Page 94 of Half the Summer's Night

Or the ropes. Maybe I could use the ropes.

But then I hear something, out in the hallway. A heavy, decisive thud. Another.

Footsteps.

Hot panic surges through me, and I leap back onto the mattress and frantically wind the rope around my wrists so that I look as if I’m still tied up. I squeeze the end of the rope in my fist, though. It’s not much of a weapon, but it’s something.

The footsteps stop outside the door. I hold my breath, staring through the darkness at the glimmering doorknob.

It turns.

“Wakey, wakey,” says that rough, masculine voice. The door swings open, and I brace myself against the wall, my heart hammering so hard in my chest that I can barely hear anything else.

My kidnapper steps into the doorway and turns his gaze toward me?—

And my stomach falls out from beneath me.

Because my attacker isn’t wearing his stocking anymore. And I realize why his voice is familiar. Because I’ve heard it thousands of times over the last two years. Chiding me. Criticizing me. Telling me I’m not good enough.

“There she is,” says Sheriff Kaplan. “Are you ready to play?”

34

ROWAN

“First step,” Charlotte says. “Look for clues.”

I glare at her. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I shout. “This isn’t a goddamn game. We aren’t playing Sherlock Holmes.”

“Keep your voice down.” Charlotte pushes past me, grabs my wrist, and drags me along after her. “A human did this. He left signs.” She looks at me, her eyes flashing in the dark. “Like scent. You picked up on it, didn’t you? That sour, spiky smell?”

I jerk my arm away from her. “Yes,” I say stiffly. “It’s adrenaline, isn’t it?”

Charlotte smiles. “Yeah, it is. Slow down. Breathe it in. Focus on it. See if you can pick up a trail.”

I stare at her, panic surging through my veins. I don’t want to focus on anything. I sure as hell don’t want to slow down.

“This is how you’re going to find her, “ Charlotte says gently. “It took me a while to learn how to do it, but I think you’ve got desperation on your side.”

“What I don’t have is time,” I growl.

“Which is why you need to stop arguing with me.”

I hate that she’s right about that. I whip away from Charlotte and look out at the graveyard. At the road.

He would have driven here. He took her away, and Abi wouldn’t have gone willingly. It’s not like he could have carried her out in the open without drawing attention to himself.

I step through the grass, past the sunflowers, heading to the road. As I walk, I breathe in, trying to separate all the scents billowing around me. I’ve done this before, even if I didn’t realize it—even if I thought it was something everyone could do. It was how I would track down men for Uncle Vic. Business partners who didn’t pay their bills on time. Double-crossing mob guys. That sort of thing. I used to resent it. Now, it feels like it was practice, preparing me for this moment.

There are a lot of scents in the Rosado night. There’s the beach and the ocean and the animals that live in the sand. There’s the metallic tang of the roads, the dieselly scent of car exhaust. A dry, papery scent that I think might be the dead lying in the ground.

But there’s also Charlotte’s fear and her kidnapper’s disgusting adrenaline.

I catch a thread of that adrenaline, starting at the tree and winding down to the road. There’s something else layered underneath it, though, and when I come to the curb, I see it:

A few splatters of blood.

“He drove her away from here,” I say numbly.