It Ends With Her

by Brianna Labuskes

  Just as she opened her mouth to dispute the claim that the Crosses had murdered Matthew, they heard it.

  The sound crawled along her nerve endings, starting at her toes, running up the ligaments behind her knobby kneecaps, finding the base of her spine, and creeping up each vertebra until it reached the top. There it settled and scratched and clawed at the little jutting point of a bone at the center. Her shoulders pressed up, as if to protect her fragile ears.

  Their eyes turned in unison to the far side of the meadow, where a sleek black cat stumbled from the shadows of the dense trees. She couldn’t see it clearly, but she saw the outline of it take a few steps toward them, stop, and then collapse into the ground.

  Adelaide’s breath caught in her sternum, the same feeling she got when she tried to swallow the too-big-for-her vitamin Mrs. Cross forced on her every morning after breakfast.

  Simon was already on his feet, walking with purposeful strides toward the animal.

  She pushed off the ground, found her footing beneath her, and chased after him across the meadow.

  They both skidded to a stop. The cat blinked up at them with one startlingly green-yellow eye. It yowled again, a quieter version of the one that had first caught their attention, then it mewed several times, its one eye pleading with them.

  They both crouched next to it, and she knocked Simon’s hands away when he would have touched it. “Diseases,” she said, her eyes assessing the wounds.

  They were deep and bloody. The fur was matted around an injury on the cat’s hindquarters, and she saw dark clots around its neck as well.

  “We have to get it to the vet,” she said, her voice frantic over the thundering pulse echoing in her ears.

  She would not let this animal die in front of her. There had to be something they could do. Her eyes darted around, trying to figure out what they could wrap it in. Would it try to scratch them if they did? Would it put up a fight? “Your shirt, your shirt,” she said, almost mindless now.

  He looked down at the black tee but shook his head. “We’re not going to save it, Adelaide.”

  Her eyes locked on his face. “What? What do you mean? Of course we are. Look at it.” She gestured to the cat, who was watching her. And her only. It meowed again, a pitiful protest if she had ever heard one. Fight for yourself, she willed the cat. Always fight. Always fight.

  Simon was shaking his head, though. He got to his feet and began looking around the ground. She watched him but couldn’t figure out what he was searching for. She put him out of her mind and stripped out of her own shirt.

  She scooched her knees closer to the wounded animal, murmuring nonsense words to it. It dropped silent, its eerie yellow eye hot against the cool black of its fur. It lifted its head, but that was too much effort for it, and it crashed back against the ground.

  She was just reaching out to wrap it in her shirt, when Simon pushed her. It was a hard shove, two hands against her shoulders. She tumbled, unprepared, her head striking the hard earth, a sad mimic of the cat’s movements a moment earlier. She lay on her back, not sure what had just happened.

  From there, she watched him raise the large rock above his head with both hands. There was something wrong with his face. Something about it that made her limbs go numb. But her brain was struggling to push through the fog of panic to figure out what it was.

  It was only when the stone arced through the air that she realized.

  He was smiling.

  Her own howl rocked and reverberated through the quiet meadow, and she wondered if it echoed in Simon’s chest, just like the cat’s had in hers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CLARKE

  July 14, 2018

  “Here,” Sam called out, pointing a burly forearm in front of her face. She slammed on the brakes, and the seat belt caught and tightened over her chest as she spun into the little path that had been almost hidden by overgrown shrubs.

  “A little warning would be nice next time.”

  She took in their new headquarters as the car, having lost most of its suspension what must have been years ago, bounced them along the rutted dirt path that passed as a driveway.

  “Home sweet home,” she singsonged, pulling to a stop and climbing out of the car. The cabin—which a generous soul might call rustic—was nestled between two hulking evergreens. The security would be nonexistent. Anyone could hide in those trees without being noticed.

  The cabin itself was a few miles outside Staunton, which had turned out to be a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town, and a bit away from the place in the picture Cross sent. Since the deadline for finding the clue they’d already figured out wasn’t for another couple of days, they had time to set up shop.

  “We’ve had worse. At least there’s a roof.” Sam pushed by her and handled the key drop box. She followed him inside, letting her bag fall to the floor by the door and flipping on the light. It let out a low, consistent buzz but flickered to life, shining an unfortunate spotlight on the musty, dilapidated purple-flowered couch. She eyed it.

  “Rock, paper, scissors?” she asked, turning to Sam.

  He laughed and dropped his bag on the cushions. A puff of dust billowed out in protest.

  “It’s your lucky day, kid. I was just itching to sleep on a couch for the foreseeable future,” he said. “It does wonders for my back.”

  She wasn’t about to put up a fight. A tour of the bedroom could wait until later. Instead, she pulled out her MacBook and set it on the serviceable kitchen table that wobbled only slightly under the weight of it as she powered up.

  Sam, who preferred old-school paper files, dug out his folder and began reading through them.

  Just like the bastard had settled into patterns, so had she and Sam. Although every part of her was screaming to go out, go find Cross, tear apart each building in town, searching for him and the missing girls, she knew it would be pointless. She had made that mistake before.

  Tonight would be better spent strategizing.

  Clarke pulled up a picture of Anna Meyers, even though she’d memorized every detail of her face by now. The seafoam-green eyes, the red hair that curled around a face that was just a little too round for her to be called pretty. “Cute” would be the word she probably heard all her life. She had freckles, orange dots that left not even a breath of air between them. Clarke imagined they were the bane of Anna’s existence. Or had been. The bane of her existence now was probably the bastard.

  “Anna Meyers,” she said, knowing Sam was looking at the same picture over on the couch. “She’s been missing since April.”

  It was undeniable—the tight, pulsing guilt that lived right underneath her clavicle. There were times she suspected this was the ultimate game, not the girls, not the scavenger hunt. But the way he tortured her with every person she couldn’t quite save.

  “Why are we doing this?” she asked softly.

  Sam watched her with quiet eyes, but he didn’t seem surprised by her question. He didn’t even ask her to clarify. Because he was Sam. He was her rock, and always had been. Even when she hated him, even when she wanted to forget his name and his face and the way he called her “kid,” he was her rock.

  There’d been only one time he had walked away from her, had let her down. One time she had thought he wasn’t coming back after she pushed him away.

  “So you’re quitting?”

  Clarke ignored the question and instead concentrated on the amber liquid that swirled so beautifully in her crystal glass. The large ice cube bounced off the edges as she rolled it between her hands.

  “You realize if you don’t finish your degree, that spot I got you at Quantico disappears, right?” Sam’s voice was harsh and cut deeper than she wanted to admit. “Don’t mess this up, kid, just because you want to go on a bender.”

  Irrationally, she felt her temper spark at him calling her “kid.” The first time he’d done it, it had made sense and been a comfort. It had curled around her like a warm, affectionate hug. But tonight? Tonight
it was a condescending uppercut right to the chin.

  “Coming from the man who has yet to meet a drink he could pass up,” she muttered, swallowing the rest of the whiskey. She pushed the glass forward and signaled to the bartender, who obliged. She flashed a smile in his direction, catching his eyes as she did. It might be interesting to see what that stubble felt like against her skin. It certainly added texture and depth to his baby face.

  He turned his attention to Sam, who ordered a Coke.

  “Didn’t realize you’d turned into such a straightedge, Sam,” she said, looking at him for the first time since he’d climbed onto the red vinyl bar stool next to hers.

  “Didn’t realize you’d turned into such a drunk, Clarke,” he countered, and she felt the words lodge themselves just below her throat. She shrugged them off, though, and then did what she did best.

  “You’ve become a stick-in-the-mud, Sam. Must be why Roger left you,” she said. “Or, wait. It was that he moved on to a younger cock, wasn’t that it?”

  She felt his muscles tense beside her. His fingers were probably itching to hit her. One slap across the pale flesh of her cheek would make him feel better. God, it would even make her feel better if he took the swing.

  But he wouldn’t. He would never. The sudden, inexplicable bite of tears pushing against the ducts of her eyes caught her off guard. She blinked hard and fast to control them as he sighed a long exhalation of air, which he somehow loaded full of disappointment, hurt, anger, and love.

  “You started it,” she said, feeling all of thirteen. She squished her eyes tight until little stars exploded on the canvas of her eyelids.

  “You can rot here for all I care,” Sam finally said, and the emotion was thick in his voice. She knew she shouldn’t have brought up Roger. It was a low blow. But she was nothing if not consistent.

  Why did he even care about her? Why didn’t he just leave her be? Wallowing in the little pity party she’d decided to throw for herself. “Great. Happy to. As soon as you leave me the hell alone.”

  “I vouched for you, kid,” he said. The anger was gone, leaving just disappointment. That was harder to take. “I pulled strings for you. All you had to do was make it through your master’s.”

  “Well, we all make mistakes, don’t we?”

  They were silent for a moment, and she wondered if he was contemplating all the ones he’d made. Just like she was doing. It was a long list.

  “Do you know how many people would kill for this opportunity?”

  “Well, now they’ll get it.”

  “This is it, kid. I’m not going to come around again,” he said.

  “Thank God for small favors.” She mock-toasted and let the liquor burn its way to her belly.

  She saw him nod. “Okay. Okay.” He sounded like he was coming to terms with something. She felt a sharp pain, a literal pain, in her heart. He was giving up on her. She knew it.

  She had always known he would. Why wouldn’t he? But now it felt real.

  “Remember, you know where to find me, if you need me,” Sam said, sliding off the stool and dropping a twenty on the bar, enough to cover her two drinks and his soda.

  “I won’t,” she said, though she felt the pain gathering, a tidal force, in the back of her throat. He was giving up on her. The one person who she thought never would.

  He stopped next to her, his hand raised, as if he was going to pat her shoulder. It dropped, though, and he turned.

  Then he walked out of the artificially dark bar.

  Blinking away the memory, she met his gaze through the moisture in her eyes. A little manic laugh escaped because she was near tears. She never cried.

  He ignored both her little, desperate sob and the waterworks. He’d seen her at much worse, anyway. There was a deep crease between his brows as he considered her question: Why are we doing this?

  “I’d like to say something along the lines of ‘because we’re the ones who have the best chance at saving them,’” Sam said. “But, really, it’s because we’re both too stubborn to let it go.”

  And wasn’t that the sad truth. She nodded once. It was enough for her.

  She returned her attention to the computer, clicking off Anna’s picture. Staring into those eyes was rubbing at her exposed emotions.

  The next picture that popped up was the first in what they called the “Meyers Series.” She knew it by heart. She knew them all by heart. Every single photo he’d sent them. Clarke studied them. She studied them during the nights that never seemed to end. She studied them in the lulls when the silence seemed more menacing than any action would. She studied them after, when the crushing weight of guilt sat heavy on her chest. And she knew she was missing something.

  This one was no different. It was all movement and blur and energy. The camera had caught a moment between the bartender of a hole-in-the-wall and a tipsy patron who had leaned over the scratched mahogany and fisted her hand in his shirt, pulling him in for a kiss. The light bounced off the mirror behind the two, obstructing the other details in the scene. It had been a pain in the ass to figure out that it was a place called Black Dove in Portland, Maine.

  But something had always bothered her about the picture. It tickled at the edges of her consciousness, a face she couldn’t quite place, a lyric that skipped away just as she reached out to grab it. But they’d solved it anyway, so she’d moved on.

  “Ten days,” Sam said, reading the simple words she knew were on the back of the photo. “We found it in nine. A box was waiting for you there. A picture of the back of a waitress’s head in Tucson. Eight days. Then there was the nightclub in LA . . .”

  She let his voice wash over her as he ran through the rest of the photos until he got to the one in Texas. She hunched her shoulders against any possible recriminations, but there didn’t seem to be any coming. Perhaps he’d actually forgiven her for the carelessness of running off in the middle of the case by herself. It was an interesting concept—one of them actually letting go of a grudge.

  “There’s a deeper pattern here. We’re just not seeing it,” Clarke said. Her fingers tapped against the table, unable to stay still.

  “He’s just jerking off as he makes us jump through hoops,” she finally said.

  “Delightful image, thanks for that.”

  “Anytime,” she said, smirking at his disgust. “But that’s what it feels like, right? What is he getting from all this?” She waved a hand to encompass both of them and their respective files.

  Sam leaned back, steepling his hands on his chest. It was a pose she’d seen countless times. “This whole thing is about power, yes? Power over us, but mostly power over you. The scavenger hunt is just an extension of that, and it serves two purposes.”

  She pulled her feet up, bringing her knees against her chest and resting her chin atop them. “He gets to tell me when to jump.”

  “And how high,” Sam agreed. “This setup, this directing-your-every-move thing, it’s one of his prime motivations.”

  She knew this. “And the second?”

  Sam shifted, resting his forearms along the tops of his legs. “He wants you to think he’s clever.”

  “They all do, though,” she said. Most serial killers—especially ones who contact the authorities—want the world to know how smart they are, even if they actually aren’t.

  “I think it goes beyond that,” Sam said. “Sometimes he comes across like he’s . . . trying to impress you. Just you. Flirting, almost.”

  Her stomach clenched against nothing. Had she eaten today? Apparently not.

  “Flirting.” The word was a bitter taste on her tongue.

  Sam shrugged. “It’s not exactly news that he’s obsessed with you. It’s just . . . in a way I haven’t seen in any other case. The language he uses? It all revolves around fun, playing, games. He’s taunting in the way young boys act toward girls when they’ve yet to develop more appropriate methods of conveying their interest.”

  She rubbed two knuckles against her
tattoo, grounding herself. “You know, it sounds really messed up when you put it that way.”

  He laughed at that. “It is messed up, kid.”

  “Okay, so he wants to impress me, not just control me,” she said. “But how is he getting his rocks off if he can’t even watch me when I’m discovering how clever he is?”

  “We know he hacks into security when he can. He’s taunted us about it in the clues enough times to guarantee that he at least gets CCTV recordings from stores and bars.”

  “Some grainy surveillance footage where he can probably only see the side of my face? That’s it?” It couldn’t be.

  “Could be why he brought us here early,” Sam said. “It’s not enough anymore. He wants to watch you. Up close and personal.”

  “God, he has a slow burn, then,” she muttered, even though that still didn’t feel right. In her gut. It was too random a reason for a man who built his life around intricate planning. “If it’s taken him this long to stick around and watch.”

  “Maybe . . .” Sam trailed off, his gaze on the ceiling.

  “What?”

  He tapped a finger against his chest where he’d rested his hands in contemplation, then dropped his eyes back to her face. “Maybe it has to do with this particular girl.”

  “Anna.” She turned her attention back to her laptop. Nothing had jumped out about her to Clarke in their investigation so far that would be a red flag. She fit his victim profile as if she were made for it. She wasn’t special. Not relatively speaking. Shaking her head, she looked over to find him lost in his own thoughts once more. “I’m not sure. So much of what gets him off on having the girls is the control he can exert upon us. They’re just the means that give him that power.”

  “There’s also the girl who’s gone missing,” Sam reminded her. As if she could forget. “Though we don’t know he has her.”

  She plucked at her chapped lips with her thumb and forefinger, considering. “Probably he does.”