Page 26

M

y breath caught.

This was it.

What are you waiting for? I said move!

I stumbled forward a few steps, as if I’d been pushed, but it was exactly the urge I needed to break into action.

The guard was sleeping through the silent alarm, and I couldn’t be more thankful that it was only visual to not rile up the juveniles inside.

The guard was out , snoring with drool down one side of his cheek.

My feet chilled to the bone, crossing the cold marble floor, slapping a pattern with the growing urgency that lit a fire under me.

Up ahead, a shimmery form materialized into view next to the glass front doors.

It was Ben.

I didn’t even care anymore if I was going crazy.

My mind screamed that I needed to get out of here, and if Ben’s presence was what helped my subconscious cope, then far be it from me to complain.

Just like in my mindscape, as I approached, his presence washed over me with cool, calming relief—like Dad’s minty muscle cream he used occasionally when he overdid it working on motors and needed to relax his back.

“Keep going, Willa,” Ben ordered as the electronic lock beside the entrance flashed green. “Head for the woods and don’t look back.”

I pushed the glass door open, following his advice not to check if the commotion had been enough to coax the guard from his slumber.

Outside, the cool summer night greeted me, a welcome sight after being under the spotlight of the bright lights inside. Was it always this dark outside the center?

Rough asphalt and loose gravel bit into my feet as I made a break for the tree line to my left.

About halfway there, the visual alarm decided the urgency of a missing patient called for an audial accompaniment. A siren wailed to join the flashing red lights that intermittently bathed the approaching forest in an eerie, demonic glow.

It felt like escaping the pan and jumping into the fire.

“You’re almost there,” Ben whispered, so I kept to my course, crashing through the underbrush and into the dark. My arms took the brunt of the slicing branches as I continued blindly, desperate to put as much distance between me and my would-be killer as possible. How ironic was it that I’d first met Ben in a forest at night, and now we were back here?

Ben’s voice continued to whisper encouragements and cautions. One time, I about ran right off the edge of a drop-off into a ravine, but he stopped me and had me turn and scramble down a gentler slope instead.

At some point, his voice trailed off, but I missed that fact over the deafening pound of my heartbeat in my ears.

It wasn’t until I couldn’t physically go any farther that I collapsed against the trunk of a large tree, tears or blood rolling down my cheeks in cool tracks that the gentle breeze lit up like liquid ice.

“I can’t,” I rasped, “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Ben’s calm encouragement had disappeared, and I was alone out here in the middle of the woods.

In fact, I had given so much of my energy that my eyelids refused to stay open. I found myself slipping into blissful darkness, unaware of the world around me.

Soft gray light of early dawn bathed the forest when my eyelids reopened, and I had to wonder if I’d landed in the dreamscape of my mind. Except it’d always presented as a barren landscape, and I’d certainly never felt as cold there as I did now, covered in morning dew that’d seeped through the thin, tattered hospital gown and instilled a chill so deep that it lingered in my bones.

The heavy pull of my numb limbs told me I was in the land of the living, as did the branches and leaves digging into my back. When I moved, every muscle twinged with sharp pain. I’d overtaxed every single one of them and had fallen straight to sleep.

“Ow, ow, ow,” I croaked, my voice weak and throat inflamed.

Pushing myself up proved impossible. My arms trembled so badly that I collapsed against the cradle of the tree trunk three times before my sails lost wind.

Physically, I was stuck.

How long had I been here?

The blaring alarm during my hasty exit meant that the authorities had been alerted, right?

Had I gone farther than I realized?

I licked my cracked lips. “Ben?”

Nothing.

“Ben?” I tried again, putting more effort into squeezing the name past my inflamed throat.

A chorus of excited barks grew in the distance, growing closer with alarming speed.

“Ben?” I repeated, my voice shrill.

He was nowhere to be found.

No all-knowing hallucinations materialized to help guide me on what to do.

I felt utterly alone—not that there was much I’d be able to do even with help.

Truly, I was at the end of my rope, unable to move, shout, or keep my eyes open.

At that point, I gave up, receding into darkness once more, welcoming it like an old friend, and when I startled, it was because I could hear men’s voices.

“We’re close!”

“Just up this way! Rex is pulling harder at the leash now.”

More tracks of tears cut through the wet numbness on my cheeks as pure relief swamped me.

The police were here.

Even Ben’s dad would be a welcome sight because at least he only wanted to lock me up and didn’t harbor any homicidal tendencies for me. In fact, one of the cops had gone out of his way to be kind.

Speak of the devil…

“There you are,” he murmured, relief evident in his voice. He kneeled down in front of me, and when his hands went to my bare arms, they were scalding hot. “Jesus, you feel like ice.” He shrugged off his own windbreaker, emblazoned with Fairview PD on the breast and across the back, and wrapped me in it. “Can you stand?”

I shook my head.

“No problem,” he said as he scooped me up. “Bart! Where are you with that damn rescue pack? She’s freezing. And someone quiet those dogs down.”

The loud cacophony settled.

“Here, sir!”

“Get your ass over here then, Bartholomew .”

“Right. Of course. I mean, on it, sir.”

My eyelids grew heavy.

I must have been fighting sleep, because the nice officer murmured, “It’s okay. Go to sleep, Willa. There’s quite a trek back. You’re a fighter. You covered six miles, probably farther if you account for the rough terrain and the fact that it’s nearly impossible to run in a straight line in the pitch black. If not for the dogs, we’d have never found you.”

Honestly, that worked to reassure me.

I blacked out and woke in the back of a stationary ambulance with one of the paramedics going toe-to-toe with a swarm of police officers.

“What’s going on?” I murmured without meaning to.

That was when the paramedic at my side made himself known, glancing in the direction I was staring.

“Honestly, they are just puffing their chests. Don’t worry. Gerard will keep the bloodhounds at bay.” Even as the man reassured me, he kept turning to the heated conversation with the ebb and flow of the volume. “You just focus on resting. It’s lucky you flew the coop in the summer. If you’d pulled a stunt like this in the winter, there’d have been a very different end to this story.” He rolled a thermometer across my forehead, frowning at the readings. “On the other hand, in the winter, you wouldn’t have had to worry about poison ivy.”

“I’m not allergic,” I replied, my voice dazed as I tried to catch snippets of what they were saying.

What sounded like Ben’s dad’s voice punched above the racket, but it instantly lowered back down.

“Seriously,” the paramedic repeated. “Don’t worry about them for now. Just focus on you.”

I didn’t have much of a say in that.

My eyes shut once more.

This time when I woke, it was on a hard mattress inside a jail cell.

The only thing I cared about was that at least it wasn’t a private room. I could see into the hallway where a spherical camera watched from its station on the ceiling.

Those were important details to a person who had almost been killed chin deep in the middle of a secure facility.

Only after a quick breath of relief did I question why I was in jail. By running away, had I broken the law so badly that they intended to try me as an adult?

If there was ever a doubt in my mind on whether someone actively watched from the other side of the camera, it would have evaporated as footsteps approached.

“I see you’re awake now.” The bars slid open. “Come on. You’re coming with me. I have some clothes for you to change into, and then you have a date with interrogation.”

I scrambled up after him, feeling each individual tendon wince and weep with pain from overexertion. “What day is it?”

He gave me a long look before admitting, “Tuesday.”

My breath caught.

Tuesday.

Apart from the police finding me that morning, I didn’t remember a single thing from Monday—yesterday.

That alarmed me.

The nondescript sweats were loose, but their warmth offered a sense of armor and comfort. My hands slid easily inside the sleeves, and I hugged myself, finally allowing myself to see my reflection. Razor-thin abrasions from branches lined my face, but most were so faint they’d probably be a forgotten memory by the end of the week.

The officer pounded on the door. “Let’s move. We all have better things to do than wait on a teenage girl to doll herself up in the mirror.”

My cheeks did their best to flush red in mortification, but even then, the rose color barely touched the pale pallor of my drawn skin.

He led me to the interrogation room, a sight that was uncomfortably familiar.

Three officers sat inside the room, and my escort joined us.

That led to a cramped space, and not a lawyer in sight.

My hands shook. “Where’s the attorney?”

“You don’t get one,” Officer One replied with a pleasant smile that failed to reach his eyes.

Officer Two—no, wait, that was the nice officer from before—cleared his throat. “Willa, please, have a seat. You remember me? Officer Reeves?”

His name had slipped my memory, though I knew I’d heard it, but I nodded anyway.

“This is my partner, Officer Valak,” Reeves continued. “We’re supposed to be the ones conducting your interview.” He said the last comment in a perfectly pleasant tone, but he cut a look to his left at Officer Three. Oh, he was familiar as well—the grumpy officer from before who had picked Ralph and me up from the construction site.

Grumpy Officer raised his hands. “Hey, don’t mind me. I’m just here in a show of support.”

Reeves looked unimpressed. “Right. Willa, you might also remember Officer Jones—”

“How could she forget? It wasn’t that long ago when I picked her up for breaking and entering,” Officer Jones grumbled.

Reeves cleared his throat, looking tired, before he nodded over my shoulder. “And your escort is Officer Bentley. Bentley, am I to assume it’s your intention to sit in as well?”

Bentley propped himself up against the door, folding his arms. “Well, since you invited me so nicely…”

Reeves’s jaw clenched, but he shook his head and returned his attention to me. “Willa, I’m afraid that due to your repeat offense now, the district has prosecutorial discretion. Because you broke out of your mandated sentence, they want to open an official case for criminal court. You’ll be tried as an adult and interrogated as an adult as well. That means you have the right to refuse an attorney, and we don’t have to make sure your parents are present either.”

My eyes bugged in fear.

“Do you understand that?”

Chin trembling, I nodded slowly.

“Okay,” he continued, glancing down at the open file in front of him as he checked something off. “Now, since you were so out of it after your ordeal in the woods, I’m going to reread your Miranda rights to—”

“No,” Officer Jerk—err, Officer Jones interrupted. “You heard what the boss said. She already had them read to her.”

Reeves fixed him with a stare. “We have body cam evidence that would prove she wasn’t conscious when that happened. Should we put our whole department under review? What’s the harm in reading them to her again?”

“The harm is—” Officer Jones cut himself off, looking like he’d bit into a lemon.

Obviously, there was something in the Miranda that he didn’t want me to hear, but he seemed reluctant to point out exactly what that was in case Reeves wouldn’t back down, and Reeves didn’t seem inclined to do so if the hard set of his jaw was any clue.

I shifted in my seat, perking up while also trying to appear uninterested. Jones glared at me, so maybe my bored expression wasn’t fooling anyone.

“As I was saying,” Reeves added after a prolonged silence. “You have the right to remain silent.”

That wasn’t earth shattering news.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Duh.

“You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be—”

Ding, ding, ding, we had a winner!

Even tried as an adult, they would have to get me representation if I asked for it.

“I want a lawyer,” I blurted as quickly as possible.

The officer by the door huffed, but Jones? He scoffed in disgust and said some not so nice words as he punched the wall.

Banging hard enough to rattle the door had Officer Bentley stepping aside half a second before said door flew open, framing Ben’s dad, the chief of police, all red-faced enraged, six foot plus of him.

His black eyes locked on me with laser focus. “You!”

Several things happened at once.

Officer Bentley, who was closest to him, stepped farther away. Reeves and his so far neutral partner, Valak, popped up from their chairs to intercept the chief. Hands landed on my shoulders from behind, pinning me back down to the chair I hadn’t even realized I’d stood from.

Then, Ben’s dad was in my face, somehow beating everyone in the room to reach me, as he shouted, “You lying little psycho whore! You killed my son!”