Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  “The men in the park—the ones who tried to hurt you. That case?”

  I hadn’t realized he was aware of that incident. “Marx told you?”

  “Just the highlights.” There was a grim set to his mouth that looked out of place on his face. “I’m glad you made it out okay.”

  “Yeah.” I glanced at Marx through the door. He was on his phone again, and he looked distinctly unhappy.

  “He’s very protective of you.”

  His comment caught me off guard. “Marx?”

  “He gave me an earful about remembering my place and respecting boundaries.” He smiled at me so I would know he hadn’t taken offense at Marx’s warnings.

  Somehow it didn’t surprise me that he’d given Jordan a lecture about boundaries. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he’d threatened him with bodily harm if he violated them. “He didn’t threaten to make you cry, did he?”

  “No.” He laughed. “But out of curiosity, what are the boundaries? I’d like to know so I don’t get shot.”

  I smirked and slid my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. “Five feet.”

  He glanced between himself and me. “Oh, so I’m trespassing.” He slid along the wall another foot and then gauged the distance again. “How’s this?”

  “Mmm, better.”

  “Am I on the border?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good. What are the rest of the boundaries? Can I ask you intensely personal questions like coffee or hot chocolate? Or is that crossing a line?”

  I smiled. “Hot chocolate. Coffee smells terrible.”

  His blond eyebrows crept up a fraction. “Clearly you’ve never had burnt coffee. Because if you had, unburnt coffee would smell amazing by comparison.”

  “That’s not exactly a selling point.”

  He smiled and it brought out the dimples in his cheeks. I remembered those dimples from when we played catch in the yard. “We have packets of hot chocolate in the back. You want a cup?”

  “Um . . .” I glanced back out of the glass door at Marx, who was still engaged in a whispered, heated conversation on the phone. I wondered what had upset him so much. “I’m not sure if . . .”

  If it was wise to wander off alone with Jordan. He might know me to some degree, but as far as I was concerned, we’d just met for the first time a little less than an hour ago.

  As I considered it, I gnawed on the half of my bottom lip that wasn’t in the process of healing. If I based every decision I made on whether or not it could be dangerous or uncomfortable, I would never leave my house.

  “Sure,” I finally decided. Jordan maintained a comfortable distance from me as we walked. “So why don’t you have a uniform?”

  He was wearing a pair of dark jeans, a blue T-shirt, and a dark-brown jacket that brought out the gold in his blond hair. “I do. Today’s my day off, and I probably won’t wear my uniform while I show you around town either. If I dress in plain clothes, it’ll look less like official business and more like a friendly reunion. Hopefully it’ll draw less attention.”

  I looked down at his shoes: they were bright-blue Converse sneakers with green laces. “Interesting shoes.”

  His eyes skimmed over my outfit and landed on my feet. “Says the girl wearing red slippers in Kansas.”

  Ha! A Wizard of Oz joke. I suppose I should’ve seen that coming. “They’re flats. Not slippers.”

  “If you say so.”

  Jordan walked into a side room where there was a small kitchenette, a miniature refrigerator, and a corner table with two chairs. He walked to a coffee pot full of charred black sludge and poured some of it into a mug.

  Ew. I crinkled my nose in disgust.

  He grabbed a second mug, and I smelled the powdered chocolate the moment he ripped open the package of hot chocolate. He prepared it and popped it into the microwave.

  He turned around to face me and seemed surprised to find me still lingering in the doorway. “I know it’s a small room, but I promise to stay on the five-feet perimeter,” he said as he leaned back against the counter and sipped his coffee.

  I forced a thin smile. “I’m good here.”

  His blue eyes regarded me with quiet speculation. “I know you’ve had a really difficult few months and I feel like a stranger to you, but I promise I’m not dangerous.”

  I had no intention of explaining that he made me nervous or that the small space that was barely larger than my bathroom made me feel claustrophobic. “So . . . the gun on your belt is just a toy?”

  He grinned. “Okay, I’m a little dangerous, but only to people who break the law. You strike me as pretty law-abiding.”

  “Eh . . . a little jaywalking here, nose breaking there . . .” I shrugged.

  “I’ve had my nose broken before,” he admitted. He set his coffee on the counter when the microwave beeped. “By a red-haired girl who took offense when I made fun of her pigtails. She whacked me in the face with a tree limb. Broke my nose and blacked both of my eyes.”

  Astonished, I asked, “Was I the redhead?”

  “Yep, and man did you have a mean swing for a six-year-old girl. I was almost afraid to talk to you after that for fear you’d hit me with a brick next. But we worked it out, and you decided I wasn’t so bad.” He removed the mug of steaming hot chocolate from the microwave and carried it over. He paused at the invisible five-feet boundary he’d promised to respect and requested playfully, “Permission to cross over?”

  “I’ll grant you a temporary visa of five seconds, and then I’m deporting you.”

  “Five seconds. You have very strict border laws, my lady.” He approached me slowly and gripped the rim of the hot cup with tentative fingers as he held it out to me. I slipped my fingers through the handle. “May I ask why they’re so strict?”

  My fingers tightened on the mug, and I dropped my eyes, watching the tiny marshmallows dissolve into frothy rings. I didn’t know Jordan well enough to share the details of my past.

  I heard him release a slow breath as he leaned back against the counter. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that question would make you uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable,” I said, drawing myself up against the door frame and meeting his eyes.

  He smiled, but it was a pale imitation of the warm, easy smile he’d flashed a few minutes ago. “You’re about as good at lying now as you were when you were nine, which is to say, not at all.”

  “I guess I’ll have to practice.”

  He lifted the coffee cup to his curved lips. “If you haven’t figured out how to lie convincingly in twenty-seven years, there really isn’t much hope for you on that front.” He took a swig of coffee and added, “Which isn’t a bad thing. Honesty is a dying trait . . . right up there with integrity and loyalty.”

  Truth be told, I never put much effort into learning how to lie well. I had watched Collin spin easy webs of lies to explain away injuries my foster siblings had mysteriously sustained, and it wasn’t a quality I held in high regard.

  “I guess I just value the truth too much to be any good at lying.” But I could avoid the truth like it was a dangerous flesh-eating bacteria if necessary, and I often did.

  “Okay,” he said, looking contemplative. “Truth or dare.”

  I frowned, not entirely certain I understood what he meant by that, but then I realized he was referring to the childhood game. “I’m not really a fan of that game.”

  “It’s a good icebreaker. I’ll go first. Truth. Ask me anything.”

  He was serious. I had so many questions about my past and my family that I didn’t really know where to begin. “Tell me something about my mother.”

  He tilted his face toward the ceiling as he thought. “She was kind of like a second mom to me. She was kind, but never afraid to put me in my place, which happened often because you were always getting us in trouble.”

  I smiled a little at that.

  “She was busy a lot of the time because of her job, but when she was around, she w
as a great mom. She adored you and Gin, and she spent as much time with you as she could. Now it’s your turn. Truth or dare?”

  I shifted uneasily. “Dare?” If he asked me to hop on one foot or do cartwheels across the room, I was leaving.

  He grinned at my hesitation. “I dare you to take a drink of your hot chocolate, which you’ve been avoiding.”

  I peered down into the mug of hot chocolate I had yet to touch. I loved marshmallow hot chocolate, but this was the first drink I’d accepted from a stranger since discovering my fruit punch wasn’t as safe to drink as I had believed it to be. It left me irrationally uneasy at the thought of drinking it.

  “It’s not drugged, Holly.”

  His comment startled me. “I never said—”

  “Marx told me the killer slipped something into your drink earlier this week when he intended to take you. It’s only natural for you to be cautious, especially since I seem like a stranger. I probably should’ve let you prepare it yourself. There’s more packets here if you want to make your own. I promise I won’t be offended.”

  He might not be offended, but I would feel ridiculous. I lifted the mug to my lips and took a cautious sip. I was not going to be paranoid.

  Wow. It was the temperature of molten lava, and I was pretty sure my tongue had just melted off.

  Jordan watched quietly as I swallowed, and then asked with a wry smile, “Well?”

  I licked the chocolate from my lips. “Well, the room isn’t spinning and I don’t feel faint, so I guess Marx doesn’t have to shoot you.”

  “Oh good, I was worried about that,” he said with teasing sarcasm. “Truth.” Apparently, he had no secrets he was afraid I might ask him to reveal.

  “Did my family get along? I mean . . . were we happy?”

  “Yeah, I mean every family has its problems. Gin struggled socially, but we always included her. Your mom was busy all the time since she was the town veterinarian. Sometimes she had to leave unexpectedly because there was an emergency. But other than that, you guys were happy.”

  It was so strange having to learn about my family from someone else. I should’ve known my mother was a veterinarian, but I hadn’t figured out how to unlock any of those memories. I sighed and my breath rippled across the top of the hot chocolate.

  “Truth or dare?” Jordan prompted again.

  “Dare.”

  “You know most people choose truth because they would rather answer questions than risk doing something embarrassing.”

  “I don’t really do questions,” I admitted as I took another tentative sip of hot chocolate.

  He gazed at me thoughtfully. Marx could look at my face and unravel my thoughts like a ball of string, and while Jordan struck me as intelligent, he didn’t have that same insightful gleam in his eyes. I was pretty sure my thoughts were safe.

  “Why is that?” he finally asked. “Why don’t you do questions? Even the most private people I know answer some questions about themselves. Their favorite color, favorite food . . .”

  “I chose dare,” I reminded him.

  “Then I dare you to answer my question.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s cheating.”

  “Yes, it is.” He grinned. “But it’s cheating for a good cause. I’m interested to know why you won’t answer any personal questions, and how I can bribe you to do so.”

  “I’m not bribable.”

  He sighed and tapped his thumbs on the handle of his mug as he tried to figure me out. He’d known me for all of sixty minutes, so his chances weren’t good. I leaned silently against the door frame, offering him nothing.

  “You’re not gonna make this easy, are you?” he asked. At my questioning look, he set his coffee cup down and gripped the edge of the counter. All the amusement and lightheartedness evaporated from his voice, leaving behind traces of sadness and longing. “Holly, I have a lot of questions, and you’re the only one who can answer them.”

  I realized an interrogation was coming, and my defenses slammed into place. I straightened in the doorway and tried to make my voice firm. “I don’t have any answers to give you.”

  “When I was ten years old, one of my friends died, her entire family was brutally murdered, and my best friend vanished off the face of the planet for eighteen years.” I met his eyes and saw the pain that those losses had caused him. “I need to know what happened.”

  I understood that he needed closure after all the years of wondering, but I couldn’t offer him that. “I don’t remember what happened. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I don’t mean the crime. I’ve pretty much pieced that together myself,” he replied as he pushed away from the counter and crossed the room, apparently forgetting the invisible boundary between us. “I mean you, Holly.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What happened to you that night? How did you just vanish? Where have you been all this time?”

  I tried to stand my ground and not back away from him, but when he came close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his blue eyes, my palms began to sweat and my heart rate picked up. A familiar spark of panic in my stomach drove me back a step, and I bumped into a plastic plant beside the doorway.

  “I don’t . . . wanna talk about it.” I stumbled around the plant, desperate to put a physical barrier between us.

  Jordan paused, suddenly seeming to realize there was far less than five feet between us. There was maybe a foot and some change, and half a plant. I was fighting the instinct to bolt.

  “Jordan,” Marx called out from the hallway; there was a low note of warning in his voice. “A word.” I hadn’t heard him come back inside.

  Jordan clenched his jaw and rubbed a hand over his short blond hair before gritting out, “Sure.” He cast me an apologetic glance before walking away to speak with Marx.

  My spine relaxed one vertebra at a time, and I gripped the mug of hot chocolate with both shaking hands, hoping it would somehow bring a sense of steadiness. It didn’t. I wished I could get a grip. Jordan had in no way threatened me, but at the same time, his proximity had very much felt like a threat.

  I retreated into the conference room. I didn’t want to hear their hushed, angry argument. I set my mug on the table and looked at the stack of folders in front of Jordan’s empty chair. I knew I probably shouldn’t snoop, and I tried not to—I did—but I was already picking my way through the pile before I thought better of it.

  I turned them as I read the labels. I came across one labeled “SUSPECT,” and I opened it cautiously. There was a copy of a hand-drawn sketch portraying a man’s face, and I turned the page as I studied it. There was something familiar about it. There were two more copies attached to it by a paper clip.

  I slid the tiny bundle of pictures aside, and my heart fluttered at the next picture. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recognized those bottomless dark eyes. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but the rest of the picture was wrong. I pulled out one of the copies and set it aside before moving on.

  The third picture in the pile depicted a grisly looking man with eyebrows as thick as caterpillars, but it was the crooked nose that caught my attention. Izzy had said the man who chased me out of the woods had a crooked nose, and this one felt familiar. I set a copy with my other picture.

  I worked my way through the folder. All the pictures were different, some of them shockingly so, but some of them contained bits and pieces of a puzzle my broken memory was trying to rebuild. I had to have seen him at some point, and the fear of that moment had seared his image into my memory . . . somewhere.

  I spread out my selected pictures and stared at them. Matching. I just had to match the pieces to the face in my mind—the one I couldn’t consciously remember. Ugh. I grabbed a pair of scissors from the cup in the center of the table and cut out the familiar parts of the faces before arranging them into some semblance of a head.

  I fitted the last piece into the collage: a mouth that resembled a bow, arched on the top and flat on the
bottom, like it was perpetually contorted in a grimace. I drew in a shaky breath and took a step back from the table as I gazed into the face of the man who had murdered my family.

  I saw him in my mind as he leaned out the window, his face caught in the pale blue glow of the security lights on the house. He’d seen me, and I had seen him before scrambling to my feet and darting into the trees. I had seen him more than once, I realized, as another memory of him lurking in the backyard at the crack of dawn materialized in my mind. It had only been a flicker before he realized I was watching and melted into the trees like a ghost.

  The door to the conference room opened slowly, and I lifted my eyes from my grisly collage to see Jordan and Marx coming into the room.

  “Holly, what are you doin’?” Marx asked as his attention lingered on the picture in the center of the table.

  “Building a puzzle,” I said evenly. I couldn’t draw a face to save my life—at least not one that remotely resembled a human being—but I excelled at matching things I’d seen before. “The shape of the face isn’t quite right. His jaw is . . . like one of those G.I. Joe dolls, not this rounded.”

  Marx picked up one of the original sketches and looked at it. “Where did these come from?”

  “Witnesses around town after the family was murdered,” Jordan answered, and he was looking at me in an odd way. “Strangers don’t go unnoticed in a small town, but none of the sketches produced any results. They were all so different that we couldn’t be sure which one, if any, were accurate.”

  Marx dropped the original sketch back on the table and looked at the one I had assembled. “This is the man you remember?”

  “Yep.” The mere sight of the image gave me goose bumps. “When I climbed out the window to escape, he leaned out of it and I saw him. I also saw him sometime before that . . . in the backyard.”

  Jordan looked completely stunned. “You never told me that.”

  “So he watched the house,” Marx said, as if to himself. “Specifically, the girls’ windows or the house in general?”