklin City Natural History Museum into the cool April air. We’ve got tons of notes for our project, which involves making a model of a hunter-gatherer village out of putty and cardboard. Our village shows how people lived before they figured out they could grow crops and settle in one place. Our teacher said that anybody who added museum research would get extra credit, and Chelsea and I are all about the extra credit.

We head to the parking ramp across the street and take the stairwell up. “You need to tell your dad to get one of those 3-D printers,” she says. “Can you imagine how amazing our village would be? If we could make tiny little tools like what was in there?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell him. I’ll get right on that,” I joke. Sometimes I’m surprised that even Chelsea doesn’t realize Dad’s company is doing so poorly.

At least I’m doing better.

It’s been seven months since my abduction. Seven months since my sixteenth birthday party.

Right after it happened, I thought I saw him around every corner. I don’t think I see him around every corner anymore. I still see him beating that poor old guy to death when I close my eyes, though. I still remember the way he held me so tightly. Like we were both in danger of drowning in that river.

We get to the fifth level. She pulls out her keys, and I pull out mine. The lights flash on her white SUV, parked next to my red one.

“Tomorrow? Study hall?” she says. We both have first period free.

“I’m there,” I say. “I promise I’ll remember your blue sweater.” I borrowed it, and I keep forgetting to bring it back.

She narrows her eyes, playful. She always acts like I’m trying to steal it.

“I swear! Unless I decide to wear it. I might wear it. Finders keepers,” I tease.

She snorts and gets in and buckles up. I shut her door for her and thump on the side as she backs up and out, leaving me alone in the parking lot.

I walk around my car and click the fob. It unlocks with a soft squeech.

Just as I open the door, I see a dark form separating from a nearby pillar of concrete. A person, coming toward me, long strides eating up the ground between us.

Him.

I back up, going around my car, keeping it between us. I know not to get in. He’ll shove a fist right through the window, because that’s who he is. He stops at the driver’s side. “You want me to drive? Is that it?”

My heart thumps in my chest. “What are you doing here?”

“Throw me the keys and get in.”

“I didn’t tell,” I say, backing away from him and my car, too, praying for somebody to come. But there are barely any cars on this level. A red exit light in the far corner shines like a beacon in the gray cavern of the parking ramp.

“If you’d told, your people would be dead, wouldn’t they?”

A cold finger trails slowly down my spine. “What do you want?”

“We’re going for a little ride.”

“I need to get home,” I say, voice louder than it needs to be. Bravado. “I’ll be late for dinner.”

“They giving you something more to eat than strawberries these days?”

If that’s some kind of sick joke, I’m not laughing. I’m backing up now, eyes on him.

He comes around the car and moves toward me, green eyes burning, dark hair curling at the ends. His jeans are faded, and his dark green shirt hangs open, revealing a black T-shirt underneath. There are specks of something light clinging to his shirtsleeves. His brown boots, too.

I think maybe it’s flour, but a man like this doesn’t bake things. It’s too coarse for flour anyway.

It doesn’t matter. Getting away, that’s what matters.

I back into something hard—a concrete post. I move around it, trying to put as many solid things between him and me as possible.

He keeps coming.

My pulse whooshes in my ears. The distance between us shrinks. I spin around and run for the exit. “Help!” I yell as I burst through the door to the stairwell. “Help!”

If I can get down to the street, I’m free. There’s life there. Cars, people.

I fly around the first landing and rush down the next set of stairs, footsteps loud behind me. I turn and descend the next flight, and then the next.

Suddenly a dark form hops over the rail.

Him.

He drops down in front of me, wrapping me in a bearhug and hauling me up, just like before, holding me tightly to his chest.

Except this time he has his hand over my mouth, sealing it. He doesn’t like that I yelled. He seems stronger and huger than before. He’s half a year older, so maybe he is stronger and huger. Maybe he spent the past months regretting that he let me go.

His fingers press into my flesh, holding me to the hard planes of his chest.

“I said we’re going for a little ride,” he growls. “What part of that didn’t you understand?”

He carries me back up the steps. I wriggle fiercely. He just tightens his hold, bringing me back up to level five like I weigh nothing—a Neanderthal and his prize.

He carries me across the gloomy parking garage, back to my SUV where the door still stands open. He shoves me into the driver’s side and pulls a gun from out of nowhere.

He has a gun.

“I’ll use it if I have to. Now start ’er up.”

I turn the car on. I’m trapped. Again. How did I end up back here?

The light from the interior of the vehicle illuminates his fierce features, all sharp angles that make me think of a diamond, strangely—how a diamond is formed under huge pressure, and it’s beautiful but incredibly hard. It can cut almost anything because of the way it’s made in nature. Stronger than steel.

He’s a dark diamond. Green eyes bright and hard.

He bends over, nearing me. I suck in a breath and shrink away, thinking he’s going to kiss me.

“Hey,” he says, “you’re okay.” He pulls out my seatbelt and tucks it across me, buckling me in. And for a second, his diamond-hard face seems to soften. “Now I’m going to go around and get in, and we’re going to drive out of here like a happy couple. Got it?”

I can’t take my eyes off his gun.

“Stay buckled in like that and do what I say and I won’t hurt you. Okay?”

I just stare at the gun, frozen. It’s so huge and dark and so…there.

“Say okay,” he says, his green gaze capturing mine.

“Okay.”

He reaches up and touches my hair, just the end, twisting it a little, rubbing the strands between thick fingers. “Your hair is different.”

The words tumble out before I can consider them. “I got blonde highlights.”

“It looks nice.” He shuts the door and comes around to the other side, gets in, and closes the door quietly. “Here’s hoping your driving skills have improved since last time.”

Despite my fear, indignation rises up in me. “What? I didn’t even have my license yet! I was backing up through woods. Running for my life.”

He shrugs.

I clench the wheel and pull out of the spot. I have no idea where we’re going or why he came back. Part of me is terrified. I can’t stop looking at that gun, even out of the corner of my eye.

Another part of me feels a sickening sense of familiarity.

When we hit the pay area, he points to the exact-change line. “I got this.”

He hands me the money, and I throw it into the basket. The black-and-white striped arm rises. I look across at the woman in the credit-card payment booth, but she’s talking to the driver in that car.

“Don’t bother,” he says. “People don’t notice shit. They don’t care.”

Of course he’d say that. But he’s wrong. “Some care.”

“You go on and think so, then.” His voice is unconcerned, easy. His whole body is easy, like we really are a couple on a drive. He tells me to turn left. He directs us toward the highway.

“Did you follow me here?”

“How do you know I don’t just really love museums?” he says. “Maybe I’m a museum lover like you.”

“I don’t love museums,” I whisper.

“Then what were you doing at one?”

“A school project. It’s extra credit if you go to the museum.”

“Aren’t you a good little girl.” He points, directing me to the highway on-ramp. “The hardworking ant.”

I merge in. He said he wouldn’t hurt me if I do what he says. Still, I’m shaking a little. Shaking inside. It’s fear. Mostly. I try for a joke. “Did you just call me an ant?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of that fable? The ant works all summer, preparing stores of food for the coming winter, while the grasshopper lies around and sings and enjoys himself. Then the winter rolls in, and it’s cold and harsh, like a fucking wasteland. And the grasshopper is shivering and starving, and he begs the ant for food and the ant says, ‘You shouldn’t have fucked around all summer.’”

“The ant doesn’t give him food?”

“I don’t know. That’s where it ends. The grasshopper’s sorry for being a fuckup, but it’s too late.”

I check his face to see whether he’s joking. “Did you just make that up?”

“No. It’s a fable. We read it in a musty old book somewhere.”

“You and your parents read it?” I say. Though I can’t imagine him with parents. Or with books.

He shrugs. “Just some old book in a box in a basement somewhere.”

“I guess I am kind of the ant,” I say. “Except I would share.”

He grunts.

“Are you the grasshopper?” I ask. “The one who blows off all the work he’s supposed to do? Just does whatever he wants?”

“Nah,” he says. “I’m not the grasshopper.”

“You’re the ant? Preparing for the future?” I look over at him. I should probably be scared, but I’m actually curious. “Would you share?”

He looks out the window. “I’m not the ant or the grasshopper,” he says.

“You can’t be neither.”

“I can.”

“No, you can’t. You either plan and think ahead, or you don’t.”

“Maybe I’m the winter, bringing all the hell,” he says. “The winter nobody ever wants to see coming, but here I am.”

With a little shiver, I put my eyes back on the road. “Do you really think that?”’ I ask softly. Because it would be horrible if somebody thought that about themselves.

“Drive,” he barks.

“Where are we going?”

“Just drive.”

We’re heading north. With a sick feeling, I realize this is the highway we took last time we were together. The one that heads out toward Big Moosehorn Park. Why is he bringing me back there?

Oh God. Is he going to finish what he started?

Maybe he thought about it and realized he should have drowned me that night. My foot lets up on the gas pedal. I could be driving myself to my own funeral.

“I didn’t tell,” I whisper.

The car is slowing down. “I know you didn’t.”

“Then why…”

“Because. Because this is how things are going to happen. When I say jump, you jump. When I say drive, you motherfucking drive. That’s how it is between us now.”

“For how long?” I hate how small my voice sounds when it comes out. I hate how I always knew he’d come back, knew it wasn’t over.

His gaze is dark with promise. He looks older than he did that night somehow. Less of a mystery, more of a promise. “Forever, Brooke. I let you live that night, and now you’re in my debt. Understand? You’re mine.”

A chill comes over me, and at the same time, the heat of anger in my neck, my face. Not because of the threat of it, but because of the truth. He connected us that night in a dark, sick way.

He made me lie to everyone I love. Made me his.

Maybe it’s the anger making me feel brave, I don’t know, but I give him my worst fuck you look. The kind of look I reserve for when guys my age are being douchebags. The kind of look that puts people in their place. “I’ll never be yours,” I say.

It doesn’t put him in his place.

He turns to me with full-on intensity. There’s heat in his emerald eyes, but also a kind of wonder. And sadness, a little bit. I cringe as he reaches over and touches my hair again. “Too late,” he says.

My pulse whooshes in my ears. “What are you going to do?”

The question feels alive in the air between us. Alive with speculation, as if I’d asked more questions. Are you going to touch me? Kiss me?

Are you going to kill me?

He’s touching my hair. His hand brushes my shoulder, a ghost of a touch, but it feels electric, shivering over my body. Sweat trickles down my spine. My heart hammers in my chest like a wild thing under my stiff white school shirt.

He seems to be thinking about the question. Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want to know.

The Burger Benny sign looms up ahead, bright blue and yellow. Ever since that night, I get this weird mixture of feelings when I pass one of those signs, like when you remember a feeling from a dream and you don’t know what it is. All you know is that it connects to some deep part of you.

I hate that we’re connected like that.

He gestures with the gun at the exit for Burger Benny. “Get off there.”

“I have to be home for dinner soon. They’re expecting me. They’ll be worried, and after last time, they won’t wait and see. If I don’t check in, they’ll call the police.”

“That’s why you’re going to call and make up an excuse why you’re late.”

“I can’t just do that.”

“Okay. Then call and tell the truth. You’re driving your buddy around. The guy who killed Madsen.”

My blood races. The more time I spend with him, the more trapped I feel. Telling them that would terrify them. And they wouldn’t be able to help. No one can help.

“The guy you covered for,” he continues. “That’s who you’re with. You know what accessory after the fact is? I’ll give you a hint—it’s not something you want on your pretty, perfect record.”

He pulls his hand away from my hair and opens my bag.

“Hey!” I say.

He fishes out my phone and hands it to me. “Make the call, little bird. Make it good.”

We’re at a stop sign. I call the house number, getting voicemail, like I knew I would. I leave a message, saying that Chelsea and I are done with the museum but I’ll be later than expected because she wants my opinion on a prom dress at Macy’s.

I feel his eyes on me as he takes the phone from me. “Chelsea,” he snorts. As if that’s stupid or something. He opens the back of it and pulls out the battery.

“What are you doing?”

“Three guesses.”

I focus on the road. “What do you want?”

“A burger. What are you going to have?”

He says it like we’re a couple on a regular night, stepping out for a burger.

But we’re not. I say nothing. He can pretend all he wants—I don’t have to participate.

I catch sight of a cop car up ahead. My pulse speeds. I grip the steering wheel. We draw nearer to the cop. To the exit.

My abductor doesn’t seem the least bit nervous. Casually, he reaches over and flips on the blinker, brushing my arm. A shiver goes through me.

His voice is casual. “Would suck to be pulled over riding with the guy you covered for, wouldn’t it? After lying to your parents like that? Things would really look bad then.”

When I glance over, he’s smiling that beautiful, devilish smile I remember so well from the first night. I feel like a fish, and this guy, he drove a hook deep into my gut. And he can pull it whenever he wants.

It’s about more than the fact that he forced me to lie.

It’s about how tightly he held me in the river that night—every muscle wet and straining with the refusal to let go.

Nobody has ever expended that kind of intensity on me. Perverse as it seems, it was something real after all the fakeness of the party. After the fakeness of my entire life.

The feeling of hating him and clinging on to him was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Like clinging to a leaky life raft even though it’s going to drown you.

Clinging to your killer, that’s a powerful and horrible kind of intimacy. I used to think of intimacy as chocolates and roses and sweet whispered words. But it can be blood and violence and darkness, too. That’s something they don’t teach you in school.

It drove a hook deep, deep into me.

The sensation of him has lived under my skin for the past seven months. The feeling of his fingers digging into my shivering flesh. The way his wet shirtsleeves clung to his bulging biceps. The hard intensity of his gaze, fixed firmly on the moon, like he couldn’t bear looking down at me while he killed me. How severe and sure his grip became each time I struggled. The musical swash of the water against our bodies, a soundtrack to the most twisted dance ever.

And then he let me live, even when I could ID him so easily.

It felt like something beyond chocolates and roses and sweet whispered words. Something more genuine, somehow.

It’s completely crazy—I know.

And I can never tell anybody, not even Chelsea. That’s almost the worst part of it.

“My treat,” he adds. Like this is a date.

I veer into the drive-through lane, heart thudding.

“Careful,” he commands. “Prom’s coming up. Saw the sign on the school. You going?”

“None of your business.”

“I’ll decide what’s my business or not. You’re mine, and that includes you answering every single question I ask—with the truth. You do everything I say and tell me what I want to know, and I won’t hurt you, got it?”

You’re mine. There’s this tightness in my belly. It’s not right. I hate you I hate you I hate you, I think at him, repeating it like that might make it true.

“Now, are you going to this prom shit or not?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

I look over at him, wondering how much he knows about prom. “I’m not old enough. It’s for seniors. I can go if a senior asks me, but…”

“But what? No one asked you?”

He sounds a little indignant about that, and it makes me smile.

I think about Zach’s fumbling kisses at the party last month. I’d liked him for so long, but his kisses had seemed as fake as my sweet-sixteen party. Kissing me like a prereq to some blow-off course he has to take. The way he touched me felt like the air-kiss version of touching. Like he wasn’t really there.

Maybe I wasn’t really there.

Zach asked me to go to prom with him and another couple, but I lied and said my parents thought sixteen was too young for prom, and that I’d promised to go to the movies with Chelsea. Then I’d asked Chelsea to go to the movies, just to make the lie true. Zach is the perfect boyfriend in every way, but everything with him feels empty.

Ever since the night of my sweet-sixteen party, nothing has felt real. Except the man in my passenger seat. He feels real.

“Let’s get the usual,” he says when we get up to the speaker thing. “Order two of the usual.” He has the gun out of sight, but it’s still there.

I glare at him. “We don’t have a usual.”

He lowers his voice. “Order. The. Usual.”