Elena stretched, leaning against the rough bark of the tree, clutching the brush end of a broom in her hands. They’d already checked five nests, and her arm was sore from lifting it over her head.
So close. Just a little more.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this one,” Sebastian said from the bottom of the ladder.
“Shush! I’ve almost got it. Get ready.”
She tapped the bundle of sticks again. It shifted, then fell. She lowered her aching arm and craned her neck over the side of the ladder. The nest disintegrated as it fell, but all the pieces caught in the sheet they had strung up like a hammock between the neighboring trees.
As she clambered down the ladder, Sebastian started sifting through the debris.
“Well?” she asked. “Did we get it?”
He grinned and held out his palm. Sitting on it was a black square of plastic.
Finally, we can figure this out.
She picked up the micro-SD card with one hand and touched the back of her head with another.
“Come on,” Sebastian said, tugging her arm. “I want to know what’s on that thing.”
She forced a smile, trying not to let him see how much her heart ached.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
As they drove, the dread in her heart grew. Once they solved the case, there would be nothing stopping her from leaving. For a fleeting moment, she considered opening her window and chucking the tiny piece of plastic. But that wouldn’t change anything. There was still a killer out there. She would only be delaying the inevitable.
So, she let Sebastian take the lead, holding his hand tightly in the elevator back up to his condo and then nodding and smiling as he dug through a pile of electronics for an adapter that would let him connect the card to his computer.
Then it was time, and when they finally saw what was on the card, she groaned. “That’s it? Just one file?”
“Come on, Chloe,” Sebastian whispered before double-clicking on Research.docx.
The screen loaded, revealing the file contained a single column of a dozen names.
And that was it.
“I don’t understand,” Sebastian said. “How does this help us?”
Everything they’d been through, all for a list of names.
Elena pulled her shirt away from her chest and looked down at the slitted snout of Chloe’s boa.
Why did you hide this for us? Who are these people?
The boa did not respond.
“It must mean something,” Sebastian said in a pained voice. “Let’s look them up. Internet searches. Maybe it’s a short list of suspects.” Desperation lined his face. “That’s better, right? Only a dozen people to investigate?”
She gulped. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
They made themselves comfortable in the living room and started researching. It didn’t take long to find the connection between the names on the list.
“Listen to this,” Elena said. “A highway patrol found Jordan Cooper, a student at the University of Minnesota, dead this morning alongside Highway 10. She was twenty-six years old and had been missing for two weeks. Jordan was traveling with a friend, Cara Rodriguez, who is still missing. Cara’s brother, Julian, is also missing. Sources say Jordan’s death is being treated as unexplained, and the investigation is ongoing.”
She scrolled down the page to a photo of a young woman with dark hair and striking green eyes.
She looks just like Chloe.
“One of his victims,” Sebastian said. “It has to be. Listen to this. I’ve got another one. Family members discovered Tanya Castle dead this morning just outside St. Cloud near Highway 10. Tanya, a sixteen-year-old, had left home two weeks prior and may have been hitchhiking across Minnesota. A representative from the St. Cloud police department reports that the investigation is ongoing.”
Over the next hour, they learned that across the country, thousands of people disappeared every day. The missing often turned up the same day or week, misunderstandings between friends, teenage runaways, kids who wandered too far from their parents. A minority remained missing. Their cases stayed open for decades, their faces printed on billboards and milk cartons, pictures aged to represent the passage of time. Others were less lucky, kidnapped by friends or relatives, unaware anyone had been looking for them.
“Highway 10. That’s the connection.” Sebastian shuddered. “That’s where the killer is operating. He’s picking up hitchhikers. He must be a trucker or someone who is on the road a lot.”
Elena leaned back. “There’s nothing here to tell us who the killer is.” Relief warred with anger in her chest, and she sided with anger. “We’re no closer to an answer than we were before. Dammit, Chloe!”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Sebastian said. He slid across the couch. “We’ll figure this out. I told you, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He wrapped his arms around her, and she melted into his embrace. He smelled earthy, like a campfire. Except the smoky scent was stronger than anything else, and as she breathed again, it tangled in her lungs and made her cough.
“What is that?” she asked, between coughing fits.
His arms tightened around her. “I think the building is on fire.”
****
Smoke filled the room with impossible speed until Elena couldn’t see a hand in front of her face.
They stumbled through the apartment, her hand clutching a belt loop on Sebastian’s jeans. When they arrived at the front door, he rattled the door handle, then swore.
“It’s jammed,” he said. “Get back. I’ll try to open it.”
She shuffled away and heard the loud bang of Sebastian ramming his shoulder against the door twice before a coughing spasm sent him to his knees.
“It’s no use,” he said, finally. “Get down before you breathe in more smoke.”
Remembering her fire lessons from childhood, she got as low as she could, sliding her stomach on the floor and crawling forward along the carpet, coughing and squinting against the fumes. She kept one hand on Sebastian’s boot, but with every minute, it was harder to see. She paused for a moment to rub her eyes, and he was gone.
“Sebastian!”
Her words were swallowed up by the crackling fire.
She grasped around, hoping she’d feel his hand on her arm or hear his voice. An image of him laying face down tormented her mind and brought tears to her eyes.
I can’t lose him.
She wouldn’t leave, not without making sure he was safe.
A vague shadow appeared in front of her, and she made for it, hoping it was him. Her fingers closed on an empty sleeve. It wasn’t Sebastian, but his jacket. Her heart pounded with the effort of pulling air into her lungs. A crash to the right shocked her back into movement, and she scrambled away from the noise.
“Sebastian!” she screamed. The hot air scorched her throat.
“Elena?” His voice was a million miles away. “Where are you?”
The temperature continued to rise, but her skin wasn’t hot. It was cold and clammy, like she was feverish. Her hand smacked something hard, the smooth edge of a door frame. She took a moment to rest, pulling in great gasps of air. She’d barely moved, and yet her muscles trembled as if she’d run a marathon.
Low oxygen.
The bathroom had a window to a fire escape, safety, freedom. She swayed to her feet. Once she judged it safe, she touched the door, finding it warm but not hot. She wrapped her hand in her shirt and pulled it open, holding her face away as a rush of air entered the hallway. A roar of sound followed, and a blast of heat seared her back, making her cry out.
“Elena!”
Sebastian’s voice sent her heart soaring.
Hands grasped her shoulders.
“Sebastian?”
The hands shoved her, sending her flailing through the doorway. She turned, and the door slammed inches from her nose.
Under her feet was not the slick surface of tile but more carpet. She reached forward, and her fingers bumped against a solid wall.
“No, no, please, no!” Her arms splayed in all directions as she searched for some evidence to deny her growing suspicion.
Walls to the left and right within arm's length. She was not in the bathroom but in the hallway closet.
“No!”
She tried for the knob, but the door wouldn’t budge. It was like something heavy was leaning against it from the other side, the same way the front door had been stuck. She took a step back and rammed her shoulder against the wood again and again until she was one large bruise. She slid down the door and wrapped her arms around her knees.
This is it. This is how I die.
She wailed. It was all her singed throat could manage. Her back ached, and she could barely move the fingers of her right hand.
A rich, coppery smell cut through the smoke, pulling her into a memory.
Her mother plunged the knife into Edward’s chest, again and again, splattering blood over the walls. Edward’s head lolled to the side, and his eyes stared at her, unfocused.
“Mom, stop!” she sobbed. She rushed over to her mother’s side and tried to pull her away, but her arm kept moving, up and down with that awful sucking sound.
She lowered her hands to the carpet. A sticky substance adhered to her fingers. She clambered away. Blood oozed from beneath the door and formed a puddle.
She turned and assaulted the wall, kicking and clawing, anything to escape the room and the ever-growing puddle of blood. She stared, horrified, at the lines of scarlet her bloody fingers had made on the wall.
She calmed her racing heart and took another look around. The blood had vanished.
It’s not real.
Her searching fingers found a rod a foot above her head. Perfect. She shoved the few coats hanging from the rod to the floor, then yanked at it. Unfortunately for her, it had been screwed into the wall on both sides. She wiggled the metal back and forth until, finally, the screws creaked and turned. This triggered another frenzy until the rod finally broke away from the wall. The cool metal was firm and real in her grasp. She turned around. A light flickered from the crack between the door and wall. She placed one end of the rod in the gap and pulled, using the doorframe as a pivot point. The door moved. She pulled until her arms twitched and her lungs burned, until at last, there was enough room to squeeze through.
She stumbled forward blindly, screaming Sebastian’s name between fits of coughing. Then hands grasped at her arms. She flailed, batting at her assailant.
“Stop, it’s me.”
It was too smoky to make out his expression, but his arms curled around her back. She shoved her head into his shoulder and sobbed. “Oh, God! I thought I’d lost you!”
“We have to get out of here,” he said. “It’s not just the fire. Someone tried to strangle me. I got free but lost them in the smoke.”
She clung to his hand as he led them through a doorway. The change in texture beneath her feet confirmed they’d made it to the bathroom. Sebastian slammed the door behind them, and Elena soaked a towel in water from the running tap and then shoved it against the space where the door met the floor. Then she hit the switch to turn on the fan, although there wasn’t much smoke in the bathroom.
That’ll give us a few minutes.
Then they ran to the window and, after some grunting and effort, shoved it open. The rush of cool air on her face made her sob with relief. Fur brushed her fingers, and the cats squeezed past them, their frantic meowing cutting through the crackle of the fire. They descended the steps in a flash of orange and black, their nails making a tinkling sound against the metal grating.
“You got the cats,” she rasped, her voice still rough.
“They’re family,” he replied.
Then the world exploded.