Dammit, no. He’s the criminal. This isn’t my fault.
Or Morgan’s.
Even so, I have a thousand regrets—that I wasn’t more on guard after breaking it off—that I didn’t report him to the police and turn over all my evidence … the list goes on forever.
“I’m not your property,” I tell him. “If you keep on like this, the truth will come out.”
“Will it?” His voice is silky with menace.
He jerks the wheel, driving the small car into a spin. I stomp the brake in reflex so we come rocking to a stop at the edge of the road, and my head snaps sideways, slamming into the window. It hurts like hell and I’m seeing stars for a few seconds, long enough for him to yank me out of the driver’s seat and into his lap. The gear shift bites into my hip. I scream then, full on ear-splitting shrieks, and it makes him hesitate. Then I process what he’s actually saying.
“My God, you’re bleeding. Morgan, are you all right?”
He cradles me like I’m infinitely precious, just like the endearment he used, and it unsettles me to the point that I can’t speak. What the hell is wrong with this man? I use his concern, relaxing enough to make him drop some tension in his arms. It’s like he really thinks I’ll snuggle against him. When he puts his face in my hair, I slam my skull back against his nose and lunge for the door handle.
Though I’m dizzy as shit, in ten seconds I’m running full tilt into the field. The corn is tall and dry, rustling, whipping my face as I shove through, deeper into the rows, so I can’t see anything. This is a scene straight from a horror movie, and I should know better, except all my choices are bad and worse. There are no houses around, and for a few heartbeats, I can only think, Is this how my mother died? I imagine her being driven off the road, surviving the crash and running, running, aware of the tiny, helpless life inside her. Is this how she felt in her last moments? I smell Creepy Jack’s blood in my hair, and in this moment, I feel only mad revulsion. If I could, I’d plunge into a river and wash myself clean, even if that ended with me floating like Ophelia with flowers in my damp and streaming hair.
He’s shouting but I don’t stop. I run and keep running as if my life depends on it. Maybe it does. I’ve lost the ability to tell. In the headlong rush I don’t see the edge coming, plunge down a bank and tumble through a briar patch. Wild raspberries, half-eaten by birds, smear my skin with red, underscored by scratches deep enough to bleed. I don’t have the breath or strength to run farther. Injuries from the accident throb from the fall, so I press myself into the damp earth, weeds tickling my bare cheeks, and I don’t move.
Creepy Jack is frantic. I hear him nearby, searching, searching, beating at the dry corn stalks. “Morgan, please. Don’t do this.”
His scuffed leather dress shoes appear, no more than ten feet from where I’m hiding. From this angle I can see only up to the bottom of his pant legs. My breath strangles in my throat, and my heartbeat thunders so loud that I’m astonished he can’t hear it. It seems like an eternity before he moves off in the other direction, still calling for me. I hide for countless moments more, shivering as if I have a fever. By the time I notice that it’s getting dark, my body has stiffened to the point that it’s agony to crawl out of the thicket. The thorns catch on my clothes like I’m a prize the bushes don’t want to relinquish, and fresh scratches scrape down my spine, deep enough that I feel the hot trickle of blood.
Finally I stumble forward and land on hands and knees in the clay-rich dirt of the embankment. There are raspberries growing along an irrigation trench, and it takes all my remaining fortitude to dig my bloody fingers into the soil and haul myself onto flat ground. All around, the wind rustles through the dry corn husks. I’ve arrived in a nocturnal agrarian wasteland. The word desolate blooms in my mind, and I picture myself dying alone, as my mother did. There will be no one to ask hard questions about my passing, either.
Pure defiance forces me to my feet. Despite the stitch in my side, the pain in my ankle, and all the myriad minor wounds that are bleeding sluggishly, I stagger onward. Now that it’s dark, I’m not altogether sure where I came from. The rows of corn seem like an endless Halloween maze, only instead of music and laughter, I hear only the wind and insects singing their night songs. Now that the sun’s gone down, it’s getting chilly, too. Not enough for me to die of exposure, but I’m not dressed for the weather, and my skin prickles with goose bumps.
Pulling down the plants around me helps a little. I spin in a slow circle and eventually identify the road. From this distance it’s a dark swathe cutting through the fields. I limp in that direction, each step feeling like a thousand, but when I reach the pavement, my VW is gone. Staring in both directions, disbelief sweeps over me.
That asshole stole my car?
If I had the energy, I’d be furious. Just now I only have room for fear … because my cell phone is still in the car, I don’t have any money on me, and the only person who knows I’m missing is Creepy Jack. He might be driving the Bug around even now, silently searching. That threat is almost enough to send me back into the cornfield.
No, I can’t hide forever. Still, I don’t walk right on the shoulder of the road. Instead I pick a careful path along the shallow ditch set slightly below it. This way, I may be able to scramble into the cornfield if Creepy Jack stops. I’m twitchy, heading for cover as cars pass, but then after I see their taillights I realize maybe I should’ve flagged them down. I’m afraid of getting in the wrong car, just like with grubby pickup-truck guy.
Walking three miles won’t kill me. Other people might.
Between my sore ankle and the fact that I skipped lunch to study in the library, I’m soon light-headed. I can remember my mom lecturing me about bad life choices and ending up dead in a ditch, but I never would’ve imagined her cautions could be so accurate. Somehow I take a few more steps, but the stars above are blurry, streaking into bands of light. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes as my knees buckle. I kneel for a minute or two, but an inner core of steel won’t let me quit.
Maybe it’s the same reason I held on during the accident when Morgan let go.
Assuming that dream is true. And I’m not crazy.
Right now my mental state doesn’t matter. I just have to get home. I’ve gone fifty yards when it occurs to me that I’m dead set on getting back to the Frost estate, which says something about my degree of acceptance. For me, home isn’t the Burnham house any longer; I’m not wearing Morgan like a dress that doesn’t fit.
Whoever, whatever I was before, I’m Morgan Frost now.
Mentally I repeat the words like a mantra—I am Morgan Frost—and for some reason it gives me strength, permitting me to pick up the pace. Even the boost of adrenaline doesn’t accomplish miracles, however. There are still two miles to go. But as I round the bend, the glimmering lights of a farmhouse shine through the darkness. I have no idea who lives here, and I doubt Morgan did either. Her family didn’t exactly make friends when they bought three failing farms and turned that land into a posh private estate. Still, even if the homeowners recognize me, they would have to be heartless to refuse to let me use the phone.
I angle toward the gravel drive as the roar of a car engine gains on me from behind. Terror sends me sprinting toward those squares of light and I don’t look back; I don’t stop either, not even when I hear the brakes, tires squealing on pavement. This is it. There’s no fight left if Creepy Jack takes me for the second time.
Never in my life have I felt this helpless, not even when I lay in a field dying.