Page 51 of The Intruder

NOW

CASEY

The final page in the book is another drawing.

All the other drawings were of women—more specifically, one woman—being tortured, but this one is a man. He is lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and there’s a girl with red hair and freckles standing over him, holding a knife.

And then above the drawing is a name and address.

I reach into my pocket to pull out the map that I found on the floor of the living room.

I unfold it and look at it more carefully under the glow of the flashlight.

I realize now that I read the map wrong.

I looked at it quickly, by firelight, and I assumed that since the girl was here, the final location was my house.

But now I realize that my house wasn’t the destination at all.

The final destination is another house, just half a mile away from here.

Lee’s house.

Eleanor was never looking for me. She drew a confusing map and ended up here instead of at Lee’s house. But he was the one she was looking for. He’s the one she intends to torture. To kill.

She kept asking me questions about him while she ate those chocolate chip cookies. I thought she was giving me a hard time about my love life or the lack thereof, but I was wrong. She had a different kind of interest in him, although I don’t entirely understand why.

And now she has left my house to go find him. And I have given her a gun.

Oh my God. Lee…

Not only that, but the sun still hasn’t risen in the sky. Lee is probably sound asleep in bed. She’ll be able to surprise him and do whatever she wants.

I’ve got to warn him.

I pick up the phone, but before the receiver even gets to my ear, I know there isn’t going to be a dial tone. The phone lines are still out. They probably won’t come back for days.

I’ve got to get over to his house. It’s the only way.

It’s possible to drive from my cabin to his, but I’d have to go out to the main road and circle back. And I don’t know what the dirt roads look like right now. There’s a very real chance that the truck could get stuck, blocked by a fallen tree. No, the best way to get there is on foot.

I bring my flashlight to the closet and grab my warmest coat and my waterproof boots.

Under the best circumstances, it takes me ten minutes to walk to Lee’s cabin.

Now that all the dirt has turned to mud, I’ll have to be more careful so as not to fall and twist my ankle.

It will take at least twenty minutes, maybe longer.

And when I make it there, it could very well be too late.

When I get outside the cabin, my yard very much looks like a hurricane hit last night.

Between the fallen tree and the smashed toolshed, scattered in pieces all over the grass, it does not look good.

I told Rudy yesterday that the tree was unstable, and now he’s going to have to deal with it sooner rather than later.

But I can’t worry about that right now. I’m just glad it didn’t destroy my truck.

The path to Lee’s cabin is through a small clearing in the woods.

I start down the path, wondering if Eleanor took the same journey when she left the house about forty-five minutes ago.

She cut the binding on my ankles so that I would be able to get free but didn’t give me enough time to stop whatever is going to happen.

That means whatever she is going to do, she plans to do it quickly.

I’ve walked several yards into the woods when I see it: a footprint. This means I’m on the right path. This is where she went, and if I keep going, I will find her.

As I continue walking through the woods, I start to wonder if I’m making the right decision. Say I make it to Lee’s house, and by some miracle, she hasn’t yet shot him dead. Then what? She has the gun. I have no way to stop her.

I should have gotten in my truck and driven to the police station.

That would have been the smart thing to do.

But that would have taken forever. It’s a twenty-minute drive to the nearest police station under the best circumstances, and once I found somebody and convinced them to help me, then they would have to drive out to the cabin.

That’s an hour for Eleanor to shoot my friend in the head. Or to cut off his ear and blind him.

No, this is the right thing to do. I’ve got to get over there and somehow convince that girl that she is making a mistake. After all, why would she want to kill Lee? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

But then again…

I always got a strange vibe from Lee. Even though he seemed nice enough and said all the right things, I never trusted the man. He knew a little too much about me—he was too interested.

Also, what man remembers the birthday of a woman he isn’t trying to sleep with? That alone was suspicious.

If Eleanor hates him that much, she must have a good reason. I’m not saying he deserves to die, but someone hurt that girl badly, and whoever did it ought to get what’s coming to him.

After what feels like an eternity of picking my way through the woods, Lee’s cabin comes into view.

I quicken my pace, my boots splashing through the mud, drenching the bottoms of my jeans.

Orange rays of sun are starting to peek out from the horizon—it’s just about morning—but the windows of Lee’s cabin are still dark.

Except for the one window that is wide open.

I calculate the possibility that the window might have been left open independent of Eleanor.

It seems extremely unlikely, since when he went to bed, there was a storm raging outside.

He certainly closed all the windows, but he might not have latched them.

If the window is open, then she must have found an unlatched window and crawled inside. She’s in his home.

The question is, is it too late?

As I walk over here, I rack my brain to try to figure out why Eleanor could possibly be so angry with Lee.

After all, it seemed like she hardly even knew him, so it seems unlikely he’s responsible for the burns on her arms. Yet she despises him.

She came after him with a knife, and now she has a gun. She wants him dead.

It doesn’t entirely make sense to me, but now I remember the conversation we had in my bathroom, when she was admiring that painting of the two birds.

I don’t know my father. He abandoned my mother before I was even born. He’s a terrible person.

I believe that bad people always get what’s coming to them.

And now it all makes perfect sense.

Eleanor, who never met her father, set out on a quest to find him and make sure he got what was coming to him. And her quest has come to an end at Lee’s cabin.

Lee is Eleanor’s father.

Now she plans to kill him, to punish him for abandoning her and her abusive mother. I’m not sure what his reasons were for not living up to his paternal obligations, but I don’t believe he deserves to die for it. Not unless there’s something else I don’t know.

I have to go in there and get Eleanor to see the light. I have to keep her from doing anything terrible—something she may someday regret. Something that might ruin her life.

And there is absolutely nobody in this world in a better position to convince her of that than me. Because I have been there, just like she has.