Page 2 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

ONE

BEFORE

It was all over the news.

Young girl gone missing.

Eighteen years of age.

Didn’t show up for work.

It had been twenty-four hours.

The police had been called. An alert had gone out. Social media was rife with theories and possibilities.

She’s my neighbor’s kid!

Nice girl and pretty. I can see why she may have been taken. We need better protection from our school systems.

I think I saw her at First and Main street yesterday at 2:00 p.m.

No. That was my daughter you saw.

I swear it was her!

They found her!

False alarm. It wasn’t the missing young woman. It was someone else out for a walk mistaken as her.

And on it went. The first hour of the breaking news was the worst. Because everyone thought they had the answers, or that by giving their immediate condolences to the family via their socials, that somehow, it helped.

It didn’t. No one had answers, or this wouldn’t be a story, and offering condolences now was like shutting the coffin before the body had a chance to be placed in it.

People thought they knew. That they understood.

I blame the true crime podcasts and documentaries.

It’s where everyone has become an expert.

They’re suddenly psychologists and profilers, detectives and forensic specialists, and if not in those categories, they were the prayer warriors and mediums with their own religious slants on how the case would or wouldn’t turn out.

Prayers.

Good thoughts.

Noble intentions.

Nosy amateurs.

And then there was me.

I come from a unique perspective, and I’d yet to find anyone who could relate to me, let alone understand me. But then, I also hadn’t tried. I preferred to be—like I was this morning—alone with my coffee, my phone, and the outside world’s noise at my fingertips rather than in my ears.

I was a victim. Or their victim. I was the one that survived—or got away.

It all depended on perspective. I’m sure my abductor didn’t feel vindicated ten years later, knowing he’d failed to fulfill his darkest fantasies with me.

But the community was vindicated. At least they had been when I’d shown up at the gas station just outside of town, dirty, hungry, scared out of my mind, and totally willing to cough up everything I could remember about my abductor.

Only, I couldn’t remember much. Just shadows.

Snippets. Little pieces of a puzzle that my gut told me was so much bigger than even I knew.

The worst part? Unlike young-woman-gone from today’s news, I didn’t have a family out searching.

I was, perhaps, the perfect profile of the perfect victim.

An unwanted, unnamed runaway from the foster care system.

I was easy to be proud of—for the few days the town claimed me as their personal victory.

I was also easy to forget—because no one really cared that I was there.

It was the others they wondered about—worried about.

I knew their names, though I never spoke of them .

Girls like me, yet not like me. Girls with families, and friends, and money, and futures. They were the ones remembered.

So when days like today happened, everyone from Whisper’s End remembered. Everyone wondered.

Had he returned?

Had the serial abductions begun again?

I sipped my coffee, thumbing through my newsfeed.

I tried to hold back a snort of laughter, knowing it was rude, but also knowing no one was in my apartment with me to hear it.

The latest post on the Whisper’s End Community group told me that Darwin’s theory was easy to disprove if anyone wanted to.

Humans were devolving, not evolving. One look at social media and a person could literally feel the intelligence of mankind draining into the cybersphere.

My daughter is home alone right now and we only live blocks away from where they think this woman went missing! I asked off of work and my boss won’t let me leave!

This road map for any kidnapper was made even more public by the fact twelve people had already commented their responses of mutual aggravation at said unfair employer, pushing the post up in the algorithms.

People should just say what any abductor would really read their post as: My daughter is home alone right now, and she’s not too far from where you successfully snatched that other young teen.

So while I’m stuck at work, why don’t you head on over and snatch my daughter too.

You won’t have much difficulty. Again, she’s home alone.

Please see the following comments from well-wishers confirming this.

Okay. Fine. Yes. I’m jaded. I’m cynical.

But I either shut down my emotions or face them.

If I still had the finances for a professional therapist, I might consider coming to grips with my past—or even trying to recall more of it.

But for now, I work at an HVAC company selling air conditioners and fireplaces and scheduling installation crews.

It doesn’t pay much higher than minimum wage and the health insurance is—let’s just say I don’t want to get more than a sinus infection or I’ll need to file medical bankruptcy.

My phone rang, vibrating in my hand, and I dropped it on the table, coffee sloshing over the side of my mug. Sudden noises always startle me. I stared at the screen.

It was Livia.

I would never have admitted my relief to anyone, but I was relieved. There was a darkness that hung over me—and always would—knowing he was out there. That he had never been caught. That they had never been found. Only me.

I answered the phone. Livia was the only person I’d let get close to me this last decade, and even then, she only knew so much about me.

We’d met at a coffee shop where she was a barista.

A barista with curly blue hair, half shaved on the left side, a halo-crown hoop through her septum, and a healthy tan skin that made me look like I’d been left out in the snow for about four seasons.

In a lot of ways, Livia and I became friends because we got each other without having to explain it.

Neither of us fit the social norm, for an entire list of reasons I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone.

“Good morning,” I answered with a follow-up slurp of coffee to drive home the point that I had successfully brewed my own cup.

“I’m not impressed.” Livia’s statement sounded like she could easily guess that I’d stuck a plastic pod into the maker and let the machine run hot water through it.

“Neither am I. Are you working this morning? I’ll swing by.”

“Noa.” Livia’s tone was exactly what I’d hoped it wouldn’t be. “You saw the news this morning?”

“Yep.”

My one-word answer might seem calloused. Unempathetic. Or even unemotional considering my past experiences. The truth was, all of that was true. I had to be calloused just to endure. Empathy was the sure way to an emotional break. Emotions were the kryptonite to survival. So. “Yep”, it was.

“I knew her.” Livia stated, already referring to the missing woman in the past tense. But I noticed, and because it was Livia, I didn’t hold it against her.

“She used to stop here at the coffee shop with her friends. I think she’s seventeen—maybe eighteen?”

“Eighteen,” I supplied. One year older than I had been .

“I suppose this dredges up old?—”

“Nope. There’s nothing similar about her disappearance.

She just—disappeared. There were signs when I vanished.

There was evidence. He wanted people to know I was missing.

” That, and the fact that if my abductor hadn’t let people know, no one would have noticed, and he wouldn’t have gotten any further credit.

It must suck to be a celebrity serial killer. Hard to keep up the image.

“Right, but?—”

“Not to mention, it’s only been twenty-four-hours. The odds are still high she’ll be found.” I argued, knowing that my nonfactual statement gave away my internal desire to feel better about ignoring it. Always ignore it. It wasn’t my story. It wasn’t about me. Not any more. It’d been ten years.

Livia was quiet so long that I was afraid my curt responses had hurt her feelings. I opened my mouth to offer an empty apology in hopes of making her feel better. I wasn’t quick enough.

“Noa, they found a snake outside of her bedroom window.”

If you’ve ever cut yourself with a well-sharpened knife, you’ll know that when you slice your skin, you don’t even feel it.

It’s not until the blood is dripping onto the floor and your brain catches up with your nervous system that you suddenly realize the severity of the cut.

That was how it was with Livia’s announcement.

Oh. A snake.

Crazy weird.

Are snakes amphibians or reptiles?

Amphibians.

I think.

A snake.

Oh God. A snake.

Everything inside of me hurt, and if a statement could make me drip blood, this one made it pour.

I almost dropped the phone.

“Noa?” Livia’s voice was far away. “Noa? Are you okay?”

A snake.

A snake coiled in a basket.

It was his symbol. He’d carved it into his victim’s neck like a vampire leaving behind teeth marks. The autopsies of the three women found prior to me escaping had indicated they’d been carved while they were still alive.

“But it could just be a coincidence.” Livia was still chattering, her nervous energy making it very obvious she knew how this would potentially affect me.

“It was just a garden snake. A totally sus garden snake, sure, but—I mean—it could’ve just died there, under her window. It doesn’t mean it’s a calling card.”

But it did. It did mean that. I knew it. Livia knew it.

He had given himself the moniker of The Nahash —some weird Hebrew word that the press had swapped out for its English equivalent. The Serpent.

It sounded so ominous. So ridiculous.

“Noa?” Livia tried again.

I didn’t answer. I just—ended the call.