I must have been drugged. That’s the only explanation. Some potion erased any memory that could fill the gap between sitting at my desk and lying here, bound. Now that it occurs to me, my sluggish thoughts fill in the lacunae to build a convincing narrative. Maybe my mind morphed the memory of the actual man who drugged me into a fairy-tale dream. The bite of the dream-snake seems so real, I could swear there’s a sore place on my neck—a place like an injection site.
Panic bubbles up through the fog that fills my brain. I twist my hands, but all I get is a stretched-out pain in my shoulders and a penetrating numbness in my fingers. If this were a story, I’d already be chewing through my skin and sinew, trying to break free, but I’m not as rash as the characters I create. They can afford to be reactionary, but as the author, I have to plan.
Wiggling to a seated position, I lean over as far as I’m able. My feet are bound with a zip tie. Excellent. I’ve only written about this technique, never tried it, but I am able to pull my feet up and scoot back through the loop of my arms, so they are now bound in front of me. And they are also fastened at the wrists with another zip tie.
Even as my mind is coolly ticking off the steps of my plan, deep inside me there’s a whimpering animal caught in a trap. I ignore it, forcing myself to rise until I’m standing, but when we hit another pothole, I lose my footing. My shoulder and cheek strike the side of the van. My eyes sting with pain and I end up on the floor, gasping.
Finally, I scoot into a corner and use it to support myself until I’m on my feet. When I saw this done, the person had plenty of room to stand and stretch his arms overhead. I’m short, but I can barely straighten up in this space. I take a minute to focus, believing this will work, picturing the move in my head. There isn’t room for anything except this single image. Then I raise my arms and bring them down hard and fast, as if I’m going to drive them straight through my own body.
And the zip tie gives way. My hands are free.
I rub them together, trying to restore feeling, to warm them up, but no part of me is warm right now. Extricating myself from these plastic bonds is only the first step in solving my physical problems, and even while I’m executing that plan, another part of my mind is already searching for the guilty party. Every good story has a villain, and I need to know mine.
If I were mapping out the plot of a thriller, the first, most obvious choice for my baddie would be the husband, but my husband Glenn doesn’t have a reckless, vindictive nature. Even if he didn’t love me, even if he wasn’t my knight in shining armor, he’d never mastermind a kidnapping plot. And the second choice, my ex-husband, Beckett, couldn’t pull it off. The only person I know who hates me—truly and deeply hates me—is Zoe.
Just thinking her name brings the darkness inside me, until I feel as cold and hard as the metal floorboard. The truck bumps over the road, shaking me like a sack of mail. No matter who set this up, I’m all alone back here—clearly I’ll have to stage my own rescue and be my own hero.
I check the pockets of my slinky black trousers, looking for assets—no phone, no wallet, nothing. Not even a breath mint to chase away the hideous chemical taste in my mouth. My slim gold watch, a gift from Glenn, is also gone, as is my wedding ring.
With another bump, I slide down the wall and sit, hugging my knees.
The metal of this truck radiates cold, forcing it into my very bones. Maybe it’s a crazed fan wanting me to play Scheherazade or an opportunist wanting a cash ransom. Glenn will pay it, any amount, a king’s ransom for my return.
But he doesn’t have access to my money.
While my mind is racing, I work on the zip tie around my feet. Fumbling, I find the catch and press it, even as the plastic cuts into my almost-numb fingers, until the loop loosens enough for me to drag it over my heels.
Points in my favor: three. First, my hands and feet are free. Second, the driver of the truck can’t see me. Third, I am smarter than they know.
Every time the truck hits a bump, it’s not just bruising me, it’s making me angry. I will not be the victim—not now, not ever. I am the author. If there is an evil mastermind, a malevolent god, that role is mine. I am the one who files for divorce, I am the one who proposes, I am the one who meets Zoe’s weakness with strength over and over again. I am the Ava Hallett. This is my story and I will take charge of it.
I open the truck from the inside, holding the doors. Once they fly open, the driver will see it in the side mirrors. When I hit the ground, I need to run.
The truck sways from side to side as a rutted dirt road unrolls behind it. All I see on either side is forest—trees and undergrowth. The sun is low in the sky and the shadow of the truck stretches out on the road like the mouth of hell.
My breath is shallow and my knuckles are white as I cling to the doors. This is the only way out, I know it, but my mind whirls, trying to find the best way, the right way. I imagine the options—kneeling down, jumping or rolling out; then I suppress the image of a woman—me—lying on the road with a broken ankle, arm, or neck, dying of starvation, lost in the wilderness. The driver could back the truck over me, run me down, shoot me, or most likely, recapture me.
I shut my eyes and let go.
The shock of landing knocks the wind out of me. My empty lungs burn. I lie on the ground, my body lit up with pain so intense it shuts down thought. Before my brain reboots, I’m running, first on all fours, then sprinting, vaulting over the edge of the dirt road and into the woods.
I catch a glimpse of the truck stopping and a figure, a man, opening the door, but I keep going, darting between trees and around scrub. The farther I run, the thicker the underbrush gets, the more uneven the ground, until I’m flying down an incline with barely a knife’s edge of control. I’m the only thing making noise now, I’m filling the world with the sound of crunching leaves and snapping twigs, too much sound to hear if the man, my kidnapper, is behind me.
I need a place to hide.
Trees are flashing by me, the world is so blurred with my speed that I can’t look for a safe place; I can’t even slow down. I could be going in circles, I could be running straight back to my captor, I could run right off the edge of a cliff or plummet into a ravine. When a thorn-laden creeper snares my ankle, I fall hard on my outstretched hands, plunging them through the dried surface layer of dead leaves to the colder underlayer.
Gasping, I’m on my feet again, running, before I realize I haven’t heard anyone behind me. There’s a tall pine ahead of me, its lower half bare of branches. Darting around it, I press my back into the wide trunk, breathing hard. The setting sun doesn’t penetrate the forest here. Maybe in my dark clothes I’m camouflaged, just another wild thing crouching in the underbrush, straining to make out the sounds of an approaching predator.
Nothing human breaks the silence, no footsteps or revving engines, only the noises of the indifferent forest surrounding me. Somewhere a branch pops, and my muscles spasm; then a bird sings out.
Cold sweat beads under my hairline as I risk one cautious step, then another. In the gathering dusk, I see something larger, darker ahead, and make my way toward it.
The upper part of the hill overhangs and has made a cave, really just a little notch in the face of the earth. I can see all the way to the back wall, and it looks empty. Before all the light is gone, I grab at the lowest branches, snatching one. As it snaps, I feel a jolt of fear that I’m making too much noise, but the woods around me are still silent.
I take another branch, then another, snapping off the dry ones and twisting the live ones until I have an armful. My face is itchy and I’m trying not to think about all the things that could be in them. I pile them at the entrance to my little cave. Maybe if I hide now, I’ll be able to find my way to safety in the daylight.
By the time I finish, I can make out the thick trunks of trees, but wire-thin vines and twigs are impossible to distinguish from the inky air. I’m shivering, only partly from the growing chill.
If this were a story
I had written, my kidnapper—the villain—would have thought of everything. He would be wearing night-vision goggles, there would be cameras throughout the woods, he’d be an expert tracker and there would be no easy escape. But I have to envision a different ending, a happy one, where I survive the night and find salvation in the morning.
I scoop up an armload of leaves, trying to get only the dry ones, and creep into the cave. Dumping the leaves on the earth, I pull at the branches, trying to make sure the inside of the cave is totally and completely dark. If no light can get in, not a scrap, then surely no one will be able to see me. I wedge myself in a nest of leaves against the narrowest corner. Tucking myself into a ball like a hedgehog, I close my eyes against the gathering night.
My body is freezing, but my soul is full of heat. There’s a puzzle to solve, my life’s on the line, and I just need to know a name, the mastermind, someone who hates me enough to have me kidnapped. I didn’t recognize the man who was driving the truck from the brief glimpse I got, but he could be just the muscle and the transport. Anyone who’s found success knows that someone else is always watching. Someone who wants what you have. Who thinks you don’t deserve it. Who wishes you would disappear.
Of course, I didn’t have to hit the best-seller list to find that person. I grew up with her.
Once there were two sisters. The older was a storyteller, and the younger was her favorite story. Zoe is the only person I know who lives in Technicolor, not thinking or reflecting or pondering, only living every moment full force. All the noise and action in our house was Zoe, and she looked at me like I was one of them, our colorless, constrained parents. So when I wrote, I wrote about her. I did it to figure her out, or to nettle her, or to give my stories all the energy and life I could channel into them. She’s always been my furious muse.
Maybe Zoe and I would have been closer if we’d had another sibling. Two are always in opposition—good and bad, oldest and youngest, smart and dumb, black and white—and with names like Ava and Zoe, it was obvious we were the alpha and omega, the only two our parents intended to have.
I probably should have been a better older sister. I was impatient, often angry, like she had been put on this earth to plague me. Maybe some older sisters teach their younger sisters to put on lipstick or sneak out after curfew, but I was never interested in that kind of thing. She was my unwanted shadow, forever a step behind me, at the edge of my consciousness, waiting.
We didn’t overlap anywhere, not in personality, not in school, not socially. When my friends had to take their little sisters with them to the movies or a football game, they heaved gusty sighs of faux exasperation. Their mothers urged them to “be nice” and remember how much their sisters loved them. My parents never said anything like that. They didn’t believe words could change the shape of a relationship. Even if they had, Zoe didn’t look at me like she loved me—she looked like she wanted to devour me. I can almost picture her bloody grin.
Someone did this to me. Someone wanted me afraid and alone, maybe even dead. Thinking that, knowing it, is like having my bones dissolve from the inside, and all my strength turns to water.
As the damp of the night air seeps into my skin and I extinguish any last quivering hint of tears, I build the case against Zoe. Just because she’s run away and found herself a new family doesn’t mean she’s been magically transformed into some sparkles-and-sunshine housewife. After all, those biting emails reached my inbox just days ago.
So I do what I always do when I need to get to some emotional truth. I “write” it out. I can almost feel the pen in my hand, but this will be a mental list. Neither pen nor paper came with me on this nightmare journey.
First, the simple litany of childhood complaints. Zoe stole innumerable articles of clothing, books, even papers I wrote. I’d find them crumpled under her bed, stained in the back of her closet, shoved to the bottom of her backpack. And always she watched me with fire in her hungry eyes.
Second, ever since my first story won an award, I’ve heard her hissing comments. That feeling you get when you step into a room and everyone falls silent, that moment like a street rat shouting that the emperor has no clothes—that’s the game she’s been playing with me for years. Zoe stands for every anonymous internet troll, every bad review, every cutting remark I secretly think might be true.
Third, Glenn. Even after three years, I wince at the flash of pain. In the guidebook of basic human decency, surely it states, “Thou Shalt Never Sleep With Your Sister’s Husband.”
But he wasn’t my husband then, I know that. I had told him to leave, that we were done. My words would bring the end to our story, or so I thought, until I tried to live without him. I couldn’t write my way out of my love and loneliness, my longing, all those romantic clichés, no matter how hard I wished those feelings away.
So I took him back, forgave him, married him.
But I can’t forgive her.
I bite my lip and hug myself closer, imagining the story unspooling without me. Glenn must be wild with fear. My parents won’t be worried, but Glenn will work furiously, tirelessly, hounding the police, shouting to the world that I am gone. I miss his strength, his certainty, the feel of his arms holding me close. Even as I try to conjure up the scent of him—birch and leather—some part of my mind coolly repeats that if I were writing this story, he would be the guilty party.
It’s always the husband. Always.
Now my arms are wrapped so tightly that it’s hard to breathe.
I don’t know how long it will be until morning. There are sounds in the forest around me, pops and rustles. This isn’t a fairy tale where a talking frog or friendly gnome holds the key to riches, adventure, and a safe return home. The smartest thing I can do now is stay put.
Once upon a time there was a woman who was strong and smart.
At daybreak, she saved herself.
And then she got revenge.
CHAPTER
7
AVA
CLOSING MY EYES, I hold that bedtime story in my heart like a candle against the dark, a promise to get me through the night. I am distinctly aware of the cold, the roughness of the rock behind me, and painful cramps in my calves and neck, but I will need as much rest as I can get, so I turn all my attention inward, imagining warmth and safety, even if they are illusions.
Finally, the darkness ebbs away.
The branches I pulled in front of the opening don’t block all the light, but this makeshift screen makes me feel safer, as though I control whether I am seen or not. My hand trembles as I brush aside a few leaves, their musty scent rising as I scan my surroundings. These could be the woods of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or some fairy-tale forest with a witch’s cottage and a big bad wolf.
My stomach is an empty crater, and the ending of a darker story rises within me. The woman disappeared in the dark woods and was never heard from again. No one knows where I am, not even me.
Shaking off my creeping despair, I crawl out of my hiding hole and head toward the sunlight filtering through the trees, which must be east. Heading seaward feels comforting. Even if I’m going deeper into the forest, I must be getting closer to home.
I’m lucky, I keep trying to convince myself. My feet crunch through the leaves as I count my blessings—lucky I broke free, lucky the temperature didn’t go below freezing last night—but I’m having a hard time forming a complete thought as I try to combat the shaking that’s spreading through my body.
And that’s when I hear it—a metallic buzzing sound that doesn’t belong in the forest. It slices through me, and I freeze with hope and dread. I don’t want to be caught again, but I can’t pass up a chance at salvation.
Forcing myself to move carefully, quietly, trying to subdue even my ever-quickening pulse, I head toward the distant sound. Sometimes it pauses, as if someone is listening, and I stop cold until it starts again. Some kind of power tool, I think, and my heart pounds in my ears. I am getting close
r and closer, I think I see movement through the trees, and then suddenly everything goes completely silent.
If I move now, the person will definitely hear me. Either my attacker will grab me and I will be caught like my escape never happened, or I will have help, something to drink and eat, a safe haven until I’m in Glenn’s arms again.
I steel my nerves for another step. Leaves rustle and a branch breaks under my foot. Nothing happens in response. If this is an innocent person who just happens to be in the woods, one of us should call out a greeting to the other, but there is only the watchful silence.
I wish I could take that step back again.
An animal—a wolf?—explodes from the undergrowth, crashing into my chest, all gray fur and fangs and hot breath. I cry out as we fall to the ground and turn my head to the side, trying to press myself into the earth.
A woman’s voice says, “That’s enough, Zeus. Aus, drop it.”
With a last push, the weight of the dog leaves me and I can see his mistress clearly.
Backlit by the filtered sunlight, she stands above me in muddy hiking boots, brown pants with cargo pockets, and a cotton jacket in army green, her dark hair cropped close to her head. She doesn’t look much older than I am, and she stands, one arm akimbo, like a fairy huntsman at rest.
I am about to gasp out a plea for help when my brain registers the slim cattle prod in her right hand. She follows my gaze and raises an eyebrow.
“I’m not going to need to use this on you, am I, Ava? You’ll come with me and Zeus without any problems.”
Shaking, I stagger to my feet, chilled by her use of my name.
I have no idea who this woman is.
Once Two Sisters Page 5
