by Tara Brown
My breath hitched in my throat as I looked back at the girls. “Jake is here with the killer.” I fought the urge to run up there, tackling the killer. There had to be more to this. Why turn on music and alert us to this place?
Sage pushed past me, not making noise but shoving her way to the top to see. A small squeak came from her lips but the music covered it.
“I don't wanna see. We need to call the cops.” Rita crossed herself and started praying silently. I stepped up the stairs, grabbing a small chair from the corner and holding it out, legs forward as I walked across the wide-open space with the music echoing off the plastic and insulation walls.
Sage and Rita were almost up my butt, they were so close.
My brain whispered things.
Things like Rita was right; we should have called the police.
Things like Jake wasn't dead yet, but I was about to get him killed.
It was really motivational crap in my head.
I ignored it and continued forward, trying to see everything. What if it was a trap and the police came and got Jake killed? I trusted no one, not even Sage or Rita. I had to solve this and save him myself.
There was a rope around the killer’s waist. It was tied to the ceiling on a thin stick. If the killer went down the stick broke. I looked for the rest of the puzzle. From the angle I was at I couldn't see where the rest of the trap was.
The empty attic should have been filled with surveillance equipment and other things, but it wasn't. There was one dome camera in the middle of the ceiling, the killer, the rope, Jake tied to a wall, and us. The phones were placed around us, resting on the ledges of the wood frame.
They played the song in almost perfect unison. That wasn't an easy feat.
When I noticed the killer didn't breath, didn't budge, and didn't turn around, I assumed one thing.
Most likely it was not the killer in front of us.
Sage stepped like she was going to tackle him, but I shook my head, still staring around the room.
He had to be here.
He loved the fear.
Jake hung limp, but in the blood and filth I could see he was alive, just barely. His chest rose shakily and fell with a shudder. His arms were what held him upright. One of his shoulders looked like it was dislocated from hanging for too long.
I needed to solve this before the trap was set off.
This was a display case. We were meant to witness Jake’s death. I knew that. I saw it.
I just needed to see how it would happen so I could stop it.
“This is like that weird movie with the dude who makes you do things. That's a camera on the ceiling and somehow there will be death in all of this if we aren’t careful. Jake’s or ours. It’s like a set. Don't move or touch anything.”
Sage nodded, but Rita shook her head and stepped back. “I don't wanna go any farther.”
Sage and I crossed the large attic getting closer to the back of the motionless murderer. Then I noticed the tiny wires above Jake’s head. They glistened in the light when you got close enough. I realized the trap.
If the killer moved at all, the rope would tug and the thin stick would break, freeing a massive weight sitting precariously above Jake’s head, only held back by the thin stick.
If the weight was dropped, then the thin wires, which I was starting to fear went around Jake’s neck, would eventually pull so hard they might decapitate him. They would strangle him at the very least. His arms and legs were tied to the wall so he wouldn't be able to free himself.
I placed the chair down and walked to the killer, looking around me for possible booby traps.
“Lainey!” Sage whispered harshly. I barely caught it over the music.
Every nerve in my body was on fire as I crept up to the man, confirming my suspicion he was a dummy. I exhaled hard. “It’s a dummy.”
She was confused, but I wasn't.
“Do you have a knife?”
She held her hands out. “Yeah, Lain, my Louis V has totally got its own pocketknife compartment.” She sounded exasperated.
Rita pulled her keys from her pocket. “My wine-opener keychain has a label knife.” She handed the keychain to Sage who opened the handy little knife and shrugged as she passed it to me.
I looked at the dull edge and winced. “I don't think this is going to work.” I dragged my thumb along it, jerking back when it cut me. “Or it will.” I gave them a look and shouted over the music, “I’M GOING TO CUT THE FISHING LINE FROM JAKE’S NECK. YOU GUYS STAY THERE.”
They both nodded, their watery eyes darting from my face to our injured friend’s.
I took the step, regretting it instantly. The pressure against my wounded ankle told my I had touched a line I didn’t see.
The dummy next to me pulled sideways, away from me. The stick broke, freeing the massive dumbbell. I tripped, catching myself as the fishing line caught my feet, landing me on my face as the heavy weight started its slow roll forward on the two beams. They ran parallel, each letting the weight rest on them.
The line moved with the weight, tightening slightly around Jake’s neck. I rushed forward, crawling on the floor to where the blood and urine soaked the wood, ripping my tee shirt off.
The jerking of me and the line caused the weight to roll off its tracks. As it fell I screamed right in Jake’s face, not sure what to do. Before it tightened too much I stuffed the shirt under the line and around his throat.
His eyes popped open with his mouth as his air supply was cut off, maybe made worse by my shirt, but at least the line wasn't cutting into him.
He jerked and struggled, making the cuts in his hands and feet bleed harder. I slid the knife up into my shirt, just missing his skin.
My fingers shook as tears threatened to blind me.
His dark-blue eyes turned red as I sawed at the plastic line with the small label knife.
I was screaming and shaking as I sliced, when suddenly Rita was there. She grabbed the line, stretching it as I cut.
Her fists filled with blood as she wedged her fingers under the line. Jake’s face was beet red, so red I thought it might explode. His eyes bugged from his head when two of the lines bust, leaving one to go. That one ripped into Rita’s fingers and mine as I shook the blade in mini sawing motions.
The line was cut, dropping the weight to the floor, and then sending it smashing through the ceiling to the floor below. Rita’s hands bled from the slits in them. Jake coughed and struggled for air as he wheezed and tried to get back to breathing. It was the scariest sound I’d ever heard.
I looked back at Sage and screamed, “Get something to cut the ropes and call 9-1-1!”
She stammered and lifted her phone, turning and running for the stairs as I started sawing at the ropes holding his feet to the wall. His toes were bruised and bent funny, likely broken from being at this angle for days. Tears splashed onto my cheeks as Rita did the same as me, working the ropes on his feet.
It was chaos.
Screaming and bleeding and wheezing and convulsing all set to the backdrop of the scariest old-fashioned song I would ever hear. Forever my mind would be traumatized by the sound of a lady singing about her love and sunshine and the promise of a wedding day.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lady Lainey
The ambulance ride wasn't what I expected.
I thought Jake would reach for me and hold my hand. I thought he might acknowledge me in any way at all.
But he was unconscious, and they were giving him mouth-to-mouth and pumping his heart for him.
I sat in the corner, wide-eyed and shocked, waiting for that moment when he gasped again on his own.
You always see it in the movies. When the one person gives the other mouth-to-mouth and then the unconscious person wakes and they cough and fight for air.
I discovered in that moment, in the real world, this is not a thing.
Unconscious people do not suddenly come back to life, fully animated.
They s
it, very still, moving only when the people screaming and shouting and giving first aid, move or jostle them.
We reeked of urine and fear and blood and more fear.
His toes were broken. One looked pretty bad.
His wrists were torn to the point he didn't have skin in a band around them both.
His left shoulder was dislocated.
But none of that mattered.
Not if he wasn't going to breathe again.
I wanted to touch him.
There was a stupid girl inside me that believed in true love’s kiss and the magic of Disney. I wanted to touch him and make him come back to life, and it was all for me.
It was selfish and cruel.
I wanted him to be with me.
Not once did my mind whisper that maybe he didn't want to stay here, not even for me. That maybe the past week had been so hard, he wouldn’t be able to get beyond it.
No.
I focused on the possibility that if I kissed him, he might breathe again, for me.
When the ambulance stopped, the doors flung open and doctors and nurses were there.
“Jackson Van der Wall, age seventeen. EVERYONE IS ON THIS!” a doctor shouted at the crowd of people.
The two paramedics continued their cycles of mouth-to-mouth and chest pumping into the hospital.
I sat there, shell shocked and lost. Quite lost.
“Lainey?”
I looked up to see Agent Ford standing in the doorway. He looked devastated as he reached for me. “Come on. Come with me.”
Tears started then. I didn't even have a story for him. How did I tell him we had withheld information?
I let him pull me from the deserted ambulance and drag me into his chest. I buried my face and heaved into his cheap suit.
He hugged harder than he should have. He should have been a robot in that monkey suit, but he was a man. He was a kind man, in that moment.
No matter how hard I trembled and shook and sobbed, he held tight. When my knees buckled and the whole realization of what I had seen and what Jake had been through hit, he lifted me up. He carried me inside.
He walked me right to the door where Jake was. He sat on the bench and placed me next to him. He stayed with me, even when my family came.
Maybe because I clung to him so hard, he couldn't have gotten away if he wanted to.
I stayed very still with the hallway buzzing and everyone around me moving crazily.
Eventually, my mother came and sat next to me, placing a hand on my thigh. I flinched away from her touch, but when I met her gaze I sighed and put her hand back there.
She offered me a comforting smile but then she said exactly what I expected of her, “Lainey, the nurses said you could shower in one of the rooms. I brought some clothes and some makeup.”
She might as well have been speaking a foreign language with the way I just stared at her, horrified.
She got up and grabbed my arm, firmly. “You will get up and clean yourself up or you will have to go home and wait there for word that he is all right.”
I blinked, confused about the statement. I didn't fight. I let her drag me to the room away from everyone. She was making her crazy face which meant I would be doing it, either way. I could fight and lose or comply and survive another day.
I sat in the shower as she stripped my clothes off and turned on the warm water. When it hit me, brown liquid dripped from my body. It puddled around me and stunk up the shower.
She turned off the water and scrubbed my hands and feet and hair and then handed me the soap. “Do the rest, I’ll be waiting outside.” She turned it back on and got out.
I stood on shaky legs and lifted my hands to clean myself, noting the chips in my nails and scrapes. Large cuts, serious ones, from the knife.
I forced myself to feel the pain as the water sprayed down and the soap seeped into them. That was my price and punishment for leaving Jake behind.
I cleaned everything three times and climbed out, feeling dirtier.
My mother dried me.
We hadn’t ever done this song and dance.
When I was a baby maybe, but I didn't remember that well.
“I’m sorry I made you do this. But the Van der Walls are the snobbiest of us.”
I lifted my gaze to meet hers. She tilted her head. “Obviously, next to my family. That’s how I know. I don't want them snubbing you or discouraging you and Jake from being together.”
I started to laugh. It was breathy and pathetic.
She smiled. “Don't patronize me, Lainey. Not tonight. I know you chose him yourself and neither of you care about the old ways, but trust me when I say, the Van der Walls care a lot. They have visions of sugarplums and the presidency. So do not make them think you are the common little brat we both know you are. I blame your father’s side of the family.” She winked. “All joking aside, try to act like I have instilled a few of the old-fashioned qualities in you.”
“Can I call you Mommy Dearest when I curtsey?”
“If that makes you a lady, I don't give a shit.” She finished brushing my hair and nodded at the clothes. “Throw those on, don't complain.” She hugged me once more, whispering, “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
I threw my arms around her neck. We hugged in a way we never had before. We melted into each other, trembling and scared. But it didn't last long.
When we went back to the hallway it was far more crowded.
Sage was there. “Jake’s still in surgery. They've said nothing so far.” She whispered, “His mom and dad are down in the waiting room. They look pretty upset and yet not. Relieved too, I guess.”
“Thanks. Where’s Rita?” I asked, not liking that we were separated. Lindsey was with Vincent; I knew that. There was no way he would let her out of his sight. Which meant Sierra was safe too.
“She’s getting stitches. Her hands are a mess.”
I turned mine over, nodding. “Yeah. I bet.”
“Oh, Lainey, those are bad.” My mom sighed and grabbed my wrist. “I didn’t even see those with the mess that was all over you.” She pulled me down the hall to a desk. “Hi, she needs stitches.”
The nurse lifted her gaze to my hands, flinching. “Your friend is through that door with the other doctor. Go show him your hands.” She looked at my mom. “You and I can handle the paperwork.”
My mom’s hands shook as she opened her purse, looking for my medical card. I didn't stay to watch her fumble for things and eventually break down and cry.
I walked through the door, cringing when I saw the needle going into Rita’s palm. Her face was turned to mine, but she had her eyes squinted shut and her mouth in a grimace. She was frozen this way, regardless of the lack of feeling.
I sat next to her, palms up and offered the doctor a soft smile.
He tried to offer the same thing back, but it came across more like a sneer. There was empathy in his eyes. He was shocked. This was probably the first time he had entered our story. He had missed the girl who had been cut and bent. The man who was bled out and twisted into a strange shape. The boy tied up and tortured. This young doctor had come in right at the girls who would let fishing line cut them to stop that boy from dying.
Rita opened one eye and gave me a look. “Did you see my mom in the hall?”
“No. Did you text them?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “They didn't respond. Dad was calling an emergency town meeting for the leaders of the community and business owners. I just thought Mom might come.” Her eyes focused on mine so intensely I couldn't look away. I knew she was avoiding seeing the needle sewing her back up.
“My mom’s here. Do you want me to get her?”
She contemplated being brave but it didn't last. She nodded and closed her eyes again.
I got up and walked back to the door. As I had predicted, my mom was sniffling and wiping her eyes as she finished the paperwork. I walked to her and leaned my head against her arm. “Rita needs you.”
Mom tu
rned and gave me a weak and wet smile. “Okay. I called her mom. She was in Manhattan. She’s on her way back.”
Rita didn't know that. “Don't tell her. Just say her mom is coming.”
“I will.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulders and led me back in.
She became someone I didn't know in that room. She was brave and strong for Rita and me. She stayed calm and none of this was about her.
For the first time my mother was not the victim.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Wakey, wakey, little Jakey
The realization it was a dream and not real was there, but I couldn't stop my feet from moving or the ragged breath from slipping from my lips. I ran to him, but he wasn't there.
“Lainey,” he whispered again, calling to me. His ghost—Jake’s ghost—called to me from the other side. No matter how hard I ran, I couldn't catch him.
“Lainey! Wake up! JEEZE, WAKE UP!” That whisper was not his. It was Rachel’s.
My eyes opened, blinking and struggling to stay open. I glanced around, shocked by the sound of Jake’s and Rachel’s whispers but when my eyes caught sight of him, he was still on his bed asleep. His machines made soft beeps and everything looked the way it had before.
He was clean and stitched, sewed back together and bandaged. They’d taken him off life support, hoping for the best and somehow—maybe by a miracle—it had worked. He had stayed alive on his own.
His brain function was normal. Enough oxygen had made it through during the first aid. They said Sage and Rita and I saved his life, but I was in the ambulance. I saw them pumping the blood through him. It wasn't me that did that.
I got up and climbed into the bed with him, laying my head on his chest. His skin was warm again, not cool like it had been with the poison dart.
I closed my eyes and realized it was never the walls of his room that made me safe. It was him.
Jake in any room made me safe. Even coma Jake.
I slept again and all my dreams were soft and fluffy, the kind I used to have before Rachel died, changing the wallpaper in my brain.
