White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller)

by Danielle Girard

  Eyes closed, he raised his face to the dark sky and let the snow fall on his skin. What the hell was happening? The last time he’d seen Lily Baker . . . no, that wasn’t the last time. He’d seen her recently, around town. But he hadn’t talked to her. Not since the night she’d been taken. How many times the sight of her in the aisles of the grocery store had brought him back to that time. But she’d ignored him, so he’d ignored her, too.

  He wiped the melted snow from his face. They had been best friends once, in middle school, tossed together in a church youth group of all places.

  Iver’s father had believed that attending church youth group kept kids out of trouble, which meant Iver’s twice-a-week attendance was nonnegotiable. Mike had come a time or two and had grown bored. Mike’s parents had enforced no such rules. Lily’s mother had died by that time, and they’d never talked about why she came. It was possible that her father, like his, had required attendance. It was equally possible that she came of her own volition, because things at home were more miserable than at youth group.

  Iver and Lily found each other by process of elimination. Most of the group were what he and Lily called Jesus freaks, kids from very religious families. Hagen had a strong Lutheran foundation. Lily’s father had been raised religious, but he’d let it go—in hindsight, he’d let most things go—after Lily’s mother had died. And Iver, for his part, wasn’t sure how he felt about God back then. He was less sure now.

  Every Wednesday night, every Sunday morning, they were inside that church building for youth group. Singing, reading scripture, and listening to one of the two assistant pastors on a shifting schedule. Iver and Lily spent much of that time passing notes, written on torn bits of napkin or the tissue paper from the doughnut box. Occasionally, when they were stuck in the chapel, whole conversations could be had on one of the church offering envelopes—first the outside, then ripping it open and writing on the inside as well.

  And then the friendship spilled over to other days as well. They did homework together and watched television—both had an affinity for anything superhero. And then there was that Wednesday night when they went from church to his house to watch one episode of Smallville before she had to get home. He would have happily spent time at her place, but she preferred his. Her father was usually drunk, and the house had the strange smell of unwashed clothes and burning plastic. And Iver’s mother had taken a liking to her as well, so that was where they usually ended up.

  The last night he saw her before she disappeared, he gathered all his courage. Focused only on Lily, he barely paid attention to the TV. Instead, he was busy gearing himself up to kiss her. With hindsight, he had realized that his timing couldn’t have been worse, as Lana Lang and Clark Kent were splitting up for the last time. Looking back, what he’d taken for rejection had likely just been surprise. But when she asked him what he was doing, he was embarrassed. Humiliated.

  And she told him she wanted to go home.

  And he told her she should go.

  She didn’t ask him to walk her.

  So he didn’t offer.

  And that was the last time he saw her for sixteen months. Somewhere between his house and her own, on the six-minute walk they’d done hundreds of times, she had been kidnapped. When she’d returned to Hagen, he’d gone to see her. He had wanted to apologize, to be sure she was okay.

  But her father had never let him inside the door.

  Only years later did Iver recognize that Mr. Baker had surely been blaming himself more than anyone else. But Iver couldn’t shake it. Although Iver had been a fourteen-year-old boy, he should have walked Lily home that night. He’d held on to that guilt for a long time, let it lead him to a dark place. A place where Debbie had found him and eventually led him out.

  The next thing he’d heard, Lily Baker was living in Arizona, and the first thing he’d felt was relief.

  “Iver?” Sullivan shouted out into the night. “We’ve got some questions for you.”

  Iver headed back inside. As he rounded the house, he saw the side gate was open. He went to close it and noticed footprints on the walkway beyond the fence. They were large and fresh, not yet covered by the falling snow. “Sullivan!” Iver shouted.

  Larry Sullivan appeared at the back door. “What?”

  “Did someone go out to the street this way?”

  “What?”

  “There are footprints here, leading from the house to the street.”

  Sullivan walked outside and stared at the tracks in the snow. He said nothing for a minute, then eyed Iver. “You think some fake boot prints are enough to convince me that you didn’t just beat the shit out of her?”

  “Larry, those aren’t my tracks.” Iver lifted one foot to show the tread of his sneaker. “Those are boots.”

  Sullivan surveyed the back of the house like maybe Iver had a pair of boots hiding somewhere.

  “Someone else was here,” Iver said.

  “Maybe it was your neighbor, the one who called it in.”

  “Who called?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We can find out from Dispatch.” With that, Sullivan returned to the house, and Iver took another minute to stare at the tracks in the snow. Was he foolish to think maybe someone else had been in his house? That maybe he wasn’t the one who had hurt Lily Baker?

  When he walked back inside, Sullivan stood with his hands on his hips while the other officer sat beside Lily Baker on his living room couch. The other officer looked a little like another kid he’d gone to school with, maybe a younger brother. The officer glanced at Iver and looked away. Yeah. Someone’s younger brother. That was Hagen. Iver ran a hand over his face. Why the hell was he still in this town?

  Sullivan eyed him and then turned back to Lily. “Ms. Baker, you sure you don’t want to press charges?” He motioned to his face. “Looks like he beat you up pretty good.”

  “I didn’t—” Iver snapped his mouth closed. There was no use fighting with Sullivan. Plus, Sullivan was calling it like he saw it. And there was a chance Sullivan was right. Adrenaline, the sound of Cal’s barking, the alcohol. Iver had come sprinting into the house ready to attack. But the marks on her neck. Christ, had he really done that?

  She shook her head again, her gaze flitting to Iver and then away again. “I had a bike accident.”

  “A bike accident?” Sullivan asked, clearly doubting the story.

  “I’m not pressing charges,” Lily repeated.

  Sullivan moved back toward Iver. “That your gun?”

  Iver’s gaze went to the place Sullivan pointed. A pistol on the ground. “No. I don’t own any handguns.”

  Sullivan looked at Lily Baker. “Is it yours, then?”

  She hesitated. Her eyes met his, and he read something there. Only he didn’t know what it was. There had been a time when he’d thought he could read her thoughts clearly. But that was a long time ago.

  “You can go, Larry,” Iver said, looking away from Lily. “We’re fine here.”

  “What about the gun?”

  “Take it. Pull prints off it. Maybe you’ll figure out who attacked her.” It felt like bluster, but it made him feel better to say it, to put another sliver of possibility out into the universe, another chance that he wasn’t guilty of beating up a woman who had once been his dear friend. Of beating up any woman. Again, he added.

  Sullivan collected the gun with a handkerchief while the other officer went to collect an evidence bag. Once the gun was bagged, Sullivan started for the door. He paused at the threshold and turned back, eyes on Lily. “We’ve got to call it in, so we’ll be outside for a bit if you change your mind.”

  Iver trailed behind them and bolted the front door. When he turned back around, Lily had pulled a blanket over her shoulders.

  “I remember you,” she said.

  He stopped moving.

  “I remember that night when—” She shook her head. “We had a fight. The night I walked home from your house.” She nodded slowly, her gaze dist
ant. “There was a van,” she said, as though realizing it for the first time.

  Iver moved forward slowly. “Lily?”

  “She was crying in the back.”

  He shook his head. “Who was crying?”

  “The girl in the van.”

  He tried to follow what she was saying. “What van?”

  Tears flooded her eyelids and trailed down her face, but Iver didn’t move. Her words made him afraid to move. None of this made sense. Coming home to Cal’s barking, the open door, finding her, taking her down. But she’d slammed him into a wall. He’d felt her power. Hadn’t he?

  “Lily?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  Lily turned to her purse and dug inside until she pulled out a pink wallet. He still had no idea what she was doing. She removed a photograph, printed on plain paper and folded in half, and held it out to him.

  He took it and stared down at the faces. One was clearly Lily, thinner than he’d ever seen her and younger. It had been taken some time after she’d escaped, he guessed. But it was the face beside hers that caught his attention. “Who is this?”

  “Abby,” she said. “I think. She’s my sister.”

  He didn’t answer. Lily didn’t have a sister. They were both only children. Twenty-four hours ago, he would never have recognized the woman in the photo. But he knew her now. Had seen her on Sheriff Davis’s phone that morning.

  The woman in the photo with Lily was the dead woman in the dumpster.

  CHAPTER 19

  LILY

  The way Iver stared at that picture told Lily he did know Abby. Where was she now? The look on Iver’s face made Lily terrified to ask him. She touched her neck, fingered the tender flesh to assess the damage. Someone had attacked her, right here in Iver’s house. She tried to recollect the details of her attacker. The jolt of electricity, the strange texture under her fingers, the smell of cigarette smoke. Tim Bailey had smelled like smoke, but there was something else to the smell. When she’d started to black out, an image had come to her. Blonde hair splayed across the snow, a beautiful face, lifeless. She pressed her hands to her throat and looked up to see Iver staring at her.

  He ran a hand across his mouth, blinking hard. “Did I do that?”

  She looked down.

  “Your neck,” he said. “It’s . . .”

  She fingered the skin. It felt hot to the touch, welts like ridges.

  Iver set the photograph on the table and sank into a chair across from her before dropping his face in his hands. “Christ. What happened?”

  She tried to remember the details. “I read the sign on the door and came in. I was in the bathroom when the lights went out. The dog started barking, so I came out, and he grabbed me . . .”

  “Who?” Iver’s eyes were wide with fear and something else. Hope? “I swear, I don’t remember touching your neck. I heard Cal barking and ran up the street. The house was dark, and I saw a figure.” He looked at her. “You, under that blanket,” he said. “Only you seemed bigger, and I ran toward you.”

  “It wasn’t you. That man had a Taser. He smelled like cigarettes and . . .” She couldn’t identify that other smell.

  Iver stared at his hands. “I’m so sorry, Lily.”

  She watched him, sensing that the apology was bigger than this night. But she shook her head, too many thoughts winging through her mind. “You interrupted him,” she said softly. “You saved me.”

  His gaze darted up to meet hers, scanning her face for signs of a lie. She could read how much he wanted it to be true. But then he broke eye contact and stood, looking around the room. “Who would have been here?”

  She shook her head, unable to find a way to tell him all that had happened, all she had discovered about herself. She started to shiver, huddling in the blanket.

  Iver rose from the chair and disappeared into the kitchen while she remained on the couch. What now? She had to go home, face her house, her life.

  She’d pushed the blanket off, preparing to stand, when he returned with two mugs. He set one down in front of his chair and carried the other to her. He set it on the table and wrapped the blanket back across her shoulders where she sat on the living room couch. The house wasn’t particularly cold, but she couldn’t stop shivering. He squatted in front of her and offered the steaming liquid. She stared at his face, matching his features to the image on the front-hall table. He had nice hazel eyes and brown hair that, despite its buzz cut, seemed to have a mind of its own. When their gazes met, his smile was tentative, not quite reaching his eyes.

  “What is happening?” he whispered.

  She shook her head, unable to answer.

  He lifted the mug again. “It’s peppermint tea.”

  She let him put it into her hands, but her fingers trembled, hot liquid sloshing over the white ceramic edge, and he took it back. She gripped her hands together. She didn’t know who she was. A man had attacked her. What was happening to her?

  Her stomach heaved, and she stood, dropping the blanket from her shoulders. Pain seared through her ankle as she half hobbled, half ran to the bathroom. She vomited into the toilet, a thin stream of water and bile. When had she last eaten? More bile released in a second wave, and she waited for another.

  When it didn’t come, she wiped her mouth with toilet paper and flushed without moving from the toilet.

  Instead, she laid her head on the arm that rested on the toilet seat, too ill to consider how dirty it might be. She deserved to be there, face in the toilet. She squeezed her eyes closed and swallowed through the tenderness in her throat.

  The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

  The door creaked open, and from the corner of her eye, she saw the dog nudge his way in. He approached her, sniffing, and after a short time, he settled onto the floor beside her.

  She heard the water running in the sink, and Iver handed her a wet washcloth. “Thanks,” she whispered, pressing it to her mouth. Then she lowered her head again and closed her eyes. She could sleep right there.

  Iver removed the washcloth from her hand and wiped the edge of her face. “Feel better?”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to lift her head. But that meant facing what was happening, and it was so much easier just to rest there.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head.

  “I know,” she whispered. “You didn’t hurt me, Iver.”

  He gave her a tight smile. “But you don’t know that, not really.”

  “It feels like it’s all I know,” she told him. She thought of Tim Bailey, but he had smelled of Old Spice cologne and stale breath. Her attacker had smelled of something else, earthier. It was some sort of spice. What was it? Iver continued to stare at her, so she explained being in the bathroom, the lights, Cal’s barking. When she’d finished, they were both quiet for a few minutes. It felt comfortable, safe.

  “Why did you come here?” he asked.

  A sound escaped her mouth without consent. A gasp, pitched high at the end. She lowered her face, pressed her palms to the heat in her cheeks.

  “I mean, it’s good to see you,” he said quickly, “but it’s unexpected. Which I guess is why I might’ve—” Again, he stopped talking.

  She looked up. “The note. The one on the door.”

  From his expression, she understood the note was not for her.

  She was not supposed to be here. Of course she wasn’t. “I found your address in my Bible.”

  “Your Bible?”

  She found her bag in the hallway, just outside the bathroom. Retrieving the Bible from inside, she handed it to him.

  “I can’t believe you still have this,” he whispered, sitting back on his heels as he turned the book in his hands.

  The Bible, the writing. It was a young person’s writing, she realized now. “It’s old.”

  Nodding, he handed the
book back to her. “From before you were—” He halted, clenching his fists against his thighs as though fighting back anger.

  “Before I was—”

  “We were in the eighth grade,” he said. “Confirmation class.”

  “Eighth grade.” She squeezed her eyes closed. Half a lifetime ago. “We aren’t friends now.”

  “Of course we are,” he said, though the awkward tone of his voice revealed the lie.

  “And my sister?”

  Iver watched her before slowly shaking his head. “You’re an only child. We both are.” He touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

  Where did she go from here? What was left? Her home. She could go there, find a key. There would be answers. She thought about the woman in the picture, the attack, the gun. Her memory of a man in a lake of blood. She could empty her bank accounts and run. Did she have savings? She was a woman who emptied an unconscious man’s wallet and dated a married man with a small child. She put her face in her hands and squeezed her temples.

  “Lily, tell me what’s going on.”

  She stood and walked delicately to the sink. Running the water, she washed her face and drank from the faucet. Her stomach had settled. The discomfort now was in her chest, her neck. She wiped her hands on the towel, leaving the water on her face. “Thank you for helping me.” She turned to the door, but Iver caught her hand, put the toilet lid down, and motioned for her to sit.

  “You need to tell me what’s going on, Lily.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked in an effort to clear her vision. “When was the last time I saw you?”

  Iver touched her arm. “What do you mean?”

  “I—” She closed her mouth and sat down on the toilet seat, defeated.

  “Lily, you’re scaring me, and it’s already been a scary day.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Scary how?”

  “You first,” he said.