The Follower Read online

  She grabbed the knot, tearing at it anywhere she could get a grip. Her jumping hands pushed and prodded it all over to find where it began. She couldn’t, no matter how furiously her fingers worked at it. Nothing would budge. In frustration, she uselessly pounded it with her fists. She might have kept going if she hadn’t noticed the red marks blooming up on her skin, fresh bruises she couldn’t even feel. She stopped.

  She went back in, pulling and tugging at the rope, but more methodically, if with no more success. She tried a new approach, swinging her other leg over the footboard onto the floor.

  ‘Forget the knot, just drag the whole stupid bed over there,’ she muttered.

  It was an awkward position, but she managed to hobble along on one foot, grab the bedframe with both hands, and lean back, pulling with her full body weight against it. It wouldn’t move, not even a fraction of an inch. She leaned down to look under the bed to see why it was stuck.

  When she saw the situation, she fell to her knees in abject defeat. The bedposts were bolted to the floor.

  ‘That motherfucker. He thought of everything, didn’t he?’ She had no choice but to go back to the knot.

  She had to focus. It was thinking that would save her, not force, not power, and certainly not delirium. She had to draw on childhood summer-camp skills she’d never properly mastered in the first place.

  ‘There’s always a trick, and when you know it, it works like magic. Come on, Julie, find the magic.’

  The downside was, some knots played against you, like a devil’s bargain. The more they were pulled, the tighter they got. She couldn’t risk that. Any more pressure and that leg would be done for. She wouldn’t let herself think about the details, the gangrene and the rot and inevitable removal. She’d read Madame Bovary last semester. She knew how it went.

  Instead, she had to remember back to the sailing lessons she’d taken the summer between eighth and ninth grades. They’d been taught at least a dozen nautical configurations, but she hadn’t paid the closest attention.

  ‘Maybe if you hadn’t been so busy flirting with Marcus Cooperman, you could be saving your life right now.’ She stopped. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Think, damn it.’ There was the bowline, the cleat hitch, the clove hitch, all pointless jokes compared to this monstrosity. She peered more closely at the beast, this odd little primrose of hemp.

  It looked a bit like a clove hitch, but one end seemed to have been passed under the other. She wriggled her fingers into the middle of it, and pinched. She yanked at it and it tightened up exactly as she’d feared. Okay. New strategy.

  She closed her eyes again, calling on all the strength she had left. Then, unbidden, an image passed through her head, a piece of some puzzle in her subconscious. There was a yellowed photograph of a woman behind broken glass, a section of coiled rope, her bare foot.

  Determination surged within her and the solution came to her in that same instant like a thunderclap. Her hands, which had been shaking, suddenly stilled. An extraordinary lucidity descended upon her and with a burst of unexpected confidence, she gently tugged the end of the rope parallel to her leg, prying it up and away, into the opposite edge. She eased it out from there. It was beginning to slip.

  ‘Have I done it?’

  As the first layer came loose ever so slowly, she could see it was a double, so she applied the same strategy again, parallel, up and through.

  ‘Keep breathing. You got this.’

  Then, just like the magic she’d been hoping for, the knot was undone and the rope fell away like a demon cast out. Her eyes flew up to the ceiling.

  ‘Thank you, spirits. Whoever is watching over me. Star-power angel or elfin demon unicorn. Whoever you are. Thank you.’

  There was no time to waste on the gods, however. Her leg was an eerie blue with white x’s ridged deep into the skin and she needed it to function, now. She massaged her thigh until it hurt, encouraging the blood to flow again through the veins, to restore life to its contiguous parts. She slapped up and down the length of her leg.

  ‘Come on, come on.’

  Hoping for the best, she tossed the rope to one side and scrambled up out of bed. Her calf and foot were completely numb. She couldn’t feel a thing, not even tingling, no pins and needles. But at least she had muscle control, even if she was limping, and as heavy and awkward as the injured leg felt, the color was returning in splotchy patches.

  ‘It’s going to have to do.’

  She lumbered over to the bag, bent like an ogre, with one hand on her protruding stomach, her good leg moving too fast to carry the rest of her body along. She stumbled and dove for the canvas, jamming her hands in and feeling around to the bottom. At first she thought it was empty, that her memory was mistaken, but there in the folds of the seam, her hands hit metal. She pulled them out victoriously, clinging to the shears as she suppressed tears of joy.

  She wasn’t imagining this. It was real. She held her salvation in her hands.

  ‘Fuck. Yeah.’

  CHAPTER 35

  Cora carried a small plastic garbage bag with her into the gas-station bathroom. In it were her clothes from the day before, stiff with caked blood. She and her father had driven all night, so she figured they were far enough away to ditch the evidence. As luck would have it the bin was nearly full. The night staff would have to take it out soon.

  She checked the chart on the back of the door to be sure. ‘Claire S.’ was scheduled to empty the trash by four. Must be the half-drugged girl in flannel restocking the pain relievers she’d passed on her way in. Not a girl likely to notice much about her surroundings, even crimson-soaked sneakers from a fresh murder shoved against the plastic. Not with eyes that blotted with mascara and thrashing grunge rock blasting at that volume out of her earbuds.

  Cora shoved the bag to the bottom of the garbage can, ignoring the various pieces of disgusting matter coming into contact with her skin. Then she stood in front of the mirror, studying her puffy tear-stained face, yellowed with fading bruises. No one would remember that either. It was incredible how easily one could disappear into the candy-wrapper foreground of a Sunoco at two a.m.

  Her eyes, red and big as saucers, stared back at her, emptied out, hollowed. She couldn’t feel anything inside. Numb to the center, her heart had apparently shriveled up into a hard nugget, resistant to all but the basest of emotions. It was better that way. She had to perfect the technique of turning everything off. Good feelings only got her into trouble. Only got people killed.

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight, trying to erase the awful memory of that moment. Her father’s hand had curled around hers, and she’d been unable to resist his strength as he’d plunged the knife into Reed’s flesh. That was it, the end of everything.

  She opened her eyes. No choice but to face facts.

  They’d surely found Reed’s body by now, and she tried hard not to imagine what they’d be doing to it. His soft, smooth skin would be naked, exposed on the slab, the camera flash tinting it blue. A lab tech would be charting the bruises, a thousand thumbprints of purple, and the rope burns, a half-dozen magenta lines twisting across the dragon tattoo on his left biceps. The assistant would be dipping a steel ruler into the jagged cuts they’d left in his torso, calculating their depth and width, checking for serrations. His face, that beautiful chiseled face, would be still for once under the bright lights above the exam table. No more half-smiles to tempt her into iniquity. No more whispered dirty thoughts to make her dizzy with lust. No ironic glances from his electric eyes to corrupt her to the core.

  She had to stop herself. Think about the danger going forward, not the damage done. It was too late for that. She had to forget him and try to take comfort in the knowledge that at least she wouldn’t be caught.

  They’d never find the knife. Her father had scrubbed it clean back at the trailer and thrown it into the swirling river as they’d crossed the bridge that night. She’d watched it sail through the night air until it was merely a pi
npoint above, a glint in the dark. She never saw it fall, but she imagined it must have entered the current like an Olympic diver, perfectly vertical, smooth with no splash. It was gone, she knew, safely sunk into the deep. She pictured it there, half covered by sand, jabbing into the earth as the bottom dwellers swished and dipped around it, hidden for all eternity.

  Her DNA samples would be gathered up in separate plastic baggies by now, labeled but never matched. She had no records, her father had made sure of that. She’d never been to a doctor or a dentist or even the school nurse. She’d never been allowed to have school pictures taken, and when the sheriff’s office had come in to gather student fingerprints in fifth grade, he’d kept her home. It was as if he’d known this day would come. She was anonymous, a ghost, a vapor. She simply didn’t exist.

  The backpack Reed had taken from her was the only small problem. No matter, they wouldn’t be able to trace her from that. It was too bad about the letter inside, but she couldn’t change facts now.

  She wiped her nose with her sleeve. How was she going to go on? Her father had the shakes and she knew he’d be sitting in the truck now, swigging down forties as fast as he could swallow. They’d barely said a word since setting out the day before, the unreality of it all having left them both in shock. If he kept at it the way she expected, they wouldn’t get far tonight before he’d pass out completely.

  Cora’s practical side was slowly kicking in. She couldn’t afford to think about what had happened, couldn’t begin to process her own suffering until they were safely ensconced in a new town. For tonight, they’d need to find a place to park off the road. She didn’t want to wake up to flashlights flooding the trailer, searching for evidence. If only she had her atlas. It was such a stupid thing to lose in the midst of this whole mess.

  She washed her face with cold water, blew her nose, and stuffed extra paper towels into the back pocket of her jeans, anticipating more tears that night.

  Before she left, she bought a cup of coffee and two kielbasa sausages from the endlessly turning electric spit roaster by the counter. The meat, dried out, crinkly and dotted with spots of grease, had probably been spinning under the heat lamp for days, but it would have to do. Neither of them had eaten since breakfast the day before. They needed the protein.

  The girl with the earbuds rang her up, singing along something about the killer in her as she dropped two dollars and change into Cora’s open palm, not once making eye contact.

  It was just as well.

  She carried her quarry out to the car, dismayed to find a pile of empty bottles in the floorboard of the passenger side. She hadn’t thought he could get so many down in one go. He already looked bleary-eyed and appeared to be having trouble keeping his tongue in his mouth. She shrank back from him in disgust. There was no alternative. She’d have to take over.

  She got out, slamming the door behind her, and walked purposefully to the driver-side door. Getting in, she shoved him over and grabbed the cap off his head, throwing it onto hers and pulling her ponytail through the back loop, hoping it would make her look older. The cops especially liked to pull people over in the middle of the night. They guessed rightly that that’s when all the bad guys were out.

  She shrugged to herself in the darkness and took a sip of the steaming coffee, instantly spitting it back out onto the dashboard. Burned beyond recognition. Well, what did she expect? Cursing, she wiped up the foul liquid with her sleeve and peered over at her father. He hadn’t noticed, didn’t budge. He was out cold.

  She lifted the cup of chicory bitterness to her lips again, this time chugging it down. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she clicked open the glove compartment, rooting around until she found a jumbo-sized bottle of NoDoz. She checked the expiration date – close enough – and popped three pills, then an extra for good measure.

  Suddenly she needed to be as far away as possible. She needed to put Reed Lassiter and her stupid hopes behind her. And for that, she had to stay awake and carry them forward into the distance. She’d drive until they got to their new home. She’d drive until her tears had all dried up and her bruises had faded into oblivion.

  She’d drive until they fell off the face of the earth.

  CHAPTER 36

  It took Adam three weeks to score an audience with the elusive Tamara Barron of Roanoke, Virginia, and even that was the result of a bit of trickery. She didn’t answer her phone much, and when she did, she hung up as soon as she heard Adam’s name. She placed him for a cop from the get-go and no amount of denial could dissuade her from that belief. Adam was secretly pleased because it proved that the job was an integral part of him, his essential nature and his ultimate destiny.

  In the end, he’d resorted to flying out to Roanoke to confront her in person. Her house was a rambling cottage perched up in the mountains, painted the same shade of green as the foliage surrounding it. He climbed the twenty-seven steps up the winding deck to the entrance and rapped at the screen door. Inside he saw a living room overfilled with two white loveseats covered in patchwork throw pillows, an array of whimsical quilts, and walls covered with framed posters of inspirational quotes. Quaint, old-fashioned, and sickeningly sweet.

  Classic rock played softly in the background, one of those crooning hits from the eighties with too much sax. Somebody was doing dishes in the kitchen at the back.

  The noise stopped at his knock, but no one came out.

  ‘Hello,’ he yelled. ‘Anybody home?’

  Still silence.

  ‘Hi, it’s Adam Miller. We spoke on the phone?’

  Nothing but one last clink of glass against glass. Adam checked the number outside to make sure he had the right place. He knew she’d retired from teaching elementary school a few years ago and had never married. It had to be her in there, but why was she avoiding him like this?

  Just as he was about to give up, something stirred. A door creaked open from somewhere deep within the house and a moment later, a gray-haired woman with squinting blue eyes emerged from the arched doorway at the back of the living room. She parted the beaded curtain with an upheld shotgun pointed directly at Adam. Not exactly what he’d been expecting from a kindergarten teacher.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said, walking steadily toward the door, her eyes a muddy mix of anger and puzzlement.

  ‘I only – I only want to talk to you about your brother.’ He’d told her this already. Why did everyone make everything so difficult?

  ‘I told you before, I’m not in touch with him. I want no part in his shenanigans.’ Only the screen separated Adam from the working end of that Remington double barrel. He swallowed, screwing up his courage to talk his way in.

  ‘Can I come in? I don’t bite. I promise.’ He gave her what he hoped was a dazzling smile, knowing he could still pass for boyish.

  She looked him up and down, then, after a moment’s consideration, finally lowered the gun.

  ‘Fine, come in. But keep in mind I know how to use this. I’ve practiced at the firing range every Thursday afternoon for the past thirty years.’

  ‘Duly noted,’ he said, shivering slightly, as he opened the screen door himself and followed her to a club chair in a corner of her homespun paradise.

  She settled on one of the couches after tossing aside a tattered aqua-and-pink striped blanket she’d probably crocheted herself.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you any tea, but I don’t think you’ll be staying long enough to drink it.’

  True to her word, she kept the gun close, propping it up against the sofa beside her.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, nodding his assent. ‘Just a couple of minutes.’

  ‘What is it you want with my brother?’

  ‘It isn’t really him I’m looking for. I’m trying to find his daughter. She used to go by Laura Martin.’

  The name set her twitching. Maybe she knew about the girl’s origins. Maybe she was an accomplice. She crossed her legs at the ankles, which were bare beneath the edge of
her white capris, and stared at her unvarnished nails, not daring to glance back up at him. It figured. He’d keep a close eye on this one, kindergarten teacher or not.

  ‘You’ll have to discuss that with my brother. If you can find him.’ He thought she seemed a little too nonchalant, a little too coy.

  ‘I’d like to. That’s just the point. I need to find him so I can find her.’

  ‘Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Me? I haven’t seen her since she was seven.’

  Seven. Just like Abigail. He stared at her, as if his penetrating gaze would be the thing that broke her. But she remained inscrutable.

  ‘What about her mother? Do you know her?’ He was determined to probe around until he hit the a-ha moment.

  She only laughed at the idea.

  ‘Her mother? No, no. She was my brother’s ex and they didn’t exactly have a long-term relationship. He never brought her home to the family. He didn’t even know about the girl until she was two or three.’

  ‘Then how did he end up with the child?’

  ‘Apparently the mother had hidden the girl’s existence from him – I don’t exactly blame her. He found out through some old friends they had in common and lit out like a shot to get her. There was no stopping my brother when he got an idea in his head. Supposedly there was a big battle but he got full custody. Or so he said. Strange to me that the court would give that ruling, I thought. Then they went on the road. You do the math.’

  Adam’s pulse quickened. She was practically telling him the girl was abducted.

  ‘He was on the run, wasn’t he?’

  She shrugged. ‘I tried not to think about it.’

  ‘You believed the girl was his daughter?’

  The woman pursed her lips and closed her eyes for a moment, sighing.

  ‘Believed it? Sure I did. Probably not the only bastard kid he’s got out there. I couldn’t see him taking responsibility though, unless he was sure. Once he started drinking, well, then it was a different story. He didn’t care so much about women then. He just wanted money, money, money all the time. That’s why I mostly cut ties. I was sick of working like a dog and then having him beg for every penny.’