Page 50 of Secrets Along the Shore

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

I droveout of Elsie’s driveway, trying not to spin my tires in the gravel. I needed to call Reuben. I need to get to Reuben. My job was almost over. I could be Sophia’s voice and give Reuben my final theory that Alan fit the profile. We could check the service records at Archer’s if we needed. I didn’t know what the right process was, but Reuben would. At this point, I was in way over my head and I was more than happy to hand it off to Reuben and hide at Livia’s.

I turned left at the end of the driveway, away from where the road would take me to Stillwater Lake. To where I’d come face-to-face with Sophia that first time, her body hidden in the cattails.

I glanced in the rearview mirror as I reached for my bag and my phone that Reuben had given back to me before I’d left the station.

My eyes locked with the passenger in the back seat.

Only, it wasn’t Sophia I saw.

It was Alan.

“Of course you’re here now.” I voiced the words to his image. He was haunting me. Like Sophia. Like the images of Lilian and Rosalie.

“I am. I’m here.”

Except they never spoke back—not audibly. Not where I could hear them.

My breath stuck in my throat. My heart pumped with such force I could feel it against my ribcage threatening to burst. I grabbed thewheel with both hands, white knuckled, and I tensed. I cursed the way my mind was suddenly wiped clear of thought. There was no instant reaction to survive. It was panic that stole my sense of reason.

I kept driving.

My phone. I needed my phone.

I stared into the rear-view mirror again.

“Turn the car around, Noa.” Alan leaned forward between the seats.

A quick glance and I saw he had a handgun aimed at my side. Was this then, how he’d convinced the three women to leave their homes? To follow him quietly and without argument?

I’d heard once—long after I’d escaped my own situation—that if you were ever threatened with a gun, it was better to run than to submit. But I was driving. I couldn’t run, and if I stopped the car, we were alone on a rural road.

My body began to shake. Every sensation in my brain was misfiring.

“Alan—” A surge of fury coursed through me, accompanied by an extreme rush of fear, and then a numbness. The kind of detachment that came from shutting out everything and not feeling. Just doing. I’d been here before. Years ago. I was here again. And for all my boasting to Reuben about learning to read people, I hadn’t learned anything. I had worked with Alan the past two years. Never once I had gotten the feeling that beneath his friendly facade was a troubled man.

“I’m not turning around.” It took every ounce of courage that I had to refuse his instruction.

“Do it,” he commanded.

I didn’t obey. To go back to Stillwater Lake was death. He could kill me now. One thing I’d learned as a victim, was that the sooner one reconciled they were going to die, the easier it was to take risks to live.

A prayer. A whispered prayer was all I could do. And then, I voiced the only other thought I had in my head.

“How’d did you get in my car?”

Alan frowned. “You’re easy to follow.”

But I hadn’t seen his car. I hadn’t seen any sign of him—I shot him a glance over my shoulder. “I don’t?—”

“I parked at the lake. I walked back once I knew you were Elsie’s. I even stopped to tell Elsie’s husband hello. He’s a nice old guy.”

The awareness in me grew. So thick and so real. I knew this was it, and if I fought the truth, I stood no chance. So I went there. In my mind. I allowed myself to accept that today was the last day I would breathe. The last day I would dare to wonder if I could ever dream again. If I could be happy. Today was the day I would join the ones I’d left behind to die when I had run and escaped. When my mind had decided there was too much trauma to remember, and when I became a blank slate.

“Listen to me,” Alan urged. There was a strange desperation in him—it didn’t match my past experience. He wasn’t in control any more than I was. In a way, that was even more frightening. I couldn’t predict what he would do. “You need to turn around. I can’t save you if you go back to town.”