Page 62 of WITSEC

Knox grabbed the pad of paper and pen that had the hotel’s logo on it and wrote down the room number and the hotel’s phone number. Then he and Colt left.

Creed flipped through the channels on the TV. When he came upon one of our favorite cooking competition shows, he said, “Here we go,” and set the remote down. Just seeing how the cooking show seemed to relax him, I found myself smiling. Hecaught me with my goofy smile and pulled me to his chest before leaning back. Keelan grabbed my feet and set them on his good thigh.

“How’s your leg?” I asked him.

“It’s fine. It’s not near as bad as your arm was,” he said.

I was pretty sure he was lying. By the amount of blood I’d seen on the towel he’d used to wrap around it, I was pretty sure it was.

It was close to an hour until the room’s phone rang. I got up to answer it. “Did you two get lost?”

“We had trouble deciding on a place,” Knox said. He then told me about the place they were at and what was on the menu. I passed on everything he told me to Creed and Keelan. We told Knox what we wanted and before we hung up, he asked me if I would like any dessert.

“Ice cream, please,” I said and our call ended.

It was nearly another hour before Knox and Colt returned with all the food. The rest of the evening was as wonderful as we could make it. We didn’t leave the living room. We ate dinner and then ice cream while watching food competitions. During that time, I refused to think of anything else other than the four of them and being in the moment with them.

As the night grew late, Creed fell asleep on the couch, and I pretended to do the same with my head on his chest. I listened as the other three whispered about going to bed and being careful not to wake us. One of them put a blanket on top of Creed and me before heading off toward the bedrooms.

I listened to Creed’s heartbeat for most of the night and when the sun was about an hour from rising, I quietly climbed off of him. I had set everything I would need to leave on the kitchen counter along with the pen and pad of paper that Knox had used. I wrote out a detailed note explaining everything.

They knew Logan had been taken by Mr. X, but they didn’t know that Mr. X had called me on the sheriff’s phone threatening to kill Logan if I didn’t come to him. To prove that Logan was alive, he’d let Logan talk to me.

“Shiloh. Don’t come. Don’t give this fucker?—”

He had been cut off when Mr. X had returned to the line and told me where to find him.

If I knew Mr. X like I thought I did, he would kill Logan as soon as I got there. I was walking into a trap that might be pointless. However, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.

I finished my note by thanking them for finding me, saving me, and loving me. I explained how much I loved them and to please forgive me. That I wasn’t just doing this to try to save Logan, but to free us from a life filled with danger, running, and fear.

I put the note on the coffee table for Creed to see when he woke up. Then I grabbed my keys to my 4Runner and my burner phone from the kitchen counter and snuck out.

I drove for twenty-six hours. I stopped once at a cheap hotel for six hours to sleep so I wouldn’t be exhausted when I returned to my childhood home in Maryland. Driving through the town I’d grown up in felt nostalgic yet strange. Who I used to be when I’d lived here was not who I was now.

As I pulled into my old neighborhood, my hands began to shake. I drove by my house once without stopping and parked down another street. Grabbing my burner phone, I dialed Ian’s number. He had called me multiple times since I’d left Colorado.

The line rang and rang until it went to voicemail. I said, “For someone who has been blowing up my phone, you chose a crappy time to not answer. I’m doing something reckless, despite you telling me not to. I’m in Maryland. Mr. X found a way to get ahold of me and told me I had to come or he’d kill Logan. When you get this, feel free to send the police to my house here.”

I hung up and got out of my car. I unzipped my sweatshirt and tossed it in the car before making my way to the trunk. The chill in the air made my exposed arms break out in goosebumps. Before arriving in my hometown, I’d made sure to stop by a few stores. My pink hair was in a tight bun to make sure it was harder to grab. I was wearing black cargo pants with boots to be able to move around quicker and easier. I had on a loose black T-shirt to hide the belly band holster that held a pistol behind my back. After opening the trunk, I grabbed a seven-inch survival knife with a fixed blade and tucked it into one of my boots. I grabbed my shoulder holster that held another pistol and put it on. Lastly, I put a spare magazine in one of the pockets in my pants.

As I went to close the trunk, something shiny peeking out from under the mat in the trunk caught my eye. I lifted the corner of the mat and found a quarter-sized disk with a well-known apple-shaped logo on it. There was an AirTag in my trunk. Questions rattled my brain. Who’d put it in my car? How long had it been there? Had Logan done it? It obviously hadn’t been put in my car by the sheriff or Mr. X or they would have showed up at the cabin a lot sooner. It must have been Logan. Was my car a backup in case anything happened to my ankle tracker, which I currently had hidden in my boot?

I supposed it didn’t matter right now. I tossed the AirTag back in the trunk and shut it. Because I was parked a street over from my childhood home, I cut through the property thatwas directly behind mine. If the owners happened to see me and called the police, then so be it.

There were a lot of trees and bushes that framed the large lot my house sat on. I tried to stick close to them in hope of staying unseen as I made my way to the house. I didn’t want Mr. X to see me coming; he was already more than prepared for me.

Before I’d left the hospital after Mr. X had killed my family, Logan had hired people to clean, fix up, and lock down the house. Nails had been removed from the doors and windows downstairs. The missing doorknobs had been replaced. The blood had been cleaned away. Because we hadn’t had time to go through my and my family’s belongings, everything had been kept where it had been, and all the furniture had been covered with white cloth to help preserve it until I could go through it.

The elderly couple who lived next door and had helped save me had agreed to keep an eye on the house and been given keys to do so. If anything were to happen, Logan had given them an email to reach him by. In the past year and a half, we hadn’t heard from them. So I assumed everything was good with the house. I really hoped they hadn’t noticed Mr. X hanging around.

I first tried to get in through the back door using my house keys kept in my go bag. The door unlocked but wouldn’t open. It was nailed shut.

Bastard!

I knew the game he was playing. He wanted to control the way I came in and possibly my escape. And he was probably trying to recreate the night he’d killed my family.

I didn’t bother trying to go through any of the windows or the garage. I walked around the house to the front door. Before opening the door, I took my pistol from my shoulder holster, aimed it out in front of me, and reached for the door handle. Steeling myself with a deep breath and slow exhale, I opened thedoor. Slowly, I pushed it inward and stepped into the place that had haunted my dreams since the night I’d barely escaped alive.