First Girl Gone: An absolutely addictive crime thriller with a twist (Detective Charlotte Winters Book 1)

by L. T. Vargus

  She adjusted her position, lowering her knees to rest on the concrete floor. The cement was like ice, but relief shrieked in her calves and ankles despite the cold. Euphoria expressed through a slowly dying soreness. The muscles giving thanks the only way they could.

  She resisted the overwhelming urge to peer out from behind the pane of mirrored glass that concealed her. It was the only advantage she had. The optical illusion that made this wall look complete. Made someone unable to see the narrow gap in the mirrors unless they knew exactly where to look.

  To peek her head out now would put her entire plan at risk. She couldn’t do it. Not even for a second.

  She would hear him coming. If she stayed quiet, stayed focused, she would hear. She had to.

  But Todd’s footsteps made no sound as he entered the corridor, creeping forward in slow motion like an assassin. His movements were smooth. Fluid. He was nothing more than a shadow.

  Instead, she heard his breath. Loud panting, or so it seemed in this moment. Was the volume actually there, though, or were her senses heightened? Sharpened like the ears of an animal. That survival instinct helping her, guiding her.

  She didn’t know. Maybe it didn’t matter.

  He sounded more like a beast than a man now, and the visual part of her brain could not link this sound to the meek man who’d hung back to thank her in her office, to the nonchalant stepfather bragging about his chicken parmesan in the dining room of his home. Whatever he’d become, he was unrecognizable to her now.

  She drew herself up, got her feet under her haunches again. Ready to strike.

  The breath grew louder. Drew closer. Closer and closer still.

  The reflection of the flashlight bouncing around came into view first, seemingly endless copies of itself rebounding from mirror to mirror, shooting everywhere like ricochets, shimmering a mess of partial beams back into her hidey hole, just for a second.

  Charlie pounced.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  She tackled him at the waist, driving her shoulder into his gut. He grunted as the full weight of her struck him.

  He stumbled backward, his shoes slipping beneath him as if he were on roller skates. She felt him struggling to remain upright, but she’d come on him too fast. Her momentum threw him off-balance, dragged him down, knocked him off his feet.

  The pistol popped and flared and bucked in his hand, the sound of the gunshot impossibly loud in the confined space. One of the mirrored panels exploded into a thousand shards, tumbling down around them.

  They hit the floor in one tangled heap with Todd taking the brunt. The impact tore the flashlight out of his hand, and the only source of light went spinning across the floor. Reeling.

  Fifty versions of him and her struggled in the cracked mirrors. Endless reflections. Everything seeming to twirl along with the flashlight’s movement.

  Two silhouettes locked in conflict. Wild things. Savage. Muscles trembling. Eyes flashing.

  And she couldn’t tell somehow where he ended and she began. Their shadows seemed to weave into one another, connected like tendrils of smoke. Writhing with liquid smoothness in the strobe effect of the spinning flashlight.

  She clawed at his hands, tried to peel his grip away from the gun.

  But he fought her, wrenching the pistol away, clutching it close.

  She took this chance to get her knees up onto his torso. Climbing him. Mounting him. Pinning most of his arm against his chest.

  He shifted beneath her, trying to free himself, but she had the advantage now. The high ground. She got a hold on his pinky finger and wrenched it back. He threw back his head, and she could just barely hear the howl over the ringing in her ears.

  Instead of loosening his grip on the gun, he changed tactics, swinging at her with his off hand, his free hand. He clubbed a fist at her head and neck. Landing blows over and over.

  But they were awkward jabs, slaps at best. He could get no leverage lying on his back with her weight holding him down.

  He wriggled again, bucking harder this time and throwing her off-balance just long enough that he was able to squeeze the trigger again.

  The gun blazed and popped again. Thrashed in their hands like a fish.

  More shards of mirror came tumbling down. Crashing like cymbals. Cracking and exploding all around them.

  She paused only long enough to confirm she hadn’t been hit, and then she was back on the attack. Clawing and scratching. Bringing her face in closer, which made his punching all the less effective.

  She went for the hand on the gun, teeth bared. Her incisors grazed the edge of his knuckles as he struggled to move away, but a moment later she found purchase in the meat along the outside edge of his palm.

  She bit down, sinking all those sharp points into his flesh. The skin resisted, holding tight. She pressed harder and the flesh suddenly gave, seeming to burst like a popping balloon, filling her mouth with the salty, metallic taste of blood.

  He screamed. Shrill and thin. His voice cracked as it burst from his throat.

  And he let go of the gun.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Charlie snatched up the weapon. Pulled it back behind her ear. Brought it down as hard as she could. Swinging it like a hammer.

  The butt of the Glock cracked as it collided with the space between his eyebrows. Hard. The back of his skull thumped into the concrete floor of the funhouse.

  The reverberation of the impact stung all the way up to her shoulder. A kind of recoil.

  All that force had to go somewhere. Some of it traveled up her arm. Jostled her joints as though trying to separate them from their sockets.

  Thankfully, his face took the brunt of it.

  After the briefest hesitation, a gash split his forehead open red, seeming to appear there in slow motion. Blood seeping out of the crease.

  His eyes drifted. Stared out at nothing in particular. Something dim in them already.

  But he was still conscious, at least part of the way. She could see it when his eyelids twitched.

  She swung again. Again. Again.

  Now she brought the gun all the way up over her head. Chopping down as though wielding an axe. His head just a chunk of wood in need of splitting.

  Hatred expelled itself in each swing of the weapon. All her rage finding an outlet at last. A way out. Catharsis.

  For Amber. For Kara. For Allie.

  The cracks turned to wet slaps as the blood spread over his skin. Drained down over the eyes, spilling over the cheekbones. Bathtub sounds ringing out, echoing off the mirrors, off the concrete floor.

  She caught one of the reflections of herself as she hoisted the gun over her head again. Froze with the weapon at the apex. Could faintly see the red spattered over her face.

  From there, it was as though she took a step back, seeing all of the reflections instead of just one. All those versions of herself poised to bludgeon, fixing to kill. Warped versions of herself in all those cracked funhouse mirrors. Stretched. Widened. Bent.

  Her lungs swelled as she sucked in a big breath. And she stopped herself. Let her arms go slack.

  Her hands fell into her lap, folded over one another, the gun still clasped loosely in her fingers.

  She wasn’t a killer. No matter what happened, she wasn’t a killer.

  Todd was out. Unconscious. Eyes closed. Face all soupy with red. But still breathing.

  She prodded him with the gun. Jamming the barrel into his neck a few times. Just to make sure he wasn’t faking.

  Then she moved, shuffled her weight off of his body. Knelt next to him.

  He had a backpack looped around one shoulder. She stripped it from his limp noodle arm. Unzipped it. Peeled open the top like a mouth.

  A nervous giggle spluttered out of her lips then. Involuntary. She just couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  She shifted the bulk of the bag, angled the open flaps toward the glow of the flashlight. The objects inside slid, jostled, toppled over each other. Everything gl
ittered faintly when the light touched it.

  The collection of tools and supplies inside the bag could only be described as an anal-retentive kill kit—almost like Todd had been planning to go to serial killer summer camp.

  Zip ties. Rope. Cuffs. A hunting knife. Glow sticks. Beef jerky.

  Charlie cut her hands free with the blade, the knife’s tip disappearing in the tiny gap between her wrists and re-emerging as it sliced through the thin band of plastic.

  She rubbed at the red welts in her skin, the grooved places where the zip tie had pinched. Neat lines etched into her flesh.

  Then she bound Todd at the hands and feet. Making sure his zip ties were nice and tight just like hers had been.

  She stood over him then. Considered what she saw.

  His face looked strange. Bloated and tired and a little sad, she thought. In the cold, the blood had already begun to congeal there in the folds separating his cheeks from his nose. Like ketchup going gummy and then crusty on the edge of the plate.

  He’d probably be out a while after the beating she’d doled out. He’d have a nice headache too, but… something still bothered her.

  It was the glass. All the broken shards of mirror. He could use those to cut his ties, maybe. Probably. If he tried hard enough, and he would.

  She dug back in the bag. Got out the handcuffs.

  Grasping him by the ankles, she dragged him back to the entrance of the Hall of Mirrors. Laid him out in that strangely tapering hallway. Slapped one side of the handcuffs around his wrist and the other around a metal handrail mounted to the wall.

  There. Better.

  The combination of zip ties and cuffs held both of his arms up over his head awkwardly. Made him look like someone in traction in a hospital, hands elevated due to some injury.

  She smiled at that image. Her eyes lingered on the plastic bands pinching deeply into his flesh like a length of twine cutting into a pork loin, the meat bulging around them.

  It was almost too bad, Charlie thought. Part of her wanted to watch him wriggle through all that broken glass like a worm, desperate to get a hold of one of the shards to cut himself free.

  Now she dug his car keys out of his jacket pocket. Clenched them in her fist.

  She zipped up the bag. Slung it over her shoulder. Maybe the serial killer summer camp kit would come in handy for her next task.

  Because now she had to find the girl.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Charlie stumbled down the steps of the funhouse onto the asphalt outside. She was too busy staring at the phone in her hand. Todd’s phone.

  She’d unlocked it by jamming his thumb to the screen.

  Now the phone glowed in her hand, shining back at the stars above. Her fingers traced over the smooth surface. Dialing.

  She brought the phone to her ear. Listened to the ringing.

  Something about this felt like an out-of-body experience after the fight. Like it was impossible that she could be doing something so mundane as making a phone call after something like that. Like life should stop or change after the most dramatic moments. It couldn’t just go back to anything resembling normal, could it?

  Zoe answered. And Charlie got so excited she barked out a cough instead of words. She had to swallow before she could spit it out, but when the words finally came, they sounded normal. Too normal. Detached. Calm. Almost pleasant.

  “Zoe. It’s Charlie.”

  Charlie heard a faint click on the other line. For a second she thought Zoe couldn’t hear her and had hung up. The thought brought a tinge of fear, of being forgotten here, lost, unable to make her way back to society somehow. A surge of that icy adrenaline feeling stung her hands.

  But then Zoe did speak, urgency in her voice.

  “Charlie, Jesus Christ! Where are you? Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. I’m at Poseidon’s Kingdom. Standing outside the funhouse right now.”

  This time Zoe’s words came out in a rush. “I don’t know what happened, Charlie. I waited, like you said, and then another car came around the park, so I figured I should keep an eye on it. By the time I went in after you, you were gone. I couldn’t find you, so I called in a team to search the park, but there was nothing there.”

  “Zoe. Stop,” Charlie interrupted. “Ritter is the killer. Todd Ritter. I’ve got him detained here. Cuffed to a safety railing inside the funhouse. Face got busted up pretty good, too.”

  “Ritter,” Zoe said, and Charlie could almost hear her brain trying to catch up. “Amber’s stepfather?”

  “Right. Just send a team out here to get him, OK? We’ll figure out the rest later.”

  Zoe answered this, her voice shaky, but Charlie could only hear the first syllable before her finger swiped left and ended the call. It left a smudge of blood on the screen.

  Charlie had an idea of what to do next, where to look. And it wouldn’t wait.

  Chapter Ninety

  Charlie rushed back through the darkness, retracing her steps from earlier in the night. She ducked back through the slit in the fence, crossed that frozen pond of a parking lot.

  Then she began mounting the hill in reverse. Slipping toward the top, slowing and kicking up snow just like last time. But then she was over it, building speed once again, gliding back the way she’d come.

  Following the gashed tracks in the snow made the whole thing easier than her first go round with this terrain—that and the fact that she had Todd’s flashlight now. Her hands not being bound by the zip tie was a nice bonus.

  She pictured Todd as she’d last seen him. The blood-smeared face. The limp arms strung up above his sprawled form, linked to the rail by the cuffs.

  And she remembered bludgeoning him, red spatter flying off of him with every stroke, the bloody gun still tucked in her belt even now. She gritted her teeth as she remembered, the savage part of her wanting to go back and finish the job.

  But no. It was better this way. Better for her soul, she thought. And maybe better that he suffer a long while in prison. No parole. Death could be considered a mercy compared to that.

  The light bounced along in front of her. Piercing all the dark it touched. Vanquishing the gloom one little slice at a time. The glow reflected off the branches, icy crystals sparkling everywhere.

  Eventually she could see the hulking form of Todd’s vehicle ahead. A dark hunk of twisted metal cast in silhouette, its front end bent impossibly around the trunk of the tree like some sort of modern sculpture.

  She raced up to the vehicle. Opened the door. Slid the keys into the ignition.

  The dome light came on, and she was thankful for that. The battery was still getting juice to the thing.

  She tapped the screen in the center of the dashboard. Fingers flicking and pressing buttons. She picked her way to the GPS history. Scrolled through it. Skimming. Skimming.

  There. A frequently visited location called “Ritter Custom Installations WH.” Charlie thought WH likely stood for warehouse. A storage building for Todd’s dock installation business. He’d been out there almost every day until two days ago, sometimes more than once a day.

  She selected it. Eyeballed the little map the GPS screen kicked out. It was less than a mile, in a row of old industrial buildings that butted up to the back of the amusement park. Close enough to reach on foot.

  A muffled noise caught her attention. The faintest thump.

  She stopped. Held her breath. Listened.

  Nothing.

  Just her imagination, she thought.

  She spotted Todd’s keys nestled in one of the cupholders in the center console. Her fingers snaked into the opening and snatched the keychain. It was heavy, weighed down with over a dozen different keys.

  Charlie took a breath and rushed into the darkness once more.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Charlie’s heart beat faster as she entered the narrow hall inside the warehouse, climbed down a few steps, and found another locked steel door. Heavy. Exterior quality.

 
This would be it. It had to be it.

  She lifted the keys, hands and arms trembling badly now. The keys were labeled in true Todd Ritter style, but she had yet to figure out his code. There was a key named “Warehouse” but the one that actually opened the door out front had been called “Side door.” It took her shaking fingers a couple of tries to pick out one of the keys and start the process of trial and error.

  She listened as she worked, but she didn’t hear anything inside. No voices. No stirring. Nothing at all.

  And that silence dug at her as the seconds passed. Deeper and deeper.

  What if… but no. Don’t think now. Just do.

  On her thirteenth try of the mess of keys on Todd’s keychain, the deadbolt snicked out of the way. Unlocked.

  She half-noticed that this key was labeled “Storage.”

  All of life snapped into slow motion again. Slower than the fight with Todd, she thought. Slower, even, than Allie’s funeral.

  She could hear her pulse in her neck. Wet knocking that seemed to echo in her ears.

  Charlie shoved the big steel door. It scraped out of the frame, hinges squealing in the quiet. The keys jangled where they still hung from the deadbolt.

  She watched as the door opened in increments. A wedge of pale light crawled over the cement floor of the room beyond, the glow from the floodlights outside spilling in from the glass blocks in the hall.

  She swallowed. Felt a lump shift in her throat. Everything in her neck felt tight and dry.

  The silence bloomed. Spreading. Growing. A deadness in the room before her. Her skin contracted as she stared into the dark there. Tighter across her chest, along her back.

  Too quiet. It was too damn quiet in here.