Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  I cracked the door open and peered at them. Both men went completely silent at the top of the steps. I wasn’t sure what expression was on my face, but Marx narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Were you listenin’ to our conversation through the door?”

  “You whisper like you’re trying to be heard over the roar of a jet engine,” I informed him.

  Sam closed his eyes and let out a pained breath.

  “Don’t worry, Sam, I think you’re frustrating too.” I stepped out onto the patio. “I need to tell you both something.”

  They both shifted until they were facing me, which only added to the intense pressure building inside me. “I can’t . . .” I twirled my hands slowly, but for some reason that didn’t make the right words magically appear in my brain. I exhaled in surrender and said, “I have no memories.”

  Chapter 20

  “YOU REMEMBER TRIPPIN’ over a body,” Marx said, testing my memory. He rested his hand on the table, his pen poised over a page in his notebook.

  He’d taken the news of my amnesia better than expected; I was both surprised and touched that he hadn’t thought I was crazy.

  He’d simply believed me.

  Then he’d sat down on the steps beside me and asked me to tell him what I did remember.

  Sam had a more difficult time accepting my condition. His logic just wasn’t that flexible.

  “Do you remember why you tripped?” he asked.

  I rubbed my hands together anxiously as I paced around the table, searching the black void of my memory for details that just weren’t there. I kept coming back to the same few images. “I slipped in blood.”

  “Describe the blood,” Marx said. “Was it in front of the body, behind the body . . . just around the head?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to envision the scene. I remembered the moonlight illuminating the room. “It was all around the body. It was like . . . tiny fissures had burst all over her body.”

  Marx sat up a little straighter, and there was a focused gleam in his eyes. “A girl or a woman?”

  I stopped by the refrigerator and looked at him in confusion. “What?”

  “You said ‘her body’.”

  I frowned as I thought back on the memory. I could scarcely see clearly enough to identify the mass on the floor as a body, let alone decipher whether it was male or female. “I don’t . . .”

  “You do remember, or you wouldn’t have said it.”

  I strained my brain to figure where that thought had come from. “When I was at the café, after Cambel died, I remembered tripping over the body, and I just had a feeling it was a woman. I can’t explain it. I didn’t see it. It was just a passing thought.”

  “That doesn’t mean your memory wasn’t tryin’ to find its way back. What happened when you fell over the body?”

  “I dropped my stuffed rabbit.”

  “Why didn’t you pick it up?” He gazed at me expectantly, and I was starting to feel flustered.

  I couldn’t summon the memories at will. The only thing that had triggered them to date was fear—and morbid little reminders that the killer left for me to find.

  I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay, Holly. Don’t get frustrated.”

  Why hadn’t I picked it up? I couldn’t remember. Remember. Broken brain, remember. Whatever had happened next made the rabbit unimportant; it slipped away from my attention as something more frightening took its place. “The moon came out and I saw what was on my hands.”

  “Did you scream? Cry?”

  “No,” I said with absolute certainty. With that memory came the full cinematic experience, and I had been lucky to be able to breathe past the knot of terror in my throat, let alone scream. I hadn’t uttered a sound.

  “Why not?”

  “I was too scared.”

  “Why?”

  My heart rate picked up as I remembered a small detail that had escaped my attention before. Something so faint it should hardly have mattered. The floorboards behind me had creaked. “Someone was in the house.”

  “The person who chased you through the woods?”

  “The man.”

  “This memory came to you the night in the park when those men were chasin’ you.” He tapped his pen on the notepad with a stony expression. “I think we can both agree what their intentions were for you that evenin’. I’m wonderin’ if that might be what triggered the memory.”

  At my bewildered look, he sighed. “Some men’s desires are driven more toward children. Did you have any sense that the man chasin’ you that night . . .”

  “No,” I said a little more forcefully than I’d intended. The suggestion sent pinpricks of revulsion across my skin. “No, I . . . I don’t think so.”

  “So probably not a child predator, but we can’t rule it out. What do you think brought on the memory? Was it the surroundin’s? In your memory you said you were runnin’ through the woods.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about the woods.”

  I sighed in frustration. I felt like we were getting nowhere. The memories made no more sense to me now than they had before. But Marx continued to take notes. “Big. I couldn’t see the end in any direction. Cold. My toes were numb.”

  “You were barefoot?” At my nod, he frowned. “Forest floors are covered in nuts, twigs, roots, debris from litterers . . . and you were barefoot?”

  “And in my nightgown.”

  “Was there snow on the ground?”

  I thought about it for a moment and then shook my head. “Crunching leaves. I could hear his boots stomping through the dry leaves. The tree branches were bare . . .”

  Marx leaned forward in his chair. “It was fall. Probably mid to late fall. It’s mid fall now, and you were runnin’ through the trees in the park from the sound of men’s footsteps in the dry leaves. Your mind might have repressed your memory of that night in the woods, but there were too many similarities in the park for it to stay buried.”

  I heaved a tired breath and dropped into the opposite chair. “That doesn’t help us find him.” I played with the cup of hot chocolate he’d brought me when he arrived. He’d brought himself a coffee, and the terrible smell of it clouded the apartment.

  “No, it helps us find you, which will help us find him.”

  I wasn’t sure I quite followed that bouncing ball. “How exactly does that work?”

  Marx leaned back in his chair. “Well, we know that a red-haired girl named Holly went missin’ in the fall approximately eighteen years ago, which would’ve made her ten years old. She fled the scene of a crime where at least one person died, likely a woman, and she ran through the woods, which suggests a rural area, and disappeared.” He set his pen down and closed the notebook. “It’s not a lot, but it’s more than we had yesterday, and it gives us a time line to work with. “

  Relief made me slump in my chair. I had done something to help. That was a first. Usually I just screwed things up.

  Marx got up from the table and took his notebook with him as he pulled out his cell phone. “Sully, I need you to look into a missin’ child for me,” he said, stepping onto the patio. “I don’t have a city to narrow it down with, so search countrywide.” He paused. “Yes, I know that’s a lot of missin’ children to go through.”

  He pulled the door shut.

  I tugged off my slippers and pulled on a pair of gray flats. Slippers were far more comfortable, but apparently wearing them outside of the house wasn’t socially acceptable.

  I grabbed my jacket off the back of the door and slipped out into the cool afternoon. I hopped up the steps and started toward the main apartment building when Marx snapped, “Holly.”

  I came to an abrupt halt and turned back. “What?”

  He covered the mouthpiece of his cell phone. “Where are you goin’?”

  “To visit Jace.”

  His gaze flicked to the building behind me, and he shook his head. “Not by yourself, you’re not.”


  “But . . .” I looked back at the building. “It’s twenty feet away.”

  He gestured toward Officer Meredith, who was so silent and stiff that he might have been a standing corpse on the lawn. I crinkled my nose. Marx’s eyebrows lifted, revealing that he wasn’t moved by my expression of displeasure.

  I sighed and walked over to Officer Meredith. He rotated his head slowly, like an owl, and looked at me with a face completely devoid of emotion.

  Yeah, that’s not creepy.

  “Hi,” I greeted a little uneasily. “Would you, um . . . mind coming with me?”

  He stared at me, blinked, and then started toward the apartment building without a word. I’ll take that as a yes. I turned on my heel and scampered to catch up with him.

  I walked stiffly up two flights of stairs with Officer Meredith at my back, and paused just outside the doorway to the second-floor hallway. An unpleasant smell seeped through the door into the stairwell, and I pressed the back of my hand against my nostrils to try to block it.

  “That smells awful,” I muttered before continuing up the steps toward the tenth floor.

  Officer Meredith lingered by the door for another moment and then turned to follow me. He lifted his radio, and the words he said nearly made me trip up the steps.

  “Detective, I think we may have a body on the second floor.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “Keep walking,” he instructed, and he marched me up the remaining flights of stairs without answering any of the dozen questions I peppered him with. I could only guess it had been the smell that made him think someone had died, but he wouldn’t confirm that either.

  I barely had a chance to knock on Jace’s door before it flung inward with startling quickness. For a moment she just blinked, and then she exhaled, “Oh, you’re not Chinese.”

  “Nope, just a lowly Caucasian.”

  She snorted. “I meant Chinese food, smart aleck.” She moved back to let me inside and then eyed Officer Meredith. He made no move to come in, and Jace happily closed the door. I found it interesting that when Sam arrived for the changing of the guard, she invited him in.

  He hovered quietly and unobtrusively by the door as we watched movies and nibbled on food. I picked through the bowl of popcorn in my lap as I sat curled into the corner of Jace’s plush couch amidst a mound of pillows and blankets.

  Jace sat on the other end of the couch, her blue eyes glazed as she stared at the TV screen. It was late, and we were watching some movie about elves and hobbits. I couldn’t really follow the plot.

  Jace yawned and I tossed a piece of popcorn at her face. I almost made it into her mouth, but it went a little high and bounced off the tip of her nose. She snapped her mouth shut with a click and shot me a mock glare.

  “You should cover your mouth,” I teased.

  “You should learn to aim.” She flicked a piece of popcorn back at me, and I tried to dodge it, but it snagged in my hair. I tried to untangle it without breaking it into a thousand tiny pieces.

  Jace chuckled tiredly.

  My attention shifted to Sam when I noticed him checking his cell phone. He typed a lightning-fast response and then tucked it back into one of his pockets.

  “Was that Marx?” I asked.

  His warm black eyes shifted to me. “Yes, why?”

  “Did he say anything about . . .” I glanced at Jace and, not wanting to frighten her, phrased my question carefully. “The smell on the second floor?”

  Sam’s eyes considered Jace as well, and then he said vaguely, “Yes, he did, and yes, Mer was right.”

  I swallowed. Mr. Stanley lived on the second floor. He’d been rushed to the hospital once before when he consumed a toxic level of alcohol and passed out in the hallway. I couldn’t ask Sam if it was him without alarming Jace, so I decided to keep that question to myself for now.

  “You know,” Jace began, her blue eyes fixing on Sam like a hawk zeroing in on prey. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. And since you’re here . . .”

  Uh-oh. I sensed trouble.

  “I hear you didn’t believe Holly when she told you about her memory,” she said, and the sharpness of her voice made Sam hesitate for a beat.

  “It’s an unusual problem to have.”

  “So you automatically assumed she was lying?”

  Sam’s expression turned flat, and he shifted his gaze to me. “Thank you for throwing me under the bus.”

  “I was not involved with this bus.” I raised my hands innocently.

  “I heard you,” Jace explained. “My window was cracked open. It also sounded like you pretty much think all of this is her fault because she’s withholding information? Maybe she was withholding information because she knew you wouldn’t believe her.”

  Sam looked like a deer in headlights, and for a moment I thought he might duck out the door into the hallway. She would only follow him. “I didn’t say that.”

  Oh boy. I pushed aside my blanket gently and slid off the couch. “I’m just gonna . . . go . . . pee for like . . . the next twenty minutes or so,” I mumbled. I grabbed my bowl of popcorn and carried it with me as I tiptoed into the bathroom at the other end of the apartment.

  I closed the door and turned on the sink faucet to drown out their voices. They deserved a private moment to work out their misunderstanding. It might be about me, but I had no intention of getting involved.

  I put the toilet lid down and sat on the puffy blue covering as I nibbled on my popcorn. Why did I have a habit of eating in the bathroom? That wasn’t weird at all. I hummed a tune to myself as the minutes crept slowly by. I wished I could remember the words. Something about balloons . . . ninety . . . or nine hundred . . . well, anyway, there were balloons.

  I paused when I saw something move outside. I squinted, making out a figure sprinting across the lawn with his gun drawn.

  Ummm . . .

  I stood up and turned off the faucet. When I opened the bathroom door, Jace was sitting there with her hand poised to knock. Her blue eyes were rounded with fear.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “There’s a man outside,” she said in a frightened whisper.

  “What? Outside where? The hallway?”

  She shook her head. “Outside, outside. Sam didn’t say who exactly, but I kinda got the feeling he meant your stalker guy.”

  I stiffened and looked into the living room. “Where’s Sam?”

  “Marx sent him a message. He said the man was outside, and he needed backup immediately. He left.” Her eyes glistened with fear. “He drew his gun, told me to lock the door, and then he just . . . left.”

  That didn’t sound right.

  I ran back into the bathroom and looked out the window. The figure I had seen sprinting across the lawn with a gun must have been Sam. He was gone. This didn’t make sense. If the killer was outside, Marx would’ve called for backup; he would never have told Sam to leave us.

  I fished my cell phone out of my jeans pocket with shaky fingers and punched in Marx’s number. I held my breath as I waited for him to pick up, but the number returned as busy.

  I hung up and tried again.

  Pick up, pick up, pick up . . . please pick up.

  Jace parked her wheelchair in the doorway to the bathroom as she watched me frantically try to call Marx. Dread unfurled in my stomach when the line rang busy a second time and switched over to voice mail. I closed the phone with icy fingers and stared at her.

  Something was wrong. I could feel it.

  The knob on the front door rattled. I walked to the doorway beside Jace and watched the knob twitch back and forth. Someone was trying to get in, and it wasn’t Sam. He would’ve announced himself. Something heavy hit the outside of the door and it bowed.

  Fear gripped me.

  “Inside. Now,” I whispered, half pulling Jace’s wheelchair into the bathroom with me. She was frozen. I shoved her into the walk-in shower and turned her around so she wasn’t facing the wa
ll.

  I closed the bathroom door quietly and locked it. Neither the flimsy door nor the cheap button lock would offer much resistance for a six-foot-four man who wanted inside. He would just break through it. I turned in a frantic circle in search of anything we could use to barricade the door.

  There was nothing. Everything in the small bathroom was a permanent fixture. I rifled through the cabinet drawers for a weapon. I pulled out a pair of scissors.

  “Holly.” Jace’s voice trembled. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I told her, even though I doubted it would be.

  I heard the outer door burst under the weight of the intruder, and there was the quiet patter of wood shards littering the floor. He was inside.

  I grabbed a can of hair spray from the counter and climbed into the shower with Jace. I hunkered down beside her and forced the can of hair spray into her shaking fingers. I had a far better chance of stabbing someone because I could at least maneuver in this small space. I laced my fingers through hers, and she squeezed them painfully.

  I looked up at her and saw the stiff expression of terror on her face. In that way we differed. She froze in the face of fear, and I froze in the face of memories.

  We listened to the sound of the floorboards as they creaked beneath the weight of slow, heavy footsteps. The sound stirred memories in the void of my mind, but I clamped down on them and shoved them aside. What good would remembering do if we died in the next five minutes?

  The footsteps drew closer, and I could see the light shifting under the door. Jace gripped my fingers tighter, and I had to clench my teeth to keep from crying out. An obscene amount of strength was hidden in her slender arms and fingers. I blamed the wheelchair.

  I tried to pry my fingers from hers to call Marx again, but she wouldn’t let go. I set the scissors on the shower floor quietly and hit redial on my phone. When the call went to voice mail, I could’ve cried.

  I remembered Sam’s words—the ones he’d whispered that I was never meant to hear: “If he gets his hands on her and she doesn’t have a weapon, there’s no way she doesn’t end up dead.” I set the useless phone down and picked up the scissors. I had a weapon—a meager one—but at least this one I knew how to use.