Don't Close Your Eyes

by Christie Craig

“Pirate,” Annie called, but the cat jumped on the window seat as if trying to find a way home.

  “I don’t know what to say, or what to think,” Isabella said.

  “Me either.” Annie refocused on her friend, sitting in the chair across from her. “I feel as if I’ve fallen into a movie of the week.”

  “Real life can be as fucked up as fiction,” Isabella said.

  “Tell me about it.” Annie thought about what Fred had told her and almost told her friend. Then didn’t. She’d whined long enough.

  “Hand me your glass and I’ll refill it,” Isabella said.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Isabella sighed. “You’re telling Mark what your mom said, right?”

  “I have to, don’t I? I went to him to help me get to the bottom of this. But…how did I get myself in this mess?”

  “You didn’t get yourself in it. It happened to you. And don’t get mad, but what she said to you sounded like…a threat.”

  Annie hugged the pillow tighter. “My mom never raised her hand to me. Neither did my dad, even though he did all the grounding and stuff. She was always so gentle, almost fragile.”

  “But that doesn’t change what she said to you.”

  “I know.” Annie inhaled. “But she said she’d never hurt me. I believe that.”

  “I get it, but your cousin’s missing. God only knows what happened to her. And your mom said it could get ugly. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like ugly.”

  Annie closed her eyes to keep the well of tears she felt from filling them. When she did, the memory, the one that had hit her during her conversation with her mom, came back. She popped her eyes open.

  “I remembered something today.” She rubbed her thumb over the scar on her knee.

  “What?”

  Annie let the memory pull her in. She could almost taste the astringent and bitter smell of the hospital. She could feel her chest going up and down, trying to breathe while sobbing. She could feel her young heart flapping against her chest like a bird trying to find a way out.

  “Being at the hospital for the stitches. Mama tried to console me, but I wouldn’t stop crying.”

  The memory kept coming, Annie was there on her friend’s sofa, but she wasn’t. She existed in the snapshot memories, feeling the snapshot fear. The room was white and cold. Something terrible had happened.

  “Dad showed up,” she said. “He was angry. Yelling at Mom. I’d never heard him yell before. The nurse made them leave the room. I was so scared.”

  “Afraid of getting stitches?”

  Annie shook her head. “Something to do with what happened in the woods. But I don’t remember…what?” Annie blinked away the threat of tears. “I want to peel the fog away. I want to know what happened. To remember and get it over with! Why can’t I just remember? Why is it coming to me in tiny bits?”

  “I don’t know,” Isabella said.

  Annie’s phone rang. Thinking it was Mark, dreading telling him, she let it ring. Then she snatched up the phone from the coffee table.

  It wasn’t Mark.

  “Shit!” She gazed up at Isabella. “It’s the same number that called before, the person who called me a bitch.”

  “Don’t answer it.” Concern tightened her friend’s tone.

  “I have to.” She hit the accept button. “What do you want? Where’s Fran?”

  “Keep it up and you’ll die, too.”

  Fear, old, new, like shards of glass sliced into her chest, but the words still slipped past her chilled lips. “Like you killed Jenny! Who is this? Tell me!”

  * * *

  Mark parked in front of the run-down trailer in the run-down trailer park. Light leaked out of the windows. He walked up the porch and knocked. Four times.

  He heard a television blaring and moved to the window. A man lay facedown on the sofa, dead to the world.

  Not dead, Mark hoped.

  His knock on the window caused a sharp, cracking sound. The man jerked up. Mark pressed his badge to the glass. The guy stumbled to open the door.

  Mark had hoped the Austin PD was wrong about Fran’s boyfriend being innocent. If he could pin Fran Roberts’s disappearance on him, it’d mean Annie might not be in danger.

  Yeah, someone had spray-painted her car and broken her window, but that action paled in comparison to someone being kidnapped or killed.

  Unfortunately, the man, who went by Bubba, had a big L on his forehead for loser, but he wasn’t nervous about Fran’s disappearance or being questioned about it. That meant his ass was probably clean.

  “Where were you on Sunday?”

  “Out with the boys. We went to the bar. Closed the place down. I stayed at a friend’s house.”

  “I’ll need the address of the bar and the phone numbers of your friends.”

  Unflinching, the guy gave Mark the information.

  He hadn’t done it.

  “Fran hasn’t called?” Mark asked.

  “No. Pisses me off, too. She’s supposed to help with the rent.”

  “Have you checked if she might’ve been here and taken some clothes?”

  “No, but she’s got more clothes than God.”

  And how many clothes did God have? Mark’s concern for Fran and for Annie rose. “Has anyone called looking for her?”

  “Hell yeah.” He inched closer. Close enough that Mark noticed the soured-whiskey breath and the sozzled way he spoke. Was that how he’d appeared to Annie and Brown this morning? Brown thinking less of him didn’t bother him. But Annie? Damn.

  “Who called?” Mark stepped back, claiming his personal space.

  “Her drunk-ass mom? Her aunt? And I think one of her uncles—the voice was muffled and it was from an anonymous number.”

  “Do you have those numbers?”

  “Yeah.”

  As Mark wrote down the numbers, one stood out. The pay phone. What the hell? A guilty party calling and pretending to be worried about a victim they’d made disappear wasn’t uncommon. But calling and not identifying yourself…? Did this mean the person threatening Annie wasn’t the person behind Fran Roberts’s disappearance?

  Shit! He’d come to get answers and was leaving with more questions.

  * * *

  Mark made the drive back to Anniston in record time. After learning Annie had gotten another threatening phone call, he contacted Sheriff Harper. The man was all too eager to drive to the pay phone and even dust it for prints.

  Obviously, he didn’t have anything better to do on a Thursday night.

  Mark called Annie back and asked if he could drop by her friend’s apartment. She agreed.

  A hour later, when he knocked on the door, Annie answered it.

  One look at her vulnerable expression and he pulled her against him. The way she clung to him for those twenty seconds brought out every serve-and-protect instinct he had. He would’ve given anything for another twenty, but she stepped back.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “No, it’s not. My mom came to see me.”

  “When?” he asked.

  “This afternoon.”

  “And?” He followed her inside. Annie’s friend sat at the kitchen table.

  Annie looked around. “Mark, this is Isabella.”

  Mark nodded, but his thoughts stayed on what Annie had said, or what she needed to finish saying. “Thanks for letting me swing by.”

  “No problem. We’ve got a bottle of wine open. You want a glass?”

  “Yes. But I’m on the clock.”

  “In that case,” Isabella said, “I’m taking the bottle and my book and going into my bedroom.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Annie said.

  “Actually, I’m at a good part in the book. The heroine just returned from a vacation and she’s about to find her ex-husband, naked, dead, and missing a certain organ, on her kitchen floor.”

  “Sounds delightful,” Mark said, horrified.

  “It is. He cheated on her.” Smiling,
the pretty brunette walked down the hall.

  When the bedroom door closed, Mark moved closer to Annie. “She seems…fun.”

  “She is.”

  They sat at the kitchen table. “What happened?”

  She told him about her meeting with her mom. When he saw the hurt in her eyes, he had to fight to keep his remarks to himself.

  “I don’t think she’d ever hurt me. She even said that.”

  “Yeah.” He ground his teeth. He wanted to hunt down JoAnne Lakes and tell her what a piece of shit she was.

  True, his mom hadn’t won the mother-of-the-year award. Considering she killed herself, it could be viewed as the ultimate form of abandonment. But guilt that she’d allowed her husband to kill his own kid had made her do that.

  What the hell was Ms. Lakes’s excuse?

  He listened to Annie as she told him about the memory of the hospital visit. That didn’t up his opinion of the woman.

  “She said George took Fran home,” Annie said.

  “Yeah.” But did George really take her home? Or was the Austin officer right? Could Francyne Roberts be somewhere drunk on her ass?

  If so, where would she be? He realized he’d failed to ask Bubba about any of Francyne’s friends. He’d checked with the names her ex-husband had offered. No one had seen or heard from her. Which meant calling Bubba again got added to tonight’s to-do list.

  “Have you heard back from the sheriff to see if he spotted anyone at the pay phone?” Annie asked.

  “Not yet. He’ll call.” But his finding something would be too easy, and nothing so far turned out to be easy about this case.

  He told Annie about meeting Bubba and the phone calls he’d received.

  “Are you saying you don’t think my mom’s family is behind her disappearance?”

  “I’m saying it’s possible. I plan on getting answers. I’m good at it.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I came to you.”

  “And not because you have the hots for me?” he teased, knowing they both needed it.

  When she didn’t respond, he brushed a few strands of her hair off her cheek. “I get off in a couple of hours. Would you feel safer at my place?” He let himself hope.

  “No, I’m fine here.”

  He couldn’t help but worry if his behavior this morning hadn’t played a part in her answer. “Tomorrow night?” If she said no, he’d know what it meant.

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  He kissed her. “I’m going to have a hard time sleeping tonight without you.”

  “You’ll survive.” She shot him a forced smile.

  “Yeah, but surviving isn’t nearly as much fun.”

  * * *

  Sometime after one a.m. Annie, curled up on Isabella’s sofa, must have drifted off to sleep. Because shortly after, it started.

  The running, seeing the Cinderella shoes, the footsteps following her, clutching the bloody teddy bear. Fran’s screams to run faster.

  But this time, the dream didn’t end where it had before. After those footfalls got close, then closer, two big male hands grabbed her up. She started kicking, screaming. She yelled for her daddy, even when she knew he wasn’t there.

  The words came spoken in her ear: Stop it, Annie!

  The deep male voice playing in her head had no face. She couldn’t put a name to it, but her five-year-old self had known the voice. For some reason that terrified her more.

  She had to get away!

  She clawed at the arms of the person who held her, while fear clawed at her young mind. Then another voice rose from the dark. A young voice. Let her go! Let her go right now!

  Annie jerked awake, heart hammering, pulse pumping, fear smothering her. She kept hearing that last voice in her head. Tears filled her eyes.

  Fran. She’d come back for Annie. She’d tried to protect Annie.

  Now Fran was missing. And it was Annie’s fault. Her fault for running out that day of the funeral. For going to Mark.

  Annie pulled her knees close and hugged them like a frightened child, and silently sobbed. She had to find Fran. She had to.

  Annie grabbed her phone and dialed Mark’s number, but remembering the time, she didn’t hit the call button.

  * * *

  At five thirty Annie, dressed, stood at her friend’s front window, steaming coffee in hand, staring out at the still-dark sky and waiting for the first sign of the sun.

  Anger curled up inside her. Anger at her mom. Anger at herself. Anger at her inability to remember more, to remember everything. Surely not knowing was worse than knowing. Why was her mind playing peek-a-boo with her past? Flashing a tiny memory here and then there, but disappearing before she had the answers.

  She hated the feeling the dreams brought on. Scared, vulnerable—like a helpless five-year-old girl needing her daddy.

  She wasn’t five.

  Maybe it was time she stopped acting like it.

  Moving to the kitchen, she set the cup down, found a notepad, and wrote Isabella a note. Gone on an early run. Be back soon.

  As she moved to her car, she swore she heard footsteps. Stopping in the middle of the parking lot, her heart in her throat, the air too thick to breathe, she considered running back to the apartment, but then she remembered Fran. Her cousin had been afraid that night years ago, but she’d come back for Annie. Determined, Annie rushed to her car and drove to the one place she might find answers. The park.

  When she pulled up into the parking lot, the eastern sky was welcoming the sun. She gripped the steering wheel, her lungs feeling as if they’d shrunk. She fed them short, shallow bursts of air.

  She searched the lot, hoping she’d see someone safe looking, but the parking lot stood empty. It seemed abandoned.

  And she felt the same way. Ted, her ex-fiancé, her friends, her coworkers, they’d all abandoned her. Even her father’s death felt like an abandonment. Now her mom.

  Determined not to crater, she squared her shoulders and got out of the car.

  Automatically, she locked her car, and the beep startled her. Putting one foot in front of the other, she walked down a wooded path. The damp smell of earth and verdant scents of nature filled her nose.

  She tried to remember being here before. But no memory rose from the fear swelling inside her.

  Palms sweaty, she stopped at a sign that showed a map of the park. She used the flashlight on her phone to see.

  Shaking inside, she studied it, but didn’t have a clue which way to go. She recalled her mom saying Jenny had drowned. By the water? She needed to go to the lake.

  Finding the location on the faded map, she started walking. The sound of her heart slamming into her breastbone was louder than the crunch of dead brush beneath her tennis shoes.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The smothering alcove of trees made it night again. Crickets and insects screamed in the darkness. Though warm and muggy, a chill tiptoed up and down Annie’s spine.

  No one was here, she told herself. No one had followed her. No one but the past, a voice said in her head. And perhaps that scared her more than anything.

  Her phone’s light barely touched the ground. Fear scented her breath, but she refused to turn back. She wanted the truth more than she wanted safety.

  She moved slow, waiting for the recesses of her mind to hand something over. They were her memories. She wanted them.

  In the distance she heard voices. Young voices.

  Or was that…? With her next breath, she felt it. A sense of being pulled back, of the past closing in. The sound of water played in her head.

  Fran, Jenny, and she were laughing, catching tadpoles. Behind them were voices, familiar, angry voices. Mom’s family, always arguing.

  As quickly as the memory came, it left. One snippet of data.

  “No.” She stopped walking.

  She leaned against a tree. The bark scratched at her skin. The memory scratched at her mind. When nothing more came, she followed the path deeper into th
e woods. Each step, each footfall, brought dread curling up inside her belly.

  What was the chance that she, Fran, and Jenny had taken the same path? What was the chance that Jenny’s bones were still buried here in the earth?

  She stared into woods. The whoosh of water whispered like a secret in her ear. Then she saw it. Jenny walking deeper into the water’s edge. Saw Fran motioning her to come back. Saw Jenny going under. Saw the tip of her blond hair floating on the water’s surface.

  Air got trapped in her throat like a liquid. Gasping, she bent at the waist to breathe.

  Had Jenny drowned?

  * * *

  Mark was up before the sun, and he hadn’t fallen asleep until after two. Sheriff Harper had called when he’d left Annie’s friend’s apartment. The street was empty when he got to the phone booth. And it’d been wiped clean of fingerprints.

  Mark knew it was too much to hope they’d actually get anything, but he’d hoped. Now all he knew was he wasn’t dealing with a sloppy perp. And if they’d taken the time to wipe their prints away, they had to be guilty of something. Something worse than wielding a spray-paint can.

  That made him worry for Annie’s safety.

  In spite of needing a few more hours of sleep, he got up. He’d showered, shaved, and shot out the door with Bacon by six. During his run, he’d made his to-do list: Find the old cop who’d written the report on the Reed case. Call Fran’s friends, whose names he’d gotten from Bubba the previous night. Go to the Coleman Concrete Company.

  The company didn’t open until eight, so he went to the coffee shop, hoping he’d run into Annie.

  She wasn’t there. With twenty minutes to kill, he parked himself at her table and read the Talbot file. The old man he’d spotted yesterday waved at him and smiled.

  Mark smiled back.

  The man, apparently interpreting it as an invitation, got up and joined Mark.

  That will teach me to smile at strangers, Mark thought. “Can I help you?” he said, pushing his sunglasses up a notch.

  “You bought me a cup of coffee a few months ago.”

  “Oh.” Mark didn’t know what else to say.

  “I thought I’d repay the favor.”

  Mark picked up his cup. “I got my coffee, but thank you.”