The Girl I Used to Be (20 page)

“So are you going to pin it on him now?”

He looks shocked. “Of course not. Not on him, not on Jason, not on anybody. We're looking at a drifter here. Someone who came, who killed, who moved on. Who's probably linked to old crimes in other states.”

“What about me? How are you going to explain whatever you do to me?”

“What about you? Everyone knows you're impetuous. You moved down to Medford on the spur of the moment. And now you've decided to move on again.”

It's going to take a lot of work to make his story fit. But he made his old story work fourteen years ago, when he wasn't the chief of police, when he didn't have access to evidence rooms and databases. So he can probably do it again.

Make me disappear like I never was.

 

CHAPTER 42

NO HOPE

When Stephen finally stops the car, I recognize where we are. It's the same spot where I parked earlier. Next to the part of the forest where my parents died.

I've come full circle.

After getting out of the car, he walks to my side and opens the door. His gun is in his hand, and it's pointed right at my chest.

“Get out.”

I don't have much choice. It's surprisingly hard to climb out of a car when you can't use your hands to push off.

“Now walk ahead of me.” He motions with his gun toward the forest.

Imagining how the bullet will bury itself between my shoulder blades, I don't move. “You don't want to do this.”

“I may not want to, but I have to.” He regards me with dead eyes. “It's too late, don't you see? It was too late the minute I accidentally shot Terry all those years ago. Everything was set in motion then. Naomi dying. Nora's heart giving out. And this.”

It's now or never. Moving faster than a thought, I lean back and brace my shoulders against the frame of the car. I kick my booted foot straight out in front of me. The hard plastic goes up between his legs with every ounce of strength I can muster. He makes a sound that starts as a grunt and ends as a scream, and staggers back.

I dart past him. Suddenly, it feels as if I'm being clotheslined. He's grabbed Nora's necklace. It digs into my throat, and then with a sharp
pop
, it snaps. He tumbles to the ground behind me, groaning.

I run as fast as I can, a crazy, staggering dash made uneven because of the boot. With my hands cuffed in front of me, I can't pump my arms but have to move them in tandem. Still, fear gives me wings.

As I run, that doubling thing happens again, the past and the present overlaid. Only this time it's not a person but a place. Now I remember being little and afraid and trying to run away. Run away from a killer. The same man who will soon gather himself, get to his feet, and chase me.

Last time, he caught me. Will he do the same this time? Because I know there is no hope that he will spare me now.

My ankle protests at every step. My feet slide on the dead pine needles. Branches claw my face, poke at my eyes. Every step betrays me with a snapping twig, a stone that clacks against another. Even my own body betrays me, panting and moaning. I'm making so much noise. Is it better to be slower and quieter or to put more distance between us?

As if in answer, a bullet sings through the air past me. The sound spurs me to an even greater burst of speed.

If I can lose him, maybe I can circle back to the road, hide in the bushes, and flag down a passing car. Or move from tree to tree and follow the road back into town.

Behind me, I hear a faint thud and cry. It sounds like he fell. Tripped on a stone or a root, the way I did when we were last here. My own balance is compromised by the handcuffs and the boot. Pretty soon, I'll fall, too. I imagine him catching up, standing over me, and pulling the trigger.

I decide to seize this moment to hide and then pray he comes blundering past. On my left, the ground rises. It's covered with dry grasses, low bushes, and tall pine trees. There's no real cover. On my right, it slopes down to a thicker tangle of more bushes and blackberry vines, deep enough to hide me. I don't want to leave telltale broken canes, so I fall to my knees and tunnel into the base of a huge blackberry bush, ignoring how the thorns tattoo my face and arms with my own blood. Finally, I'm in as deep as I can get. In the shadowed darkness, I breathe shallowly. My heart is so loud that surely he'll hear it, too. Sweat traces a path down my spine.

And then I hear him, muttering and cursing. “Which way? Which way? Where did she go? You can't let her get away.” He's no more than fifteen feet from me.

I close my eyes. I don't want to watch my own death come for me. I'm breathing so lightly my chest doesn't even rise a millimeter.

 

CHAPTER 43

NOWHERE TO RUN

Just as I think that he must surely see me, Stephen asks himself, “What's that?” He breaks into a run. His footsteps, which were so close, now move farther away.

Even though he seems to have left, I can't risk moving too soon and giving myself away.

My dad's death was fast, but my mother must have been so frightened before she died. Had she tried to appeal to Stephen, to their long friendship? Had her disbelief at what was happening slowed her reaction? What had it been like to look into the face of someone she thought of as a friend as he stabbed her again and again? Had she thought of my father or me? Or had it all been beyond thought, a crazy struggle that lasted only a few seconds?

Tears come to my eyes as I think of her and my dad and Nora, all of them taken from me.

No! I'm not going to let it happen again. Moving as quietly as I can, I twist and strain until I can pull out my phone. When I turn it on, I see one bar. It wavers but then holds. Relief washes over me. Now to call 911 for help.

I push the 9 button, then stop. First of all, I'm going to have to risk talking. How close is Stephen? Will he hear my voice and turn back? Will he shoot me before I can finish explaining to the dispatcher what's going on?

And even if I manage to tell my story, what will the dispatcher think when I claim that the chief of police is trying to kill me? The first thing they'll probably do is check with Stephen. He'll make up a lie. It might not hold in the long run—especially once I turn up missing—but either way, I'll still be dead.

I delete the 9, put my phone on silent, and switch to my text program. Duncan's my only hope.

Nd help. Spaulding killed parents!! Took me 2 same place. Hiding from him in woods.

What? Srsly? Call police.

No! He IS police. Plz come b4 he finds me. I'll try 2 get back 2 road.

His answer comes only a second later.

Coming 4 u.

My sense of relief doesn't last long. It will still take twenty minutes for Duncan to drive here. And even before that, he's going to have to get his hands on a car. Should I stay where I am for a while longer? Try to head back to the road now? I'm just starting to think it might be time to risk leaving when a white flake floats through the blackberry canes and past my eyes. And then another one. The flakes look like snow. Which is impossible.

It's ash.

I sniff. The air smells sweet and smoky. And the forest is tinder-dry.

Pausing every few seconds to listen, I carefully back my way out of the blackberry bush. It's even more difficult than tunneling in. All the canes I pressed one way now have to be pushed the other. Without a flat-out panic numbing me to the pain, each new scratch makes me flinch, which just makes another thorn snag on a different part of my body. As the canes finally grow sparser, I cautiously peer out. My heart is thudding in my chest. I'm so afraid I'll find Stephen waiting patiently for me, but there's no sign of him.

But about the length of a football field away, a thin plume of gray smoke is rising to the sky. Even while I watch, it grows fatter. Underneath the gray, there's the orange flicker of flames. A half dozen trees are on fire. Another line of smoke rises from a new tree. Flames the color of molten gold race up another. And now I can
hear
it. A crackle that thickens to a roar.

The fire is between me and the road. And it's getting bigger every second.

I don't think this fire is an accident. Stephen has set the forest alight, hoping to drive me out or burn me down. When I was here fourteen years ago, I could have frozen to death. Now I might turn to ashes.

Maybe I can circle around it and get back to the road. Get to Duncan. I imagine jumping into his mom's car and getting out of here.

Even in the few seconds it takes to imagine this, the forest fire is stretching out, hungry flames finding new fuel, thanks to wind-carried embers. Moving like a living thing, the fire skitters here, takes great leaps there. It flows like liquid, flames swirling and twining.

It's mesmerizing. I shake my head and start to run from the flames. Maybe I can outrace them. The air is so hot it singes the insides of my nostrils. The white ash is falling faster and faster. After a few minutes, I risk a glance behind me. It's much worse than I thought. The flames have jumped from tree to tree, so that the fire is beginning to ring me like an open mouth. It's so close now, only a few hundred feet away, and gaining on me every second with a sound like thunder.

With my head twisted around, I can't watch my feet, so when my right toe hooks on something, I fall hard, landing with my cuffed hands in my solar plexus. The air is knocked out of me. I lie there, mouth open like a fish's, my lungs empty and my diaphragm stuck.

Get up
, a woman's voice says. I don't know if it's in my head or in my ear.
You have to get up, honey.

Now,
a man's voice commands.

Suddenly, the scorching, smoky air rushes back into my lungs, hot and harsh. Gasping, I roll over, push myself to my feet, and start running again. Trees pop and snap as the flames find pockets of moisture. All around me, bits of fire flicker through the air. Each is a burning leaf that blackens to a crisp in midair. Then one of them, still burning, lands a few feet ahead of me and ignites a new fire. I swerve around it. But the fire at my back is giving birth to more and more spot fires that flare up and join the mother conflagration. I'm no longer thinking of finding Duncan or avoiding Stephen. I'm not even sure what direction I'm running in. Now all I want to do is survive for a few more seconds.

I crash through dense underbrush, veering around clumps of brambles, threading between tree trunks, my eyes constantly evaluating where I can go, where I can step. The air is as hot as a kiln. My tongue feels fat and swollen against my dry lips. Pine needles and small branches begin to swirl around me as they're pulled off the ground and sucked into the firestorm at my back. When I wipe my stinging eyes, my palm comes away smeared with ash.

Something crashes past me. Two somethings. My heart stutters in my chest. Deer. A doe and a fawn, leaping so fast they barely touch the ground before they bound off again. They live here and I don't, so I follow them as flames lick the trees and orange-and-gray clouds billow to the sky.

The fire's orange-yellow glow casts my shadow ahead of me. Behind me, a tree explodes as a pocket of hidden moisture turns to steam. Splinters shoot past me. A flaming branch falls at my feet, and I leap over it like one of the deer, ignoring the sharp pain in my ankle when I land.

Through the acrid smoke, I can still dimly see them ahead of me. The deer are cutting down into what looks like a small ravine.

I risk another look behind me. A wind-fed wall of flames twenty feet tall is racing toward me, roaring like a freight train.

There is nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. The fire is coming.

And soon it will catch me.

 

CHAPTER 44

EMPTY EYE OF THE GUN

Go!
the voices whisper.
Keep following the deer.

As I run down the steep slope after their bounding shapes, I spot what they were making for: a stream about twenty feet across. Nervously dancing back and forth, they are now standing in it, the water just past their bellies.

My back feels like it's already on fire. The sound of the conflagration is so loud it's more a sensation than a sound, like a giant hand pushing me forward.

I leap into the water. Right before my head goes under, I snatch one final breath of scorching air. I keep my eyes open. Around me, burning branches hit the water. The legs of one of the deer churn past. Above me, there's an eerie glow, brighter than any hell I've ever imagined, as the wall of flames reaches us. I curl into a ball and will myself not to float. Will myself not to breathe as the fire roars over us.

But finally I have to. Yanking my wet T-shirt over my mouth, I pray the fabric will somehow protect my lungs from the hot gases. I put my feet under me and, with my shoulders rounded, stand up just enough that my mouth clears the water. Immediately my T-shirt dries out and then crisps on my back. Hot ash freckles my neck. I smell the sweet stench of burning hair. I suck in a breath and sink again, but the water seems lower. Has it boiled away at the edges, turned to steam?

I don't know how many times I repeat this—holding my breath until my lungs burn like the air above me—until I think it might be safe to stay on my feet. I swipe the water from my eyes and look around. A few hundred feet ahead, the fire is working its way up a slope. It's so bright I have to squint to look at it.

Around me, what had been lush forest just an hour ago has been transformed into a nightmare lunar landscape, blackened and charred. A few trees still have burning branches, while others have been reduced to limbless trunks like blackened telephone poles.

Smoke clings to the ground, low enough that even just standing up, I'm out of the worst of it.

Amazingly, the deer have survived, too, although their flanks are dotted with burned patches. A look passes between me and the mama deer, a look beyond words, but still filled with understanding.