It Ends With Her

by Brianna Labuskes

  “I didn’t,” he said, still not looking at her. “I really didn’t.”

  The rain kept up its steady patter against the windshield, and it was as if each drop washed away some of the anger she’d been holding on to. The anger she’d been holding on to so as not to feel anything else. The rest, well, that was much harder to deal with, to understand. Anger she knew.

  The problem was that a small part of her had thought they’d be able to save Charlotte.

  “I have to go change.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry, kid,” he whispered as she was closing the door. The apology lashed against her like the quick slap of leather against skin.

  She took the stairs two at a time, fumbling for her key card. Once she was safely in her room, she leaned back against the cheap wood of the door.

  Had it been him at the cemetery?

  She didn’t like it, this not trusting herself. Because reality was a fleeting thing, and she knew that too well. The idea of losing her shaky grasp on it terrified her.

  Her eyes caught her reflection in the mirror above the dressers that ran along one of the walls of the motel room. There was a flush running up the long length of her neck, but her cheeks were pale, and her pupils were dilated, eating up most of the green of her irises. Her shoulder-length brown hair was dripping onto her soaking-wet shirt. It clung to her body, highlighting the thinness of her frame, all the hints of curves long faded from endless weeks of forgetting to eat.

  She glanced away, not wanting to see how fragile her control was, and that’s when she spotted the flip phone sitting on the counter below the mirror. It was small and silver and years out-of-date from the sleek iPhones everyone carried these days.

  And it wasn’t hers.

  Before she knew it, she was sliding on a fresh pair of gloves and crouching so she could get a better look. It didn’t seem to be rigged to anything. Bombs weren’t really his style.

  She shouldn’t pick it up. Even if it wasn’t going to explode. But she did anyway.

  Carefully, she grasped it between two fingers and thumbed it open.

  The background was just the default factory setting. She navigated to the contacts, then the phone log, and finally the texts. Everything was blank. She dropped it back on top of the dresser before shrugging out of her soaking-wet clothes. By the time she’d wrapped herself in a too-small hotel towel, the phone had gone to sleep again. A few buttons brought it back to life, but there was nothing waiting for her to find.

  She plucked her own phone out of her purse and fired off a quick message to Della LaCroix, the tech genius on Sam’s team.

  Need a favor. Can you look at something for me? Don’t tell Sam?

  The second text was to Sam. She hesitated over the wording, his whispered “I’m sorry” lingering in the little space where someone less cynical than herself might call her heart.

  He’s been in my room—can just tell.

  She pressed her lips together until she felt the sharpness of her teeth against the flesh, but she decided to leave the message at that, with no mention of the phone.

  This was wrong. Hiding it. There were procedures. Rules to follow. Probably for good reason, definitely for good reason. They could make plans, trace the phone, lull him into a trap. All good options.

  Except she was herself. The person who always had one hand hovering over the self-destruct button. Because something dark and dangerous whispered to her that they had gotten nowhere from following the rules. The phone would be clean, and he was too smart to fall for any of their traps.

  But maybe. Maybe if Clarke didn’t turn it in like a good little FBI agent, if she hid the phone away like a guilty secret, he would think she was getting sloppy. And then he would get sloppy, too.

  So she didn’t do all the things she was supposed to do, all the things she’d been trained to do; she just stood in the middle of the shitty hotel room, with its ugly walls and its cheap carpets, and mentally traced the thin white scars that ran along her inner thighs. They made her miss the weight of a razor blade in her hands.

  The vibration from her own phone pulled her back. She glanced down; it was just Della.

  For you, anything.

  Maybe in a different life there would have been a twinge of guilt for dragging Della into her lies. At this point, it was all just background noise.

  Maybe in a different life that twinge would have been enough to get her to call Sam, confess everything. But this life was what she had, and so she studied the flip phone instead. There was nothing to find, but it kept her mind from looping in on itself as it was so prone to do.

  And then it rang.

  Everything in her stilled. Her heart, her lungs, her thoughts.

  She flicked the phone open to answer it but didn’t say anything as she held it to her ear. There was silence there, but she refused to break it.

  The voice finally slithered through the open line. “Hello, Clarke.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  BESS

  July 7, 2018

  Bess Stanhope hated the smell of beer. She also hated when her boyfriend would get that look in his eyes after he’d tossed back a few. One time he’d thrown the contents of the half-drunk red Solo cup in her face, and her hair had smelled of hops for days. She’d scrubbed her scalp raw when trying to wash it out, but nothing erased the memory of the expression on his face when he’d done it.

  He was drinking now, and she wished she’d stayed home. But he’d begged her to come with him to the lake house to celebrate the Fourth. Three days later and the party still hadn’t stopped, and she was so tired. The frazzled edges of her nerves were raw and pulsing after the constant barrage of misogyny and alcohol that was the mainstay of this getaway weekend.

  It was only 10:00 a.m., but a group of the revelers was lying out on the docks, basking in the harsh rays of the summer sun, with a cooler full of Coors Lights. The bros were all decked out in Ray-Bans and red swim trunks as if it were an agreed-upon uniform, down to a cookie-cutter girlfriend draped off one arm.

  Every so often one of the ladies would get tossed into the frigid water, sinking under the mirrored surface with an angry-cat shriek, after putting up a faux fight that involved ineffectual swats at sweaty chests. The boys would high-five one another, then adjust their backward-facing baseball caps for no apparent purpose, while the victim sputtered to the surface. Few women looked good with wet hair, but these ones came close.

  Bess wanted to plunge a screwdriver into her own eyes.

  She stretched out her legs, which looked stubby in comparison to the gazelles on the docks. Her neon-pink running shorts rode up high into the creases of her thighs, and the blades of grass were sharp against her pasty skin. She tipped her face up to the sun, drinking in the closest thing to silence she’d had since arriving at the lake house.

  The name itself was a misnomer. She’d been picturing a little cabin by the water, but they’d pulled up to a three-story mansion, BMWs and Mercedes lined up like haphazard soldiers in the driveway.

  It was a far cry from their tiny place in Brooklyn. And an even farther cry from what she was used to before that. Growing up, she would have thought this place a castle out of the fairy tales her mother liked to tell her while they’d huddled under thin blankets in their studio apartment. The cold that had turned Bess’s fingers numb was always just woven into the story as part of their adventure. They were exploring the North Pole, not freezing because they couldn’t afford the expense of turning up the thermostat.

  Jeremy, on the other hand, was in his element. Though the excess was beyond their means now, he’d slipped back into it like a well-tailored jacket. While she found a familiar comfort in the nights they had to eat ninety-nine-cent tacos from the vendor at the end of their street, it chafed him. He missed filet mignon and Dom.

  Austin, their host, had greeted Jeremy with a “Yo-o-o-o” and a handshake-hug bro bump that let them assert their heterosexual masculinity and establish affection at the sam
e time. Austin had turned to her next, and she blinked against his shimmering goldenness—his tawny hair that draped over hazel eyes, his bronzed skin on display thanks to low-riding blue gym shorts—before he’d gathered her in his arms in an embrace that lasted three seconds too long.

  Jeremy was pale in comparison, with close-cropped brown hair and deep-chocolate eyes. He would refuse to put on sunscreen this weekend, and then he’d burn and swear he didn’t, even when she could leave ghost handprints on his back.

  She suspected Jeremy had always been envious of Austin, whom he’d been friends with since their high school football days. Neither had been a true star, so they hadn’t been able to ride the glory into college. Jeremy had struggled his way through a business degree, with a GPA that had reached only the low threes, with her help. Austin had pursued debauchery, paid for by his trust fund, but had come out of it with “Harvard Business School” on his résumé.

  Bess wondered if Austin kept Jeremy around as a funhouse-mirror version of what he could have become. A way to make himself look better. She wondered what that made her.

  The problem was that Jeremy’s temper—never very far from the surface—flared so easily around Austin.

  They’d had a few good weeks recently. Before that there had been months of tension and whispers and walking on eggshells. He’d told her all that was over. He’d been working toward his new promotion, and now that it had been announced, things would be good again.

  She’d let the bubbly effervescence born from that promise carry her into this holiday weekend even though she’d known with all the outside forces adding pressure it would be a tough one.

  They’d only just dropped their suitcases in the corner of their spacious bedroom on the third floor when they started fighting. They had their own bathroom en suite, and Bess had eyed the walk-in shower with a longing she usually reserved for red wine and cookie dough.

  He came in behind her, pulling out his dick so he could piss in the toilet. She hopped on the swirled-marble countertop, watching his back, trying to avoid catching her own reflection in the mirror.

  “So you think he’s hot?” Jeremy asked, finishing off. He walked over to the sink, nudging her out of the way to wash his hands.

  “What? Who?” She was genuinely confused by the question.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He turned cold eyes on her, and she took a quiet breath. Those eyes were so quick to warm with humor and affection most of the time. But she knew this would be one of those moments when the rage froze them over, and she lost the Jeremy she loved to a monster. She braced herself.

  “You’re such a lying whore.” His voice lashed across her like a whip as he pushed her back up against the mirror. The faucet dug into the small of her back, but she barely even noticed that bit of pain as his forearm came up against her throat. “You know what I’m talking about. Austin. You practically threw yourself at him.”

  Bess clawed at the thick arm cutting off her air supply and met his stare dead on. She kicked out with her leg, but he blocked the blow. It did make him release her, though, and she slumped back, gasping for air.

  “I don’t know why you do things like that, that make me hurt you, Bess.” His voice turned soft and soothing. He ran his fingers down the side of her cheek. Hers were still protecting her neck.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. He’s nothing compared to you, baby,” she murmured, laying a shaking hand on his bicep. The muscle flexed beneath her fingers. “Look at you. How could I want anyone but you?”

  He nabbed her fingers to bring her palm up to his lips and laid a gentle kiss there before scooping her off the counter, into his arms. He carried her like a baby into the bedroom and deposited her onto the soft yellow down comforter. He bunched her short sundress up around her waist, pulled her panties down, and pushed into her in one swift move. She didn’t dare cry out as he met dryness and resistance. He thrust into her as the other arriving couples chatted just outside their door.

  In the very best circumstances, Bess wasn’t the type of person who fit easily into a new, large group. She’d long been envious of those who could seamlessly blend into the personality of the crowd, feeding off the energy. But she only ever felt drained by it.

  She’d tried to rally and, with the help of red wine, make that first night bearable, but she was still sore from that afternoon, and she was tired of explaining away the blooming purple-and-green marks on her neck.

  He doted on her to compensate for her quietness, and the other girls cooed over how sweet they were. The perfect couple. It turned the alcohol sour against her taste buds when he smiled at the compliments and pressed his lips against the cheek he was so careful not to bruise. They’d learned long ago injuries to the face were harder to hide.

  Jeremy wouldn’t be pleased that she wasn’t down at the docks with him. She watched him as one of the leggy blondes plunked herself squarely onto his lap. She watched his hand graze the underside of the blonde’s breast as he pulled her close to whisper something in her ear, and she knew he was probably hard as a rock against the leg that did not have a dimple of cellulite on it.

  There was nothing in her but relief, though. Relief at not being the center of his attention. Just five minutes of not having his suffocating gaze directed at her every move was glorious.

  It was time. She’d gone into the bathroom that first day, after he’d attacked her, and had quietly vomited into the urine he hadn’t flushed from earlier, and as she’d lain in the fetal position with the tile blessedly cold against her flushed cheek, she’d known. It was time. Time to finally leave.

  She was prepared, to some extent. A while back, she’d signed up for self-defense classes, telling him she’d joined a book club. In reality she’d spent every other Wednesday night in the small but well-lit basement of her local church.

  “Make yourself big,” the teacher, an aging hippie with long, stringy gray hair, would yell at the self-conscious circle of women. “Don’t be afraid to use your voice.”

  The moves never seemed to work on Jeremy, but it was nice knowing she had them at the ready anyway.

  Still, she’d stayed with him. When he was kind and sweet, he was the boy she’d met in freshman English who secretly loved Shakespeare and brought her iced green tea to class. When he wasn’t, well. She kept surviving those times, her battered body stitching itself back together, and as the bruises faded, so did the feeling of certainty that she had to leave. Because he would be happy and smiling again. Until he wasn’t.

  Fingers of tension coiled around the base of her neck, pulling the delicate muscles tight. She shook her shoulders, trying to loosen them, then pushed to her feet.

  She tightened the laces of her shoes, smiling down at the happy, bright yellow of them against the lush lawn. It was late in the day to start a run, and the air was already suffocatingly hot, but she needed to feel the pavement beneath her, to eat the miles away and challenge her lungs until they burned and clawed at her throat. She shook out her legs and pushed her unruly dirty-blonde hair back into a ponytail.

  It was just this one last weekend. She could do it—she could get through it. Had made it through worse. Plans would need to be made, of course, when she got back to the city. He wouldn’t just let her go; she wasn’t naive enough to think that. But there was something in her that hadn’t been there before. A certainty. A determination she could cling to when he turned soft eyes in her direction, and the memories of harsh words and harsher blows receded.

  Yes, there were plans to be made. There wasn’t much she could do at the moment, though.

  So she flipped to an old Guns N’ Roses song on her iPhone and took off at a light jog, skirting the house and finding her stride on the empty two-lane road that led back to town.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CLARKE

  July 13, 2018

  Clarke pulled the faded photograph from her bag and held it up. Her eyes fli
cked between it and the building on the other side of the street. The store’s sign had long succumbed to weather or neglect, but it was a match. GARY’S. She flipped the photo over to read the now-familiar scrawl.

  Four days.

  The plastic bag protecting the picture was the only thing stopping her from tearing it to shreds.

  It had been four months since Charlotte’s funeral, and nothing had changed. Only the scenery. And even that was all starting to blur together, one miserable town after the next.

  She’d thought maybe Cross was getting careless with the addition of the phone. But it hadn’t rung since that first time she’d found it. Instead there had been two months of silence after Charlotte’s death. Then the picture had arrived. It was of a pretty redhead with a round face, caught midlaugh and mid–eye roll, like she’d been secretly delighted the photo was being taken. There was an innocence in the captured moment that made the next realization much harder to swallow. Cross had his next victim.

  The countdown didn’t start with the pictures of the girls, though. No. He liked to let Clarke and Sam figure out exactly whose death they would be responsible for before sending them on the chase.

  Della ran the photo through her face-recognition software and came up with Anna Meyers, a pastry chef from San Francisco. She specialized in cupcakes and had been missing since April.

  Cross let them sit with the knowledge for two weeks. Two weeks of not being able to do anything, of realizing the bastard had Anna, while being helpless to even know where to start the search.

  Then the first clue had arrived. Apart from the pictures of the girls, that first clue was the only thing he ever mailed them directly. The rest would be left at the locations, for them to figure out, for them to find.

  Weeks after Anna’s sweet face had first landed on their desk, they were nearing the end of the countdown for finding her. Four days. That’s how long they’d had to figure out the latest clue was at Gary’s. If his pattern held, they’d have three to find the next location. Failing to do so would cost them their final prize. Anna.