Don't Look Behind You (Don't Look Series Book 1)

by Emily Kazmierski

  Our parents’ death.

  The long, painful scar that’s faded to a white line along her cheek.

  The Mayday Killer’s presence here in Hacienda.

  His threats against Noah’s parents.

  Esau looks at Taryn, his expression cool. A handsome statue chiseled out of granite. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  She scowls at him. “You love it.”

  Yanking viciously at the rubber band on his wrist, he mumbles something.

  “What was that?” Taryn’s eyes are locked on him.

  He clears his throat. “Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” For the first time tonight, she sounds less sure of herself.

  “You were using me the whole time. It was all a power play.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is, Taryn. I thought you and I were building something together. I thought we made a great team. The lighting. The blocking. Hell, the performances you’ve gotten out of all of the actors this semester. The play would have been fantastic. It would have been more than enough to give me a shot at film school. But none of it was real. The whole time, you were using me. Trying to take the play for yourself. Weren’t you?”

  Taryn’s face flashes white and then red. “I admit it started that way. I lost everything, Esau. Everything. But if I could take one play and put my own spin on it, it would mean that I wasn’t completely lost. That there is some of the old me buried inside somewhere. But as I got to know you, everything changed. You said it yourself. We make a great team.”

  “Made.”

  “What?”

  “We made a great team. No more.” His hand slashes the air between them.

  Taryn’s jaw clenches. She glares at him, breathing hard. “That’s really what you want?”

  Esau’s harsh look silences her.

  I stand between them, torn. Half of me wants to explain to Esau that we only lied because we were forced into it. The other half wants to wrap my arms around my sister and beg her forgiveness.

  A low rattle comes from somewhere outside the concrete room. Something skitters over the floor. A shaft of light flashes under the seam of the door.

  My heart kicks into my throat. Mr. Baugh is back, and there’s no telling what he’ll do now that he has both of us trapped. Esau, too. Swallowing, I put a hand on his arm. Wait until he meets my gaze. “If you get the chance, run. Tell Aunt Karen what happened to us. You’ll do that, won’t you?”

  Esau’s eyes blaze. “You think I’m a coward?”

  “Yes, if you’re so willing to believe that what we had didn’t mean anything,” Taryn bites off.

  I shoot a look at my sister, annoyed at her caustic attitude, even though I know it’s a front she’s using to hide behind.

  “It’s not cowardly to go for help,” I say to Esau. “Please.”

  We fall into a hushed silence as something scuffs right outside the locked door.

  He’s coming.

  I’ve been running from the demons in my mind for six months, but it ends now. I’m not going to run from this. If Mr. Baugh thinks he’s going to help the Mayday Killer do whatever he has planned for us without having a fight on his hands, he’s mistaken. Hiding the rusted chisel behind my back, I square my shoulders.

  “Megan?” someone whispers. “Are you in there?”

  I know that voice. Relief floods through me as the chisel hits the ground with a plunk. I’m at the door before I can blink, hands pressed to the gnarled wooden planks. Rough splinters dig into my fingertips, but I don’t care.

  “Noah, we’re in here. Help us!”

  “Get away from the door, and be ready to run.”

  I take a big step back, confused by why he’d—

  BANG

  The door convulses and flies open, slamming against its frame. Fragments of wood scatter through the air. My hands fly up to cover my eyes. I peek out from between my fingertips and my mouth falls open.

  Noah stands in the doorway with Esau’s rifle hitched to one shoulder. His wild curls fall over his forehead and the sleeves of his flannel are shoved up over his elbows to reveal the capable arms underneath. Did he just shoot the lock off the door? I gape, staring, and can’t seem to stop.

  Beyond him, the barn door hangs partially open to reveal the pitch dark of the night beyond. Bats fly across the moon.

  “I’m sorry, but I followed you guys. I’m here to rescue you…” Noah trails off when he sees who else is in need of rescuing.

  “Thanks, Noah,” Taryn says as she passes him in the doorway. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Esau snorts as he moves to follow, prompting me with one hand between my shoulders. Despite the anger flaring across his brow, Esau doesn’t take his gaze off my sister’s back.

  Noah blinks, eyes skirting between my twin and me as the four of us approach the barn door on quiet feet. He hands the rifle to Esau and falls into step beside me since Esau is like a wall behind Taryn. Esau snaps the gun’s loading chamber open, finds it empty, and closes it again.

  Noah gulps, something akin to hurt in his eyes. “There are two of you.”

  I focus on the ground as we creep through the wild backyard toward the side of the house nearest the street. The house is quiet and unlit. Maybe we got lucky and Mr. Baugh had to go out, missing the blast of a rifle being fired in his backyard.

  Noah’s presence is like a spectre beside me. Unfocused and immaterial. For the first time, I wonder what it must feel like for Noah when he looks at me. What thoughts and emotions are coursing through him now that our duplicity is plain. For the first time, I can admit that we led them on, Taryn and I, without thinking ahead to how it would make them feel. I tried to keep things with Noah platonic, but I didn’t entirely succeed. And based on the photos of Taryn and Esau that Justin got, my perfect sister failed spectacularly at keeping our director at arm’s length.

  I reach out and take Noah’s hand, needing the warmth of human contact. When he doesn’t pull away, I whisper, “If you’ll let me, I’ll explain everything. Later.”

  With a gentle flick of his wrist, Noah lets go. He adjusts his glasses and averts his gaze.

  The tatters of my heart tear asunder. Whatever was beginning to sprout between Noah and me, it’s blackened and dead now. Rotten from the roots.

  “Well, isn’t this adorable?”

  Up ahead, Taryn gasps, the tall weeds and grasses pawing at her hips.

  Esau curses, shoving my sister behind his back to shield her from the two shadowed figures blocking our access to the street and our only avenue of escape. One of them holds a flashlight in our eyes, nearly blinding us.

  Noah shifts his weight in front of me so I can only see a sliver of the phantoms over his shoulder.

  As the two figures come closer, their shapes come into focus. Two men. Both armed. When they’re a few feet away from us, the one holding the flashlight lowers it.

  My vision sharpens. My breath floods out of my chest, leaving me agape in shock and horror.

  One of them, the one with the flashlight, is Mr. Baugh. My favorite teacher turned kidnapper. But until this moment, I didn’t understand why he did this to me. Why he used the pretense of the Lopezes being hurt to lure me into his car earlier tonight at the corn maze and absconded with me to this broken-down house out in the boonies.

  The other man is heavier, bearded, with a bedraggled appearance that suggests an unpleasant smell, but the juxtaposition of him with Mr. Baugh shakes something loose. If they stood side by side, they’d be nearly identical.

  This man has hunted me for months, making my every waking hour a nightmare impossible to wake from. He looks at me with intensity in his gaze, and I realize that I wasn’t a player in this game.

  No, I’m the prize awarded to the winner.

  The Mayday Killer has revealed himself at last, and we’re trapped.

  Day 1

  “Mom? Hello?”

  Taryn is rooted to the wooden planks in the foyer, the police d
ispatcher talking into her ear through her phone.

  But I step into the kitchen. My gasp snatches her attention. My ragged sobs make my sister’s eyes well and spill over.

  Two bloodied human forms lie ravaged on the kitchen floor. Their blood splattered over the faces of the appliances and cabinets.

  My breath hitches as I reach toward the form that was our mother. I can’t bring myself to touch the still, lifeless twist of flesh that wrapped us in a warm goodbye hug only hours ago.

  My knees knock together. “Taryn! Are they coming?” I stammer, but I can’t think. Can’t remember what I’m supposed to do in an emergency.

  The squeak of a rubber sole against the wood floors makes my eyes fly to my sister’s in terror. I can’t move. I’ve turned to stone.

  A man emerges from the hallway and skirts toward her. His blood-spotted face is twisted in a hungry scowl, but his movements ooze unearthly calm. Small, beady eyes move between us under thick, unkempt eyebrows. “Audrey?” he asks.

  Taryn swivels toward me, mouth open in shock. “How does he—?”

  Sirens wail nearby, but I can’t look away from him.

  With a furious cry that I will never, ever forget, the man’s blade slashes through Taryn’s cheek. Blood spills down her neck as she tries to stop it with white fingers. I lunge toward her, my tongue twisted hopelessly.

  Her wail of pain lacerates my organs to shreds.

  Footsteps thud across the wood floor. The front door slams against the wall, and he’s gone.

  Sirens claxon as they draw closer.

  I pray they’re coming for us.

  Chapter 38

  Taryn

  “Just let us go. Let us go and we won’t tell anyone we saw you. You can escape.”

  “And give up my mate? I don’t think so.”

  A sickening swoop crashes through my stomach as the Mayday Killer looks past us, his eyes locking on my twin. Did he just say… mate? This middle-aged monster thinks my sister is his match?

  A menacing grin crosses the man’s face as his eyes glimmer. He’s far more dangerous than I imagined.

  My fists clench. He can have Audrey when hell freezes over.

  A sharp steel knife flashes as it catches the moon. It’s such a sudden, savage move that I don’t register what’s happening until the blade has slashed along Esau’s arm. Esau’s blood is almost black under the pale moon’s light as he pulls his wounded arm into his chest with a guttural yell.

  In an instant the psycho out maneuvers him, whipping me around and pulling me viciously against his chest.

  My breath halts in my throat as he presses the warm, sticky blade against my throat. “Any more heroics, and this one dies.”

  Esau is glaring daggers at my captor, but I can’t focus on anything but the dark liquid seeping between his fingers. He’s losing a lot of blood, and if he doesn’t get help soon...

  The whites of Noah’s eyes shine in the dark as he stands in front of Audrey. He’s made of more than I knew, but the resigned look Audrey gives him as she gently steps around him betrays her. I didn’t truly see Noah, but she did. She does. He stuck with her all these months, even when she evaded his questions, avoided his hints about being more than friends, and outright lied to him when she absolutely had to. I’ve listened to all of the recordings, and whatever the thing was that they’d begun between them, it’s as real as the blade against my throat.

  Audrey isn’t looking at me.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” she says, centering her attention on the man who has me locked in a brutal embrace. “There’s no need for that. I’m not going anywhere.”

  The paunchy, pungent barrier behind me shifts. “I knew you’d understand, Audrey. You know it was all for you, right? Everything I did was to prove to you how right we are for each other.”

  Esau’s face is pale as he wavers on his feet.

  Audrey ignores Esau, taking another careful step closer. Her eyes are pinned on the murderer whose knife is digging into the flesh below my trembling chin. “I saw,” she whispers. “How could I not? It was all—very sweet.”

  Noah looks like he’s going to be sick.

  The man at my back stands up straighter. The acrid stench of rot washes over me when he laughs. “I knew. The moment you told me that you felt overshadowed by your sister, that you felt like your parents didn’t even see you, I knew. My parents didn’t see me either.”

  Mr. Baugh starts as if he’s just remembered where he is, and looks down at the gun he has aimed at Noah’s chest. He blinks and glances at me, but before I can react, he looks away. The last, desperate flicker of hope I had that he would have a change of heart withers in my chest.

  “Tell her what you said to me. Tell her you meant it,” the Mayday Killer urges.

  The eagerness in the man’s voice makes horror dawn in the pit of my stomach. There is no way Audrey could have known—much less spoken to—this man before he eviscerated our parents, could she? She wouldn’t do that. Not my best friend. My twin sister. The gentle, quiet soul who grounded me when I needed a jumping off point to fly.

  Look at me.

  I will it with all my might, but Audrey’s attention is fixed on the man holding me hostage. Her expression is a mix of so many emotions I can’t hope to pick them apart. When she speaks, everything I thought was true is obliterated.

  “I told you sometimes I wished I wasn’t a twin. Wished I didn’t have a mirror image reflecting all that I lack back at me. And you said you wished there was something you could do to help me. You figured out a way.” Audrey bites her lip, eyes darting toward mine and back over my head.

  This cannot be happening. I am not hearing this. Audrey, my Audrey, would never join up with this psycho. She would never heap kindling and fuel on his hatred in an attempt to build it into a fire capable of murder. But by the determined look on her face, I guess I was wrong. I don’t know anything about this girl. Not anymore.

  I cringe and try to pull away from the killer’s punishing grip, but I can’t as the blade at my throat begins to cleave my skin. Maybe it would be better if I died quickly, before the true horror of my situation comes to fruition. Still, I can’t look away.

  The knife bites deeper, and I close my eyes. My heart is a sledge-hammer behind my ribcage, each punishing beat forcing the blood through my body in a gush as it surges toward the small cut at my throat. The man threatens to pull it wider with a flick of his fingers.

  “Are you ready?” he asks, his tone less hungry, more placating.

  Audrey nods. “But don’t kill Taryn. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  The knife backs just a hair’s-breadth away from my skin, and I take in a slow, careful breath.

  “Let’s move inside,” Mr. Baugh says. “We can have the ceremony in the living room.”

  “I, I think I’m going to—” Esau topples into the mud and doesn’t move.

  “What ceremony?” Noah asks in a strangled voice.

  “You’ll see,” my captor says, shoving me toward the house’s warped back door.

  “What about the boy?” Mr. Baugh asks from somewhere behind me, not even deigning to say Esau’s name. Anger starts to spark low in my belly. Audrey may be lost to me forever, but I won’t lose Esau too. He’s the only person I have left to fight for, and I will never give up.

  “He dead?” my captor asks his brother.

  When he fell, Esau made no move to catch himself. His body was so still, and there was so much blood...

  “Not yet.”

  “Leave him.”

  “No!” I cry. “Let me go, you freak.” I kick and yank with every bit of strength I can call forth. The man at my back hisses as my heel connects with his kneecap. His fingers on my upper arm loosen a fraction, and if I can just—

  My vision goes white at the hot, shearing pain at my throat. The man’s breath is moist on my ear, and revulsion works its way through every cell in my body.

  “Not yet, girlie. I need you and the scrawny boy as witnesses.”
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  Inside, once Noah and I are zip tied hand and foot and shoved on to a musty plaid couch, I realize how truly screwed we are. I stupidly left my phone in Esau’s truck. Audrey isn’t wearing her bracelet, although if she was planning this with that murderer, she probably left it off on purpose.

  Was all of this an act? The fear that crowded her expression when Mr. Baugh shoved Esau and me into that concrete cell he built in his barn. The dirty tear streaks on her cheeks. The fact tools were left on the workbench where we could reach them.

  If Noah hadn’t arrived and shot the lock off the door, would Audrey have magically figured out how to get the door open and feigned helping us escape? Were Mr. Baugh and his twin lying in wait for her to lead us right to them?

  Now, Mr. Baugh is across the room leaning against the smoke-stained brick fireplace with his gun leveled at Noah and me. He checks his wristwatch and steals a glance toward the back bedroom where his brother disappeared a minute ago.

  Audrey, too, stepped away into the bathroom, leaving Noah and me alone out here, gaping like idiots. A fist clenches around my stomach, making it gurgle in acidic protest. There has to be a reason she’s going along with this. But what?

  Could she really be as angry and hateful as she sounded outside?

  I wished I wasn’t a twin.

  The reverberation cuts as deeply as it did the first time I heard it. I never wished Audrey wasn’t my twin. But maybe that’s the problem. I always thought of her as my twin, as someone whose existence was attached to mine. Not the other way around. And our parents? They fawned over me, I’ll admit, but they never treated Audrey badly. Not that I noticed.

  In my peripheral vision, Noah adjusts his shoulders. A pungent cloud is dislodged from the couch cushions, making me wrinkle my nose in disgust. It smells like a hundred cats lived and peed in this house.

  Noah’s mouth twists in a grimace as he attempts to shift his arms. He looks pained at the way they’re wrenched and tied behind his back. He’s been oddly silent since he arrived, not that I blame him.