“Glenda, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to go with him,” Mia said, deliberately loud enough for Nate to hear.
Glenda shrugged. “This better be damn good, Nate.”
They were still within Mia’s view, but she could no longer hear them speaking. She looked at Leo scowling as he poked the fire. Deciding now was a good time as any, she reached into her bra where she had tucked the note she’d found and opened it to look at it again. The flattened it on her knees and held his eyes with hers.
“What is that?” he asked.
As if he didn’t already know.
“It’s the note you were hiding in your pocket from me,” Mia said with all the intensity that she had. “I found it really interesting that you would keep that from me.”
Leo let out a ragged sigh as he rubbed his jaw. He strode over to her and reached for the note. She almost considered it yanking it away, but relaxed and let him take it. His rough fingers clasped on it, while he maintained eye contact with her, brows furrowed. “When did you get this?”
“I took it out of your pocket when we were up in the tree.”
“So you just make a habit of putting your hands in my pants and pulling out whatever meets your fancy?” he asked.
Despite her anger, a stubborn smile tightened at her mouth at the unintentional suggestiveness of his comment. The fact that he looked so annoyed with her and had no idea how perverted that question sounded made her smile almost squirm with totally inappropriate giggles.
“This is funny to you?” he accused.
“No,” Mia insisted against her amusement. “The thing is, I wouldn’t have to take things out of your pocket if I didn’t feel my life was on the line right now.”
He folded the note and gripped it in his hand, still scowling. He collected the remaining wood they’d chopped, laid down a layer of dry wood atop the wet surface and then a peak of food for a fire. From the other pocket, on the other side of his jeans, he drew a yellow lighter and began flicking it under the corner of the note. It took to flame in a giant flash of orange and Leo threw it down on the woodpile.
“Why are you burning that note?” Mia wanted to scream. “That’s evidence.”
“I’m burning it because it’s bullshit.”
“Bullshit? What are you talking about?”
“This whole death threat thing is nonsense and you know it, Mia. So it’s time to stop now.”
“Did you write that note, Leo?” she asked. “I need to know. Is this revenge for me leaving you?”
“Of course I didn’t write this,” he said. “What kind of sicko do you think I am?”
“Then why was it in your pocket? Where did you get it from?”
He shook his head at her, “You’re not getting it, are you Mia?” he held out a hand to comfort her, to hold her.
“Getting what?” she pushed away his hand. She hadn’t noticed the air felt thick and humid, as darkness fell down hard on them. The glow of fire sent sinister shadows across his face. She didn’t feel like she knew the man she was looking at anymore.
*******
Sunday, September 17: 5:32 p.m.
“I don't feel comfortable ambling this far from the camp,” Nate said after they had run for about ten minutes into the darkness of the forest. “We should go back.”
“Seems to me, you don’t feel comfortable doing anything,” Glenda said. “Seems to me you’re kind of a wimp. And who the hell uses the word ‘ambling’ anymore?”
“I-I-I don’t understand why you are so angry,” Nate stammered. “And why do you want to hurt Mia?”
“Because…” Glenda started. She didn’t even know where to begin. It wasn’t that she wanted to hurt Mia. She only wanted answers to her questions. Questions she'd orchestrated since their meeting at the library years ago when she’d convinced Mia to let her move in. For years she had pretended to be the doting, caring roommate when underneath it all she hid this terrible secret from her.
“Because?” Nate prompted.
“I’m tired of talking about this.”
“You promised me if I ran into the woods with you, you would tell me why.”
Glenda slid from her pocket the sleek blade, ripples of moonlight dancing across its grooved metal. “Is it supposed to be my problem that you were naïve enough to believe me?”
Nate’s eyes widened at the sight of her weapon and he backed away from her. “What are you doing to go do with that?”
“I’m going to kill you, Nate.”
“Like you did to Penelope?”
“Yes,” Glenda stepped toward him. “Except that bitch cop I pushed off a cliff. You, I’m going to stab right in the heart. But the end result will be more or less the same.”
“But Glenda,” he pleaded, “I love you.”
“Lies.” Glenda lifted the dagger to his chin and dotted a tiny hole under his chin bone. She smiled when he winced. “I gave you the chance to make me happy and that chance is gone now. You don’t love me, you never have. Just like my mother never loved me.”
Nate visibly attempted to process the disjointed information. “I am so sorry for whatever has happened to you in your life that made you so sad. I wish my love could be enough to help you heal.”
Glenda chuckled with a glare. “Lies again.”
“I am not a liar,” Nate refuted. “And nor am I a murderer. So if you must kill me for that, then so be it.”
“As I’ve said before. If you can’t help me, then it looks like tonight you’re gonna be a martyr.” She drew the knife high above her head and slammed it down into his throat. The blade resisted more than she expected and his eyes bulged and watched her in silent horror. She drew it out and lifted it to stab him again, but he collapsed forward on to her feet. She kicked him once to see if he was dead or not. Not sure if he was faking, she waited to see if he moved or breathed. When a gallon of dark blood pooled under his face and saturated the soil she accepted he had to be gone. She wiped the blade clean on her jeans.
It was harder than she had imagined to kill someone with a knife. If she were to get Mia alone at the cabin to complete the mission, then first she would have to get rid of Leo. But She wondered how she would do that if he was so much more powerful than Nate. A knife would not work with Leo. She would have to come up with another way to get rid of him. Because as soon as she attacked him, it would need to be the money shot that took him down.
She tucked the weapon back in her pants and marched back to camp. There was no more time to waste.
*******
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A raw chill dripped across the brown grassy plains. Dusk fell hard and rapidly down upon them. Mia trembled with her palms out in front of the fire, trying to defrost the jittery dread that numbed her from the inside out. She looked up to the forest beyond where Leo sat on a log, the forest where Glenda and Nate had run into, and sensed unspeakable danger coiling just beyond what the eye could see. Leo watched her from across the fire, the angles of his face casting long shadows in his bearded flesh against the licking of orange campfire light.
“What is it?” he said to her.
Far away, the eerie song of howling coyotes rolled through every curve of the foggy valley. Mia shivered.
“We need to go to Glenda,” she whispered, although not sure who she was afraid of hearing her. Her stomach clenched as deep dread now boiled into terror. “As safe as you say Nate is, I know something is wrong. I feel it in my every molecule. I just can’t explain it.”
“She’s an adult who can make her own decisions and he has done nothing wrong. She was the one who grabbed his hand and ran with him,” he said. “Trying to force them apart, for basically a hunch, is violating their boundaries and, quite frankly, a bit creepy.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I need her to be okay.”
He looked at her for a long time over the flames. She watched him back, as his irritated gaze mutated into frustration and then jumbled into confusion before eventually softe
ning into awareness.
“Where’s the map?” Leo eased up and walked over to her. “I’ll go find them and bring them back.”
Mia got up and crossed the camp to where Glenda’s orange bag lay crumpled in a loose mess. She shook it open, releasing the contents onto the ground. After her vlogging camera tumbled out, a pill jar clattered out after it. The lid popped open and out spilled dozens of tiny amber tablets.
“What are these?” Leo lunged down to grab a handful.
“Some vitamins that Glenda takes,” Mia said. “She said it’s for her heartburn.”
“I don’t think so,” Leo said, squinting at them closely in his palm, turning them over. “I think these are estradiol."
Mia blinked at him.
“Medication for males transitioning into females.”
Mia stepped back, her eyebrows lifted in shock.
“You didn’t already know that?” Leo crunched his eyebrows together. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”
Although it had never occurred to her, it didn’t surprise her. Glenda had always a gregarious flare of femininity that was so in your face that Mia assumed no one would ever need to question it. Mia certainly had not. Glenda had presented herself as a young woman, and that was that.
“No,” Mia said. “I never knew….”
Leo chucked the pills back in the container and back in Glenda’s purse. “Either way, I’m going out there to find her. Where’s the map?”
Mia rummaged through Glenda’s purse, cognizant of not finding any more shocking information about her roommate. Her hand found the transparent sheet of paper and she pinched it and dragged it out.
It was then that her eyes caught something.
“That’s so weird…” she said, studying what appeared to be various words in her own handwriting on the transparency.
“What is it?”
“Look at this,” Mia’s hands touched the paper where Glenda had written instructions on how to get to Blueflower. Her fingers traced the curly lines across the clear page. Glenda must have been tracing Mia’s own words from a collection of transparency photocopies onto paper. Mia held out the page to Leo to look, but they were interrupted by the sounds of crunching footsteps from the valley below.
Mia spun and looked down the dip of meadow. A burst of red hair came bouncing atop a dark shadow, making its furious way up the hill toward them. In her fist, Glenda gripped something made of shining metal.
“There she is,” Leo strode toward the valley at waved down at Glenda, gesturing her to come over. “She looks fine to me.”
“No, Leo, don’t go near her!” Mia screamed. “It’s her.”
“Yes, I can see that it’s her.”
“No. You don't understand. She’s the one who has been writing me these notes,” Mia pleaded. “Glenda brought me out into the woods to kill me. Do you get me now? She wants to kill me.”
Leo turned to look at Mia wordlessly, his eyes fixated on her, as though he was not quite sure what she meant, but didn’t disbelieve her either.
The pack of coyotes’ crying song in the distance turned strangely tortured and menacing.
As though hearing Mia’s revelation, Glenda bolted up the valley toward them, the knife in her fist slashing the air back and forth before her with each step.
“Let’s go.” Leo grabbed Mia by her bicep and they bolted in the opposite direction. Toward Blueflower. She had no time to grab any belongings from camp, and her hiking boots pounding the dead grass with throbbing pain that ached from her toes up her calves. Her hand tightly gripped in Leo’s she let him lead the way and prayed the girl would not catch up to them.
*******
They flew over the rolling hills, Mia’s feet barely grazing the earth, for what felt like hours. Leo never let her hand go. Her lungs scorched with a severe lack of oxygen. They kept digging deep into the shadows of the forest, following the town of Blueflower’s glimmering lights up ahead, keeping off the main trail so Glenda could not easily follow them. As the lights became more than just sparkles but actual rectangular windows of houses emitting safe, warm light, Leo pulled west in the direction of the town, still yanking Mia’s hand, who pulled east in the direction of her grandfather’s cabin.
“We need to get to town to call for help,” Leo shouted at her.
“I can’t,” she cried. “I need to get to my son.”
“Mia!” he shouted. “This is a goddamn emergency and I am not leaving you to go there alone.”
“Brendan is there!” she cried as she shook loose of his hand. “I can’t leave him. I promised him I’d be there.”
“Mia, listen to me. He is not there. It was just a dream,” Leo yelled the logic at her with a frustrated viciousness that startled even him. She winced, and he deliberately softened his next words, “If you run to the cabin alone and Glenda finds you there, who knows what could happen to you?”
“I know,” Mia said. “But I can’t risk losing my son again. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
Leo looked up at the blue and yellow flickering lights of the town that were mere minutes away and the plunging darkness in the forest where the cabin would be. Someone would have to be out of their mind to chase after a ghost child instead of running to town for almost guaranteed help.
He stared hard at her. Although they heard no noise, Glenda would be fast approaching in the darkness behind them at any point.
“Make your choice,” he said to her. “You want to get rescued or you want to die for a dream?”
Mia shook her head, tears swelling on her lower lashes. Her shoulders shook in misery. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” She let go of his hand, and then sprinted into the fog of the forest.
Leo watched her disappear. He wanted to bolt in after her, to drag her back to her senses. But she was gone. The sound of her running footsteps faded quickly and he found himself rooted in total silence.
His gaze dragged back up the hill to Blueflower. Salvation was literally only steps away. If he ran up to town and made some calls, he could be back in the forest within ten minutes. Although in this darkness, he had no idea where the cabin was.
Or…he could wait for Glenda to approach and handle her when she got there. In whatever manner he was forced to deal with her.
He made his decision, but not without a grimace, and charged up the hill to Blueflower. As he rounded the top of the hill, his gaze drifted to a home down the street. Its windows lit with a creamy yellow glow, the house itself embraced by a jungle of birches on the property.
One of the trees, a shockingly huge one caught his eye. Tucked protectively deep inside the embrace of its fat branches nestled the quaintest little treehouse he’d ever seen. It was nothing fancy, and something about the proud way it stood there told him it didn’t need to be.
He imagined it must have been a very focused and diligent person who’d taken the time to build that thing for the kids. The builder probably stepped away from an important project, only to inflict on himself a few blisters from the cheap clearance lumber and bruises on his thumbnail from when the hammer went awry. Maybe he’d dropped his paintbrush in the garden below and cussed miserably under his breath as he progressed down the wobbly ladder to fetch it for the seventh time. But those types of inconveniences were worth it if they make the kids happy and, more importantly, if they prevented their untimely deaths.
The sounds of helicopters churned closer in the sky above. Leo watched them in the sky. He hadn’t even called anyone yet. Were they coming to rescue them? How did they know they were there?
Leo’s lungs choked and he looked away from the house. He held both hands to his head, pushing up his hair in angry frustration.
Taking one last look at the town beyond the house, he soaked in everything. Freedom. Rescue. Salvation. Then he turned and looked back down the hill, debating what to do. Should he run to the helicopters or run back to rescue Mia?
He took one deep breath.
And he ran like hell.
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*******
Sunday, September 17: 6:33 p.m.
“Now, we’re in the valley, take it easy,” the helicopter pilot, Lawrence Mulaka, said into his headset mic as he lowered his aircraft into the mountains. “Maintain airspeed.” He scanned the trees below. “Dude, the sun is going to set in an hour and visibility is fucking terrible.”
The steep drops of mountain were perfect traps for the clouds that rolled in. Between that and the thick trees, Mulaka wasn’t able to see much.
“Just a little bit further up the valley,” Michaels insisted. “I think that’s where Constable Barter was planning on hiking with the group.” He tried to hide his overwhelming joy that abusing his power as a cop, even if he only still was a cop in training, could actually work at manipulating his friend Brad to make their video game buddy take out the chopper. He couldn’t help feeling a little bit corrupt. But at the end of the day, if it meant rescuing Penelope Barter then it was worth it.
“Dude, the cloud coverage is something fierce tonight,” Mulaka yelled into his headpiece as the helicopter slunk down between the valley of Blueflower. Thick white fog padded against their window. “I’m gonna have to clear out of here. We can keep search in the morning.”
“No,” Auxiliary Michaels insisted. “I want to take a look at the lake.”
Mulaka sighed, shrugged, and plowed his aircraft forward into the whiteness. As they flew out over the lake, the clouds cleared a little and Michaels looked down. Along the side of the lake, he saw a person wearing a red sweatshirt, clutching what looked like a tree.
“There’s someone down there!” Michaels shouted.
“On the lake?” Mulaka scrunched up his nose, unable to believe it. “You gotta be kidding me.” He lowered the chopper to a stony clearing near the sighted person. No sooner had he landed the chopper, Michaels was bouncing out the door to rescue. “Wait, man. You need to bring some equipment!” Mulaka offered, but it was too late.
Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist Page 18
