21 Dares: A Florida Suspense Mystery (2 page)

The
man grabbed both her ankles. She kicked. He pulled. She hugged a post. He yanked
her legs. Her body lifted off the floor, into the air. Her arms tightened around
the post. Blood squished in her right palm. Her arms slipped. Her fingers caught
the wooden edge. She scrunched her face, bit her tongue. The man tugged, hard, then
suddenly let go.

Abbie’s
side hit the top of a lower beam with a painful thud. She caught her breath.
Inhaled.
Turned, just as the man’s head
disappeared through the trap door, followed by his arms and hands.
Several
bangs rose from the hallway beneath her and the floor vibrated with each jolt.
The house creaked, followed by a gun shot.
Then another.

The
attic fell quiet. Abbie held her breath. She chewed her lower lip, watched the
opening.

A
head popped-up, blocking the light from below, and a face came into view. It
was a new man. He had a moustache.
Blue eyes.
Kind eyes.
Kind smile.

“Abbie
Reed?” His voice was calm. “Abbie, I’m a police officer and you’re safe now.”

He
extended a hand, palm up, as if he were approaching a nervous dog. Abbie backed
away from him.

“It’s
alright Abbie.” Even in the dark his eyes sparkled. His smile widened,
revealing a row of white teeth. “I’m going to take you to your Daddy.”

Trembling,
Abbie took his hand. She let out a breath and let him help her down the ladder.
She landed in the hallway. The ceiling lights were bright but the table lamp lay
in pieces on the floor. The upended table was sideways next to the bald man. His
body spread out face down, his arms extended. A circle of red widened on his
back, drenching his shirt. A dark puddle expanded beneath him, pooling around
his sides and drowning her teddy bear. It rested motionless in the puddle
beside the bad man.

Abbie
stared at the tattoo on his arm.
Gareth
the Goodhearted Ghoul smiled whimsically at her.
She swore it winked. Abbie
shook her head and took a step back toward the policeman’s leg. She wrapped an
arm around his leg.

He
said something into his walkie-talkie. A garbled voice returned the message,
then
the policeman kneeled beside her. He looked Abbie face
to face, stared into her eyes
.“
Abbie, my name is Officer
Hicks,” he said to her.
“Charlie Hicks.”

Abbie
listened, but said nothing. She watched him. He continued in that slow, calm
voice.

“You’re
a very brave girl,” he said. “And I’m going to take you to your daddy, but I
need you to do something for me, okay?”

Abbie
heard him, but didn’t respond. His face was close to her’s, but his words sounded
far away. It was like the whole hallway was expanding behind him, stretching
away from them. He put a hand on her shoulder, and it felt heavy and warm.

“Abbie,
I’m going to pick you up and carry you downstairs. I want you to close your
eyes and keep them closed. Can you do that for me?”

She
nodded and shut her eyes. She felt the policeman’s strong arms wrap around her
and lift her into the air. Her body pressed against his core as his grip
tightened. He carried her to the stairs and she could feel them descending, one
step at a time. When they came to the landing downstairs, Abbie felt his body
turn. They were moving through the living room. She opened her eyes. She didn’t
want to, but she had to.

A
grey box cutter was on the floor.
Its blade shiny between
streaks of blood.

And,
there was her big sister.

Heather’s
body
lay
face-up, motionless on the floor, beneath the
large living room window. Moonlight shined down on her, bathing her still body
in a ghostly, white aura. Her head angled back. Her eyes were open, staring
empty toward the ceiling. Her neck was exposed, as was the angry gash that ran
from her left ear across her throat. Abbie didn’t scream. She didn’t speak. She
just stared at Heather’s still body until Officer Charlie Hicks carried her out
the house and across the front porch.

He
set her down on the front lawn. Abbie raised her head.
The night was clear. Thousands of stars shined white and dazzling.
Neighbors crowded in the street. A police car was parked at the curb,
its red and blue lights flashing. Finally behind her, she heard Charlie Hicks shut
the front door of her home.

16 years later…

Chapter
2

A
bbie Reed took a can of Seafood Feast from the
cabinet and opened the top over the sink. Clem paced along the baseboards,
meowing. Despite carrying a solid twelve pounds, the cat effortlessly leaped
onto the counter, nudged Abbie’s arm, rump up, and waved its striped orange and
yellow tail.
 

“Hold
your horses.” Abbie picked Clem up with both hands and set him down on the
floor.
 

N
ow a twenty-year-old college student
with white skin and dark brown hair that she generally kept pulled back in a
ponytail, Abbie had a full day of classes ahead of her. She wore comfortable
jeans and a tan button-down shirt tied in a knot above her waist, showing an
inch or two of white freckled stomach. Her bare feet were cold on the kitchen
tile.
Absentmindedly, she clutched the small silver unicorn pendant
swaying at the end her necklace. She had a habit of gripping it whenever she
felt anxious.

The
laptop on the counter had a DVD playing in it. Despite the dramatic music and
action on the screen, Abbie ignored the episode of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. She had a cat to feed. Setting the open
can in the sink, she bent to grab the food bowl. Clem watched her take the empty
dish,
then
took to licking his front paw.

Abbie
brought the dish to the sink and ran it under the faucet, half glancing at her
laptop.
The blue-and-white Skype logo popped-up and twirled
on screen with its bubbly music, interrupting Buffy’s street fight with a horde
of vampires.
She
paused
the DVD and answered
the video chat.
 
The face of a man in his
early fifties appeared on the screen and smiled.

“Clinton
Reed…” Abbie returned the smile. She spoke to her father every single day for
the last two months, ever since leaving home to attend Bay Harbor University in
Tampa.
Go Mighty Manatees!
Her father
wasn’t on board with her moving. To be honest, he wasn’t even comfortable with
her leaving the house. And these last eight weeks had been the longest they’d
ever been separated.

“Happy Birthday, Abigail.”
His hair was a deep
shade of grey. It turned early, when he was still a young man of thirty-five.
Now, it lightened his heavy face, which, with its worry lines and the dark bags
under his eyes, made him look closer to sixty.

“My
birthday’s not for another two days.” Abbie rinsed the bowl under the tap as
she spoke.

“Okay,
then.
Happy Pre-Birthday.”
He chuckled as if he made a
joke, then the worry lines returned.
 
“Did you get the check?”

Abbie
set the dish in the sink next to the can of cat food and stretched an arm
toward a pile of mail at the end of the counter. She picked up a red Hallmark
card with a yellow kitten on the front. There was a check folded inside.

“Yes,”
she said, holding it up to the camera.
“And the card.
It made me cry.”

“That
was from your grandparents. My present is… well, I wish I could come down to
visit you.”

“You
don’t have to do that,” Abbie said. Clem meowed loudly, and she glanced down at
him. Her father continued, also vying for her attention.

“I
should’ve at least driven you up there when you left,” he said. “I wanted to. I
really did.”

“I
completely understand.” Abbie scooped the Seafood Feast into the bowl with a
spoon,
then
lowered the bowl to the floor. Clem
pounced on it as Abbie straightened back up and looked at her father on the
screen. “Maybe I can come back home for the weekend. And Thanksgiving is, what,
a month away?”

He
shook his head. “You should stay up there. Spend your birthday with your
friends.”

Abbie
laughed at that. “I haven’t had time to make friends yet. I’ve only been here a
couple of months.”

“What
about your roommate?”

As
if on cue, a voice behind Abbie interrupted the conversation.

“All
of my Tinder matches got wiped-out.” Susan Nichols stepped out the bathroom
holding her smart phone in one hand and running the other through her short
blonde hair. Close to six feet tall with an athletic build, her long legs
seemed to drive her much higher than she really wanted to go.
So she wore flat pumps, like she
always did. They matched her white shorts and green BHU tee cut just above the
navel. With her head down, she appeared focused on her phone
.

“Every single guy!
Gone!
Caput!”
She shook the phone in her hand then looked at it
again.
“Geez!
It’s like my phone is jealous and wants
me to stay home on Saturday nights.”

Abbie
acknowledged her,
then
turned back to the laptop. “I
have Behavioral Science starting in twenty minutes.”

“Okay.”
He looked down a moment. It seemed some pang of regret flashed across his face.
When he looked back up, Abbie clearly saw it in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Be
careful today and call me when you get home.”

“Love
you.” Abbie moved her fingertips over the mouse sensor on her laptop.

“Wait!”
He raised a hand and it jiggled the image. “When it rains…”

Abbie
glanced over at Susan, who stood at the door pressing her thumbs on the phone
screen. “What’s wrong with this stupid thing?” She screamed at it. Abbie looked
back at her father’s face in the monitor. “C’mon. I’m practically an adult…”

“And
when it rains,” he said again.

Abbie
sighed. “Look for rainbows.”

“And
when it’s dark?”

Abbie
rolled her eyes.
“Seriously?”

He
asked it again. “And when it’s dark?’

“Look
for stars.” Her tone turned cold. “Now, I’ve really got to go.” Abbie ran a
finger over the mouse sensor and closed the Skype window. She looked at Susan.

Susan
dropped the phone into her purse and held the front door open. She pointed
toward Abbie’s laptop. “
You watching
the Muffy DVD
again? You know we have over three hundred channels on the tube.”

“It’s
Buffy, with a ‘B’,” Abbie said. Frozen onscreen, Buffy Summers stood in
mid-stride crossing a dark Sunnydale street. The spunky, teenage vampire slayer
was headed to The Bronze to save her little sister Dawn, and she sang “Walk
Through
Fire” as she marched into battle. Abbie had seen
this episode a hundred times. It was her favorite, next to the one where Angel
turns evil, or where those tall, white, tuxedoed ghost-zombies floated into
town and stole everyone’s voices, or the one where…

Susan
laughed, tapping her finger nails on the door. “Trust me, it’s Muffy. The
producers knew what they were doing. Now let’s go.”

“I’m
coming.” Shrugging, Abbie turned off the laptop, jumped off the stool and
grabbed her book bag and purse. She slipped a pair of tennis shoes on her bare
feet. “
You working
today? It’s supposed to rain.”

“No,
I’ve gotta get my phone fixed and I need that student discount.” Susan pointed
to the white block letters spelling “Bay Harbor U.” across her chest. “That’s
why I’m repping the alma mater today even though I clashed with all my
professors and they accused me of arson.”

Abbie
crouched down to Clem, who was still engrossed in the Seafood Feast. She rubbed
a hand over the cat’s head and ears, and told him to be good. Finally, she followed
Susan out the door, pausing a moment to lock it behind them.
Susan rambled behind her.

“Did I tell you one of the hot girls who
lives on our floor moved out and now a newer, hotter girl is moving in? I can’t
compete.” Susan waved a hand as she talked, walking briskly down the three flights
of stairs. Abbie followed. Traffic noise from the street carried in through the
open stairwell windows. A baby crying loud enough to be heard in one unit
competed with a television turned-up a little too loud from another.

Stepping on the sidewalk, Susan turned to
Abbie. “It’s soooo time to move outta here.”

* * * *

Sitting on a bench across the street, a man wearing a
brown hat and a tan trench coat held a pen and notepad in hands. He watched
Abbie Reed and the tall roommate walk down the three flights of steps to the
parking lot.
 
Abbie looked up at the sky
and pointed.
Perhaps they were talking
about the chance for rain
, he thought. He couldn’t hear exactly what they
were saying from that distance.

Pushing his brown hat lower on his head to
shade his face, he remained in the shadows beneath the oak trees and palms. He
watched the girls climb into a blue Honda Civic, then scribbled, “
8:25 AM leaving apartment
.”

The roommate’s car pulled out of the parking
lot. He knew it was headed toward the psychology building on the University
campus. Sometimes Abbie Reed would walk to class. Sometimes the roommate would
drive her. Either way, Abbie would be in class till four, which gave him some
time to kill.