by BETH KERY
He lifted his head to peer at her face. “You okay?” he murmured, smoothing the tendrils of her hair away from her ear and damp neck.
She glanced around the room, seeming to gain her bearings.
“I’m sorry. Did I yell?”
He nodded, studying her face closely. She seemed okay now, but confused. “What were you dreaming about?”
“I . . .” She looked up at him, her blue-green eyes reminding him of pure, untainted pools, when only moments before, primal fear had swum in their depths. “I don’t remember.”
How could the terror he’d witnessed have vanished so quickly? His stroking fingers paused. “Are you sure?”
She nodded, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry I woke you. I probably should get up, anyway. It’ll be dawn soon, won’t it?” she asked, rolling her head on the pillow and squinting to see the time on a nearby clock. He used his hold on her jaw to tilt her face back in his direction.
“You said something about a knife.”
She stared at him blankly. “A knife?”
He nodded, searching her expression.
“That’s weird. I can’t remember what I was dreaming. But—”
“What?” he asked, when she cut herself off.
She shook her head. Her cheeks flushed a light pink.
“I guess it makes sense. I used to have a fear. About knives.”
“A fear?”
“Yeah, a phobia actually,” she muttered, her discomfort clear now.
“You mean you got anxious around knives?”
“More than anxious,” she mumbled, avoiding eye contact with him. “I couldn’t be around them. I’d panic. It was one of many phobias I had when I was a teenager. I was a mess, if you want to know the truth.”
“I do.”
She blinked and looked at him, probably startled by his firm, quick reply.
“No. You don’t, actually,” she assured thickly. She started to sit up, clutching the sheet over her breasts. He moved back reluctantly to give her room. “Don’t worry,” she said, leaning up on one bent elbow and finger-combing her long hair back behind her shoulders. “I don’t have any phobias anymore . . . or panic attacks.”
“How come?”
“My dad.”
“He treated you?” Jacob asked slowly, recalling that her father was a psychiatrist.
She nodded.
“Isn’t that a little . . .” unethical, he thought. “Unusual? For a father to treat his daughter?” he asked, repulsed by the idea, for some reason. She stiffened.
“My father was one of the most respected psychiatrists in the country, not to mention arguably the most renowned expert in the world in the field of hypnotism. He was the ideal candidate to address my issues.”
“Hypnotism,” he repeated, stunned.
“Yes,” she said, eyeing him warily. “You don’t have to look like that. It’s not witchcraft, you know. What’s more, he was completely successful.”
“He cured you.”
Her gaze skated away from his. “That’s right. Don’t worry, I’m not contagious, Jacob.”
She flipped the comforter back in preparation to get up. He caught her forearm as she started to slide out of bed.
“You’re glad?” he demanded. “That your father was the one to treat you?”
“Of course I am! You have no idea how anxious I was, how shut off from my friends and a normal teenage existence. I was afraid constantly. I’m a different person today, because of my father’s help.”
Her face was pale and tense. It came to him in a rush, how his abrupt, tactless questions must have struck her. Yet his curiosity still prodded at him. Did her father’s treatment have anything to do with why she never mentioned her kidnapping or their flight from Emmitt Tharp? Is that why she didn’t recognize him? No, that couldn’t be the only reason. She didn’t recognize him primarily because he didn’t remotely resemble that skinny, helpless thirteen-year-old kid. Jacob had made sure of that.
Maybe Dr. McFadden had merely done what any father would have longed to do when presented with a traumatized daughter. Had his treatment psychologically distanced Harper from the frightening memory of her kidnapping and her assault at the hands of Emmitt Tharp? Or had he tried to totally erase that handful of days and nights from Harper’s childhood? Speculation and questions flooded his brain.
Until he focused on Harper’s anxious face again, anyway. He couldn’t badger her about it. Not now.
Besides, if she had forgotten, she was safe from the memories.
He was safe from her remembering.
He nodded once, his hold on her loosening. “I’m sorry. I think a little of your nightmare rubbed off on me. You looked really scared. I shouldn’t have asked so many questions.”
He saw the tension melt from her sloping shoulders and graceful back. “It’s okay. I’m sorry for freaking you out. I guess we all have nightmares, right?” she asked him uneasily.
He nodded, reaching to stroke her silky shoulder, reassuring her even as he reassured himself.
Yeah. Everyone had their nightmares. The truth was, Jacob had some that involved a knife, too. Not just any knife, either.
The exact same knife that apparently still haunted Harper’s dreams.
Twenty Years Ago
After they’d locked the sedated dogs in the barn, he’d furtively led Harper over a freshly mown lawn to the edge of the forest. He removed his backpack.
“Climb up onto my back,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Your walk leaves a trail. I’ll wipe it when I go back. Just do it, Harper. Get on my back.”
Even though she looked exasperated, she put her hands on his shoulders when he turned around. He draped his pack in the crook of his arm and hoisted her onto his back. Willfully ignoring the sensation of her hands fastened on his skinny muscles and her breasts pressing against his shoulder blades, he entered the forest. Fifty feet in, he set her down next to an ancient, branchy oak.
“The angle on the house is good here, see?” Jake said, pointing toward a clearing in the trees. “I’m going back for a few minutes to do something. You stay here. If you see my uncle come out, or any other man come onto the property, hide up there,” he said, pointing at the intersection of the trunk and seven gnarly, thick branches. “There’s a hole in the trunk up there. Just slide right in it. You’re little enough to fit. I hide there sometimes from Emmitt, so I know he doesn’t know about it. If I don’t come back to get you soon, wait until you’re sure the coast is clear, and head in that direction.” He pointed to the west. He noticed her alarmed expression. “I’ll be back in less than five minutes. I’m telling you this . . . just in case.”
She caught his arm, halting him as he started back toward Emmitt’s property.
“You’re crazy. Let’s go. What do you have to go back for?” she hissed.
“There’s something I have to do,” he repeated, holding her stare as he calmly removed her grasping hand from his arm. “It’ll only take a minute.”
She looked mutinous. “I’m coming, then,” she stated, stepping toward him.
He caught her at her shoulders.
“You’re not. I’m sorry. I told you that you had to do what I said, and you agreed. This is something I gotta do alone. Don’t pitch a fit about it.”
The anger slowly drained from her face. Maybe she sensed his grim, sad sense of purpose.
“Okay. But . . . hurry,” she whispered tensely as he turned.
He merely nodded once. He turned and slunk back onto Emmitt’s property.
• • •
She had lead feet, Jake thought numbly several hours later. He hadn’t hesitated to tell her, either, as they hastened through the woods earlier. Now he heard her stomping on the cave’s dusty stone floor a good fifteen seconds before she appeared b
y where he knelt next to a tiny trickling waterfall.
He knew from years of solitary exploring that the waterfall filtered down through stone from the top of the bluff. It was pure for drinking. Caves like this one pervaded the Appalachian Mountains, but this particular one was different. It was unique to Jake for the sole reason that Emmitt didn’t know of its existence. Jake knew this from the simple logic that Emmitt had never successfully discovered Jake there, despite the fact that he’d combed the woods and hills looking for him on dozens of occasions in the past.
He’d brought them there because he was uncertain about the tranquilizer and how long his uncle would be knocked out. Here, he could keep Harper temporarily safe while he determined if Emmitt had picked up their trail.
Harper noisily plopped down on the earth next to him. At least her lack of grace wasn’t as important now that they’d reached the cave. Either Emmitt would fall for Jake’s false trail in the direction of Poplar Gorge, or he wouldn’t. If he picked up their trail to the cave, Harper could be as silent as a flea, and Emmitt would still find them.
During their flight through the woods, Harper hadn’t seemed to have any idea what Jake meant about moving through the woods like a ghost. How could Jake ask her not to make the grass rustle or bend, or twigs break beneath her feet?
She had no idea of what it meant to be prey.
Given the racket she’d made approaching him just now, there’d been time to duck behind the rocks and avoid her. Was it what he’d done back at Emmitt’s, his fear of being caught . . . or his fascination with Harper McFadden that kept him fixed in place? He was too weary to figure it out. He continued to wash his hands in the cool waterfall when she came and sat beside him.
They’d washed and dressed her cut wrists earlier. The white of the bandages flickered in the light of the small camp lantern. He was highly distracted by the feeling of her knee brushing against his lower leg. Half in dread and half in anticipation, he waited for her to speak.
But she didn’t.
Instead, her small, warm hands surrounded his wrists. He stiffened at her touch, but didn’t resist when she gently pulled his hands out of the streaming water. When she released him, he sat back on his haunches, his wet hands leaking onto his jean-covered thighs.
“Your hands aren’t going to get any cleaner,” she stated dryly.
He raised his hands to his face, palms facing him, and peered at them closely. His fingertips were as wrinkled as prunes from being underwater so long.
“What’d you do, Jake?” He heard her whisper from the darkness. “What did you do when you went back to your uncle’s?”
He lowered his hands and braced them on his thighs, rocking back and forth slightly.
“I killed Mrs. Roundabout.”
“Who’s Mrs. Roundabout?”
He was surprised and relieved that she didn’t gasp in horror at his confession. She’d asked the question quickly and calmly.
“My dog,” Jake answered dully. “Emmitt didn’t think she was my dog. But she was. Not that I owned her. Not like that. She was just . . .” My friend. He didn’t say the thought out loud. Harper probably already thought he was a stupid hillbilly. “My dog, that’s all,” he repeated lamely. He lowered his head and studied his knees. “All the dogs on Emmitt’s property are bought for the fights, so Emmitt thought Mrs. Roundabout was his. She wasn’t, though.”
“Fights?”
“Yeah. Dogfights. Men bet on a dog to win in the ring.”
“How do they win?” Harper asked, sounding puzzled.
“By taking down the other dog with its teeth and claws, injuring it until it can’t get up and fight anymore. Sometimes by killing it.”
“And . . . and people bet on it? Watch it?” she asked, her bewilderment and dawning distaste obvious.
“Yeah. They root on their dog. The one they bet on.”
She didn’t say anything for several seconds while Jake steeped in his foulness. His dirtiness. She had no knowledge of the things he’d seen, of the brutality he’d witnessed and taken part in, even if unwillingly.
“Why’d you kill her?” He winced at the word “kill” coming out of her mouth.
“Because my uncle made her fight, and she got hurt real bad. I was trying to doctor her, but she wasn’t getting better. She was in a lot of pain. Suffering. Since I was leaving with you, I didn’t have any choice.”
“How’d you do it?” she whispered.
“I gave her a lethal dose of the sedative. She’ll just have gone to sleep.” He sniffed and swiped at his cheeks. They were wet. He hated that she witnessed how weak he was. He clamped his eyes shut and took a deep, uneven breath. “It’s done, now. I guess she’s not suffering anymore.”
“You did the right thing. You absolutely did the right thing. I’m just sorry you had to do it. And I’m sorry that you lost your dog.” He looked around, startled at how fierce she’d sounded. She put her arm around his shoulders. Her face was close. Her kindness—and her touch—had almost crowded his grief and fear clear out of his brain.
“Do you think he’ll find us?” she asked quietly after a moment. Jake blinked, jerking his awareness off the sensation of her rubbing her fingers soothingly over his upper arm. He wasn’t used to being touched kindly. Grandma Rose used to hug him sometimes before she’d gotten sick and taken to her bed. That’d been nice and comforting, he recalled. But Harper’s half hug wasn’t the same . . . in fact, it was a world of difference.
“He doesn’t know where this cave is,” he repeated. He’d told her of the whole plan once they’d reached the safety of his cave. By leaving a false trail in the direction of the nearest town, Poplar Gorge, Jake hoped Emmitt would draw the conclusion he’d taken Harper south. In truth, they’d hole up in the cave until it was likely that Emmitt was hot on the false trail, then cross the river and head in the direction of Barterton.
Barterton was farther away than Poplar Gorge, and for all Emmitt knew, Jake had never been there. Jake had traveled there twice now, however, on his own and in secret. He liked the hot dog stand downtown—soft-serve ice cream for a quarter. Once, he’d camped out on the outskirts of town and snuck into the back of the local drive-in and watched a comedy on the big screen. Both trips had been undertaken while Emmitt was in Charleston for extended weekends, supposedly for “business,” but probably mostly just for whoring and drinking. Jake had bargained with a kid who lived down the river, Stevie Long, to come over and feed the dogs while he made his little trips in Emmitt’s absence. In return, Jake had promised to do Stevie’s math homework for six months. Looking back on it, Jake thought he’d struck a good deal with Stevie. His knowledge of the landscape in the direction of Barterton would help their escape.
“Emmitt won’t imagine I’d take you to Barterton,” Jake told her.
“Why not?”
He stilled his shrug with his shoulders elevated, suddenly aware he might throw off Harper’s embrace. Her touch had sent him into a trance. His gaze shot sideways, but he didn’t dare to move his head. As if she’d sensed his sudden tension and awkwardness, her hand slid down his back and off of him. He tried to contain his sharp disappointment.
“Emmitt doesn’t think much of me, one way or another. He wouldn’t think I’d come up with a plan that wasn’t the obvious.”
“He doesn’t get how smart you are,” she stated rather than asked. “That’s an advantage to us.”
He looked at her, his mouth hanging open. It was the best compliment he’d ever gotten.
“You didn’t kill Mrs. Roundabout.”
“What?” he asked, amazed not only by her firm proclamation, but her blazing stare. She might be a menace in the woods, and a city girl to boot, but Harper McFadden was no weakling.
“You didn’t kill Mrs. Roundabout. You set her free, just as surely as you freed me. He killed her.”
Jake swallowed
thickly and nodded, pulling his gaze off her mouth. He still saw it in his head as he stared unseeingly at the trickling water. He shouldn’t be thinking about Harper’s lips, given the circumstances they were in.
Maybe she was right about Emmitt being responsible for Mrs. Roundabout’s death. Something else was a certainty. Emmitt’d kill Jake the second he found them.
He didn’t want to think about what his uncle might do to Harper afterward.
4
make me
DESPERATE
sixteen
Present Day
Three days after she’d awakened in Jacob’s bed from a nightmare, Harper glanced up from her computer when she heard a tap on her office door.
“I’m almost finished, Burt,” she mumbled distractedly, paging down to the last paragraph of the story she was editing. Burt Chavis was dressed in board shorts, a Swell T-shirt, and flip-flops. His sun-bleached dreadlocks were pulled back in a thick ponytail. He was twenty-eight years old and wore a perennial grin. He was a crappy dresser, but he possessed a surprisingly incising brain for a summertime beach bum and wintertime snowboarder. Harper had decided early on he was the best of the two reporters she had working for her. His easygoing, friendly manner made people open up to him during interviews. Sangar had told her in private that Burt had some issues with backing up his claims for stories with credible sources, but Harper was keeping an open mind. She wasn’t that much older than Burt, and they’d been comfortable with each other from their first meeting.
Besides, it was her job as Burt’s editor to make sure his stories were credible.
“What’s this I hear from Ruth about you being invited to the Latimer compound the other night?” Burt asked.
“It was nothing. A cocktail party,” Harper said without removing her gaze from Burt’s story.
“Ruth said it had something to do with Cyril Atwater wanting to make a movie out of a story you wrote,” Burt said, his lazy stance as he leaned against the wall just inside the door belying the sharp intelligence in his pale blue eyes.
