This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2018 by Lisa Unger

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

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eISBN: 9781542090308

Cover design by Belief Agency

People in their cars. They’ll do anything, as if they’re at home on the living room couch. In their metal boxes, shuttling through space, people fight: body language tight, hands flying, mouths wide. They pick their noses, do their makeup. I saw a blonde woman in the passenger seat of an old Volvo bent over the driver’s lap, his hand resting on her neck as her head rose and fell. Through the back window of a shiny minivan, a silent baby wailed as our vehicles hovered side by side. His face was red, mouth in a nearly comical O, eyes squinted shut, arms straight out. His mom, she just drove, face blank as stone. It was strange. It made me feel hollowed out inside that no one was comforting him. I waved at the woman in the driver’s seat, but she didn’t see me. I dropped back finally, let them disappear silently into the night until it was just me again, and the white beam of my headlights.

I’ve been on the road awhile. How long? You know, I’m not even sure. Too long.

The radio is off. I can’t stand the soulless pop music, the manic chatter, the static, not for one more minute. There is just the sound of the wind shearing over the car, the tires on asphalt—a deep, hypnotic hum. Underneath that, something else. The car. It’s not right, this shaky old Mustang. It’s making a funny sound, a kind of grind-thunk, grind-thunk.

It can’t break down. It just can’t. I stroke the steering wheel. Just stay with me, I plead silently. The Mustang was my dream car when I was a kid. Not an old beater like this, on its last legs. Mine was red and glossy, fast and loud. I imagined myself behind the wheel, driving out West to exciting new places, music blaring, top down, hair blowing. Dreams come true, I guess, just not always how you imagine them.

My phone comes to life where it sits on the passenger seat, the screen casting its blue-white glow on the dashboard, the ceiling. I pick it up. The glass is shattered, a spiderweb of cracks held together by the protective film. I try not to think about how it got like that.

Where are you?

It was one of the first things he texted me, and at the time I found it very sexy. The intimacy of the question, the suggestion that he had a right to know. Now it just makes my stomach churn. I don’t answer.

You’re not going to get away with this. You get that, right?

Headlights behind me, coming up fast on my left.

There are no lights on this road; the night is pitch black on either side. Even the sky above has been abandoned by the moon and stars. In the city, it never does get dark, does it? But here, wherever I am now, it’s black. I push my foot down on the gas, my heart revving with the engine. Those lights in the rearview mirror are like eyes, bright with menace, bearing down on me.

There’s no way he’s found me.

There’s so much distance between us.

He always had that gift, though, of being where I didn’t expect him. Finding me when I didn’t want to be found.

It’s gaining. This car doesn’t have the juice to outrun something newer and faster. It’s shaking. So am I.

When the black sedan pulls beside me, the windows come down.

Oh, please, I pray to no one and nothing.

When I can bring myself to turn my head, I see a vampire, a witch, a green-faced man with bolts in his neck. They wave and honk, yelling. The vampire pushes out his tongue, opening his mouth, wide and vulgar, neon fangs displayed. Then, pedal to the metal, they squeal off. I hear their whooping laughter as a voice carries on the night: Trick or treat! Then they swerve out of sight.

Adrenaline drains from my system, replaced with a rush of relief. I’m almost light-headed with it. The road swims. I nearly laugh—on another night it would have been funny.

Halloween. That’s right. It’s coming up fast—just a few days away now, isn’t it? I don’t know for sure. The last few weeks are just a blur. One bad mistake leading to another, and another—a train wreck. And here I am, alone in an old beater on a dark highway with Halloween looming. Why do we celebrate the monsters, the destroyers, the killers among us? Me, I prefer to run away. As fast and as far as I can get.

The road rolls out ahead of me, a dark ribbon unfurling. I think it will go on forever, and I’ll just keep driving and driving. But then a string of lights slides into view on my right.

SLEEP TIGHT MOTEL

A low concrete line of a building, red doors in a tidy row. There’s a rocker out in front of each curtained window, a dim light on the wall, just above and to the left of each rocker. Behind the building I can see a tall stand of pine trees. The trees look like they go on for miles—a great black wave of nothing.

I pass a sign:

PLENTY OF ROOM.

FREE BREAKFAST.

RING THE BELL.

Slowing—did I intend to slow down?—I see now that the sky above those towering treetops is milky with stars, more than I have seen in my lifetime, a twinkling swirl in the blue-black night. Fatigue hits me like a wall. The car slows to a crawl, crunching onto the rocky lot, finally coming to a stop before room number seven, as if of its own free will. Like one of those carnival rides that ends before you’re ready and places you exactly where it wants you to go. The needle is near “Empty.”

I’m so tired that it’s an effort to hold my head up.

My body aches from the endless drive. I extract myself from the car, joints cracking, neck stiff, like an old woman. I’m not old, but I’ve misused my body and let others misuse it, and I think it shows. I know I feel it, all the scars and broken places, visible and otherwise.

What hits me first as I close the car door is the scent—the clean, crisp air laced with the light, fresh scent of the pine trees all around. Then, the silence. The lightest breeze, a whisper on the air, but nothing else. Oh, how it used to grind me down, the ceaseless noise of the city—cars and construction, horns and shouts, rumbling trucks and hissing buses. Shouting, screaming, jeering, endless talking. The chatter of my phone, constantly ringing, beeping, pinging. The throbbing music of the nightclub where I worked. Now this quiet—it’s a salve; tension drops from my shoulders. I draw in the deepest breath I have in days—maybe months.

I walk up to the office door and ring the bell. All the windows in the rooms behind me are dark. There are no other cars but mine. I have not seen another vehicle since the carload of ghouls, and I hadn’t seen one for hours before that.

All the windows in the rooms behind me are dark. There are no other cars but mine.

I ring the bell again. If no one answers, maybe I’ll just get back in the car, open the windows, and try to sleep for a while. Get on my way at first light.

Get on your way to where? I imagine him saying. You have no place to go.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I look at the spiderwebbed screen.

Been trying to call. Everything okay?

I stuff the phone back in my pants. I should get rid of it, cut the last tether to the life I’ve just set on fire. I can’t bring myself to do it. Maybe there’s a way out of this. A way back. I know there isn’t, of course.

A ghost. A shadow in the window.

No, a man, sleep-tousled sandy hair, five o’clock shadow, eyes a stunning mineral green. Kind. Kind eyes.

He opens the door with a jingle.

I point to the sign. “Sorry. The sign said ring the bell.”

“Not at all,” he says, swinging the door wide, smile welcoming. “That’s why we’re here. Sorry it took me so long.”

I step inside.

Faded jeans, a long-sleeve brick-red T-shirt, Converse sneakers—a man who dresses like a kid. That and his obvious sleepiness, it’s vaguely sexy.

“Get many late-night check-ins?” I ask.

“Oh, we get folks all hours,” he says, shutting the door behind me.

I almost apologize again, but I’ve been trying to stop doing that. It’s such a female thing, to reflexively apologize for everything, for your very existence it sometimes seems. I look around as he shuffles about behind the desk. Fishing-gear chic seems to be the décor we’re going for here. Mounted nets and rods, a framed collection of lures, lots of pictures of bearded outdoorsy-looking men, smiling, triumphant, holding high gigantic bunches of dead fish. Honestly, I never did get it. The killing of a thing for sport.

“I see you parked in front of room seven. Is that the room you want?” he asks.

“Oh,” I say, looking back at my car. “Whatever’s available.”

I step across the rustic wood floor to move closer to the counter.

He smiles. “Miss, they’re all available.”

“Well, whatever is best then.”

He shrugs. Again that smile—which manages to be somehow wise and innocent all at once. “Honestly, they’re all pretty much the same.”

“Then seven it is.”

He hands me a key from a hook on a board, from which dangle nine other keys. A chunky wooden pine tree is attached to the gold ring, the plain wood branded SLEEP TIGHT MOTEL on one side, the number 7 on the other. It’s solid and heavy in my hand, a well-made thing. Which is notable in a world of shoddily made plastic junk that falls apart, gets discarded and swept into the ocean, only to be replaced by more junk.

He slides a clipboard over to me.

“Just fill that out and we’re good to go.”

“Sure thing.”

I proceed to fill the entire form with misinformation, present a driver’s license that isn’t mine, then pay with cash I stole from someone who loved and trusted me. One day I will make up for all the things I have done in the last seventy-two hours. I swear it.

“Always so quiet here?” I ask, sliding my dirty money and pack of lies back to him.

“Summer’s our season,” he says. “That’s when the fish are running, and the whole place is packed for weeks. But, yes, it’s always pretty quiet.”

I nod, gripping the key. I am reminded of a place I visited with my dad, a place where we fished and then cooked our catch over a fire by the riverbank. It’s such a peaceful, happy memory. Just thinking about that day relaxes me—the clear blue sky, the rushing river, the smell of the fire.

“I sleep right back there,” he says, pointing down a hall to an open door. “Need anything, just dial zero on your phone, and I’ll hear it. Does the quiet make you nervous?”

“No. I like it.”

“Help you with your bags?”

“No.” I give him a smile and a little wave. “I don’t have much.”

“How long will you be staying?”

“I plan to be gone in the morning.”

He nods slowly. That smile tickles at the corners of his mouth but doesn’t fully form.

I follow him outside and down the covered walk. He takes the key from me and fits it in the lock, swings the door open. It’s far nicer than I expected, with crisp white sheets and big fluffy blankets on the bed, a cozy reading chair and lamp, a tidy dresser, flat-screen television. The bathroom, white and gray, is small but spotless.

“Everything look good?”

“Yes. Perfect.”

“There are trailheads behind the motel, easy to find if you just follow the path. If you feel like a walk in the morning before you shove off. I serve breakfast at seven, and it’s free with your room, so I hope you’ll stay at least that long. You can check out whenever you like tomorrow. Like I said, we’re not busy.”

I look out the window to assure myself I can see the car from the room. I can.

“Your car . . . ,” he says, letting the sentence trail off.

“Yes.”

“You seem worried about it. We could put it in the garage if you want.”

I am worried; the car might be seen from the road.

“If it’s no trouble—”

“None at all. It’s not a garage exactly, just an empty old barn and workshop. There’s not much in it; sometimes rich folks from the city have a lot of expensive gear. We just lock it in there.”

Outside, he walks past the rooms of the motel, then waits at the edge of the parking lot. I get in my car, then follow him along a gravel drive as he walks the short distance to a freestanding barn. When he swings the heavy wooden door open, I pull the vehicle inside. I grab the two bags I have with me and lock the car, double-checking the trunk.

“Want me to lock it?” he says when we’re outside. He motions to the latch on the barn door.

“Maybe not.”

“In case you leave early tomorrow. Before breakfast.”

Does he look a little disappointed? I feel that familiar niggle of not wanting to disappoint anyone, ever, for any reason. Another female quirk, isn’t it? Always be polite, meet expectations, smile when you don’t want to, cry instead of getting angry. Be pleasing. But honestly, I have really walked off the edge in that department.

“Right,” I say. “Which I might.”

“I’ll leave it open then.”

He walks me back to my room. At the door, he says, “I have a prediction.”

It echoes another moment, at another door, with another man, though the memory is faded.

“What’s that?”

“You are going to have the best night’s sleep of your life. And if you’re still here in the morning, the best breakfast too.”

I smile. “Are you a psychic?”

“Let’s just call it intuition.”

“Good night, Mr.—”

“Call me Drew.”

“Good night, Drew.”

“Good night, Madeline.”

I almost correct him. Oh, no, I’m not Maddie. I’m Eve. I’ve said it so many times; my best friend and I look so much alike we could be sisters. That’s why her identification is working so well for me. I catch myself, smile, and shut the door.

Maddie’s prettier than I am—fine, delicate features where mine are softer, less well formed. Her eyes are almond shaped, cat eyes. Darker—midnight, not chocolate. She’s a bit thinner, though I can squeeze into her stuff. I’m tougher, supposedly, or so I always thought; I’m the one to tell aggressive guys to fuck off, or to leave the clingers hanging, to ghost even the good guys when I’ve lost interest. Maddie’s the nice one. Too nice. The sweet girl who says yes when she means no because she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Then she gets hurt.

I realize I’m still clutching her driver’s license, glance at her smiling face.

“I’m sorry,” I say to no one.

People are addicted to all kinds of things. Maybe that explains why, after I’ve had a hot shower, changed into clean clothes, buried myself in the soft white bliss of a surprisingly comfortable bed, all I can think about is him. How can you desire someone who hurts you? How can you miss him so much your body aches? Maybe not him, the man he actually was, but the man I thought he was. We cling to our ideas of people, don’t we? We hold on tight even when all evidence points to something else.

I’m about to drift off when my phone lights up the room.

You will never get away from me. You must know that.

He saw Maddie first. But Maddie was already in love with Henry, who was working late that night—which as a young associate in a big law firm he did a lot. So, Maddie had agreed to a girls’ night out with me. I saw him leaning into her at the bar, tall and svelte, dressed in black. He wasn’t her type; he wouldn’t have had a shot even if not for Henry. Maddie was turned on by smarts, by sweetness—not by whatever this guy had. Dark good looks, obvious wealth.

I rescued her.

“Hey, we’re waiting for you,” I said, dragging her back to the dance floor.

She waved to him, and he watched her go. Then his eyes fell to mine; my imagination of course, but I swear there was an audible click. Something caught in my chest, fluttered into my belly. It’s like my body knew, right then.

“That guy,” yelled Maddie. “He was . . . intense.”

“What’s his name?” His eyes were still on me; I could feel their heat.

“Erik.”

“What did he say?”

“He was asking about you. He thought we were sisters.”

I looked back over to the bar. But he was gone.

“Let’s go,” said Maddie. “I’m wiped.”

“One more drink,” I coaxed. I didn’t have a Henry at home. I wanted to drink and dance and meet someone.

“One more,” she conceded.

Yes when she meant no. If only she’d dragged me out of there like I would have done to her if I wanted to go and she wanted to stay.

Something wakes me, its echo still on the air.

A hard thunk on the wall behind my bed has me sitting bolt upright; then I hear a crash. Silence. I wait, holding my breath. Then the sound of something being dragged heavily across the floor.

I get out of the bed and dig through my bag, find the gun I have stowed there. It’s a .38 Special, a basic revolver, loaded with six bullets. My father taught me how to use a gun like this one when I was twelve years old, gave me one for my eighteenth birthday. He blew his brains out with his own .38 some years later. Alcohol. Depression. Lost his job. Done. How this world will grind you up if you let it. He thought my mom and I would get the insurance money; we didn’t. Suicide clause.

This time, a scream—sharp, cutting the night, turning all my nerve endings to ice. It ends abruptly, in an ugly, strangled bark. Silence. Another thunk.

I pull on the jeans I’d left draped over the chair and go outside onto the porch, head next door. I stand and listen, keeping my breath even, both hands on the gun. The room is dark, the curtain still. If I hadn’t heard what I heard, I’d be sure it was empty. Didn’t Drew say all the rooms were empty?

The quiet all around me swells, blood rushing in my ears. The air is cold. The little bell on the office door sounds as it opens. I hear footfalls approach.

“Madeline?” says Drew as he draws near. “Was that you?”

“It wasn’t.”

I lower my gun and tuck it into my jeans, let my shirt fall over it, before turning to face him. He’s fully dressed, hair brushed, squeaky clean. I wonder what it says about me that I found him more attractive when he had just rolled out of bed.

“It came from in there.”

He shakes his head. “There’s no one in there.”

“There is.” I know what I heard.

He takes a big ring of keys from his jacket, jingles through them, then fits one in the lock. He gives a hard knock, another. When there’s no answer he pushes the door open. I keep my hand on my gun. I’m expecting a murder scene, but the room is empty, as tidy and welcoming as my own.

He walks inside, and I follow. The light layer of dust on the surfaces tells me that no one has been in here for a while.

“You heard it too,” I say, half questioning.

“I heard—something.”

“I heard someone screaming. A woman.”

He looks around, then back to me. “Sound is tricky out here. It carries from far away.”

I never understood that, about sound carrying.

“There’s a fog rolling in,” he goes on. “Sound gets trapped under the moisture, bounces around in strange ways. It could have been miles away.”

“I heard a heavy clunking.”

“Now, that’s the pipes,” he says, knocking on the wall. “They’ve been clunking since I was a kid. This was my grandparents’ place, then my parents’. Now it’s just me. Life sentence.”

Life sentence. He’s cheerful about it, anyway.

“Sound is tricky out here. It carries from far away.”

I feel silly, butt of the gun sticking into my ribs. What did I hear? The sun is rising golden over the trees; I walk to the door to watch it. A heavy fog rolls through the dark swath of pine, lapping over it like a wave.

I follow as he checks the other rooms. All empty, and all, as Drew said, much the same as my own. Mine has a photograph of a rushing river over the bed, and on the dresser, a small statue of a howling wolf carved from wood. I’m guessing pine. In other rooms, there are images of fish, trees, rushing rivers. More statues of different animals—a brown bear, a beaver, a sea otter on its back.

“Sorry that, whatever it was, woke you.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly seven. How about some breakfast before you’re on your way?”

On my way. To nowhere.

“Sounds great.”

I stop by my room to stow the gun, then follow him up the walk.

The breakfast room looks out onto acres of pine trees rolling into the distance. As I sit, staring at the single daisy in a small glass vase on the red-and-white checkered cloth, the fog grows thicker and thicker, painting the world smoky gray. Something about it, how it snuffs out the light, the color, makes me anxious. My chest feels heavy; there’s a throb in the back of my head. I better keep moving. I don’t have time for a leisurely breakfast. I’m getting up to go when Drew comes out with cups and a pot of coffee.

“Mind if I join you?”

It smells so good, the coffee, food cooking in the kitchen. I stop midrise and sink back down. “Please.”

He disappears again after dropping off the coffee service, returns with plates piled high with sunshiny yellow eggs, fluffy flapjacks, fresh red strawberries, crispy bacon. My stomach rumbles in anticipation. When was the last time I ate? I think I had a protein bar yesterday at some point, maybe one of those bags of peanuts you get at the gas station.

He puts the plate in front of me.

“Bon appétit.” French, though, surely, he’s never been to France, or maybe anywhere. He looks so pleased as he sits across from me. He tucks a red napkin into the collar of his blue pinstriped shirt.

“Oh, wow,” I say, looking at the food, inhaling the aroma. “Thank you so much.”

He pours the coffee, the nutty scent wafting up. He doesn’t ask me how I take it but puts in just the right amount of cream.

I couldn’t eat in front of Erik. He couldn’t stand the sound of women chewing, he told me. Just think about what that will do to your thighs, Eve. I hesitate, remembering, actually tasting the blood in my mouth.

“Please, eat,” says Drew, looking at me, expectant, smiling.

And I do. “Oh.”

The eggs. I’ve never tasted fresher, more buttery, more perfect eggs. And the pancakes, they just seem to melt away on my tongue. The berries, sweet and juicy. The bacon, crispy without being burned. I realize that Drew is the first person to cook and serve me a meal since my mother died three years ago.

I catch him watching me, that smile again.

“Did you make this?” I ask with my mouth full.

“I did.”

“It’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

It’s sweet and a little funny to watch him blush. I know I should stop, compose myself. But the food is such an orgasmic blend of savory and sweet, and I am so hungry. It’s been more than just a few days since I’ve eaten like this. In fact, food hasn’t tasted right, somehow, since I met Erik.

All of it comes bubbling up, and I almost start weeping at the table. I issue a little gasp and cover my mouth with the napkin.

“Hey,” he says. “What is it? Is the food okay?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful. Thank you.”

He’s watches me with such innocent concern, his hand reaching across the table. Then his eyes drift away, to look out the window.

I see it too.

A police car, a black-and-white prowler, comes drifting out of the fog and slows to a stop in front of the office.

“Huh,” he says, rising. “I wonder what brings him out.”

Drew leaves the room. I watch as a tall police officer emerges, pulls on his hat. He has a full black beard and a sizable belly. He wears mirrored sunglasses, so I can’t see his eyes as he ambles toward the office. He reminds me of someone—a character on a television show, maybe.

The bell at the door jingles as the cop comes inside. I overhear a muffled exchange of voices.

I get up and move closer so that I can listen in on their conversation.

“It’s a multistate search,” the officer is saying. “Eve Brown and her boyfriend, Erik Chapel. They disappeared with a huge pile of money stolen from the nightclub where she worked. Last surveillance camera footage captured at a gas station about fifty miles from here had them heading north in a stolen black Lexus. There’s a string of bodies piling up behind them.”

My throat is sandpaper; a bead of sweat travels down my back. I don’t need to hear more. I slip out the back, return to my room from the other side, and grab my bags, which are packed and waiting by the door. When I peek out, the prowler still sits empty. I am thankful for the fog, thick as gauze. I head for my car, lugging the heavy bags, slipping in through the open barn door.

Chest tight, I sit in the driver’s seat and wait. Will I hear them running out of the office after me? The silence all around me is a kind of sound, the hum of a million quiet things.

Finally, in the distance I hear the prowler’s engine come to life, a cough, a rumble, a moment of idle. Then tires on gravel until the sound fades away. I can feel my heart thumping in my chest as I turn the key in the ignition.

Nothing.

Again.

A click, a strange light hacking sound.

Wait. Breathe. Again.

Not a sound. It’s dead. The car is dead.

My phone pings, and I pull it from my pocket.

I’m right behind you, Eve. You’re never going to get away.

In the rearview mirror, I see the form of a man standing in the open doorway, a shadow against the light outside. His legs are slightly spread, arms akimbo. My body goes slack the way it sometimes did with Erik, once the fight had been beaten out of me. I found it was better, faster, to just succumb, which is the only reason I can think of why I did the things I did. I was just beaten.

Maddie had called it first. I don’t know you when you’re with him. I got mad at her, told her she just didn’t get what Erik and I shared. He wasn’t some buttoned-up, bespectacled Henry. He was wild, exciting, connecting me to desires I didn’t even know I had. I was someone different with him, someone better. She just looked at me. What’s wrong, honey? What’s he doing to you?

I close my eyes as he draws near, listening to his footfalls, imagining his breath. It’s better this way. I think part of me knew the first night we were together that he would be the end of me. He was always the predator. I was always the prey. It’s pointless to try to reverse the roles. You can’t fool Mother Nature.

“Madeline?”

For a moment it’s him, close-cropped dark hair and black eyes, the trim goatee. Cheekbones like cliffs, lips girlish pink. A mix of dark and light, mingling shadows on his face. I feel his hands roaming my body, taking me down roads into a kind of pleasure I thought was a lie, something you only read about in books. Causing me pain I never imagined I’d allow myself to suffer. He gave me a kind of poison pill, and I swallowed it, part of me liking it, the sickness. I didn’t want to get well.

Drew at the window, that innocent look of concern.

“My car,” I say, holding back tears again. “It won’t start.”

“Come on back,” he says gently, opening the door. “Finish your breakfast. You’re safe here. You don’t have to run anymore.”

I left Maddie waiting for our drinks at the bar that night and headed for the bathroom. In the dark of the hallway, he emerged from the shadows.

“Is your friend as straight as she seems?” Erik asked.

“Straighter,” I answered with a smile.

“And what about you?”

“Less so.”

The serpent, the jaguar, the vampire, they glamour. That’s what they say, isn’t it? Their stare paralyzes the prey, renders it powerless to run or fight. Erik snaked a gentle arm around my back, laced his fingers through my hair. I felt his touch on the back of my neck. Then his breath in my ear.

“You’re stunning,” he whispered.

My body tingled. He pushed me into the dark corner, pressing his mouth to mine. My body, it was on fire. His hands up my skirt, finding their way. I pulled at his fly. Right there. I let him take me in the dark corner of a nightclub. I wish I could say that I felt ashamed afterward as I pulled down my skirt and went to the bathroom to clean myself up. But all I felt was an unfamiliar dark thrill. Even my reflection in the smoky mirror was strange.

He was waiting for me when I came out.

“Why don’t you get rid of your friend?” he suggested. “I’ll meet you outside.”

I put Maddie in a cab. “Let me drop you,” she said.

“I’ll walk,” I lied. “I need the air.”

That was the first lie I told under Erik’s influence, the first night we met. Why hadn’t I seen it as a red flag, the immediate changes in me?

As I remembered it, I had cleaned the plate Drew put it front of me before the cop came, eaten like a starving person. But when we return to the table, it sits untouched, still hot.

“Did you make more food?”

“No,” he says softly. “You barely touched it.”

Again, it is heaven in my mouth. Outside the window, the fog is so thick now that it’s all I can see—the blue of the sky, the black green of the trees, all vanish into the gray. I could walk into that mist and just be gone too, I thought.

“It’s kind of fitting, isn’t it? The fog.”

“How so?” I ask.

“With Halloween coming,” he says. “It’s kind of a big deal around here.”

I notice for the first time some carved pumpkins on the fireplace hearth, a skeleton in a rocker wearing a fishing hat and holding a rod, a collection of gourds on the other tables, the fresh flower only on mine. Hanging by the door, a chalkboard decorated with bats and brooms and witches’ hats. HAUNTED TOWN TOUR 9 PM, it announced. FOLLOWED BY HOT CIDER AND GHOST STORIES AROUND THE FIRE PIT.

Oh, one of those towns—the kind of place my mom used to love—with psychics and witches, maybe a dark history of some sort, something that’s been twisted and commercialized, something heinous morphed into something adorable.

“Halloween,” I say. I’ve always hated it, ever since I was a kid. It always just seemed like an excuse to connect to the darkest parts of ourselves, the stuff we tamp down the rest of the year. “A day to celebrate evil.”

Drew looks at me strangely, and for a moment he reminds me of someone. No, that isn’t it at all. It’s as if I know him, that I have always known him.

“There’s no such thing as evil.”

“Oh, no?” I could share a story or two that might change his mind about that.

“There’s just light and shadow, a kind of balance, or dance.”

When I looked into Erik’s eyes, really saw him for the first time, there was nothing there. I was gazing into space, a vast, cold emptiness. There were no layers to him, no light and shadow. All the air left my lungs. Thinking of him, my hand flies to my throat. That’s the last place he touched me. It is still raw and tender where his hands had squeezed until I saw stars.

“Darkness is a part of life,” Drew says lightly. “Death is a part of life.”

“I just don’t get it,” I say. The strawberry in my mouth tastes like sunshine and green grass, blue skies and pink blossoms. For a second I forget everything—that I’m on the run with no place to go, that Erik is somewhere right behind me, that the police were just here, that I’m not sure what Drew suspects, or why he’s being so kind to me. It’s just me and that berry in my mouth, the warmth of the room. I wipe away a trickle of red juice, and my napkin comes back stained with dots of blood red. “Why celebrate death?”

“We’re dead far longer than we’re alive. Why not celebrate? Why not tell ourselves a story about what comes next?”

“If anything does.”

When my father died, I waited for a haunting. I prayed for one. But he never came; I think he would have if he could. And my mother, she wasted away, cancer taking her piece by piece. There was nothing left of her.

“Are you familiar with the laws of thermodynamics?”

I laugh a little. “No,” I say. “I wasn’t the best student, barely graduated community college.”

“The first law states that energy can change form but cannot be created or destroyed.”

“Okay.”

“So, we—our bodies, our spirits or whatever—it’s pure energy. To me, that means we have always been here, and we always will be, just taking different forms.”

I like that. It makes a kind of sense, managing to be scientific and spiritual all at once. Something about it gives me comfort. My plate—how does it still look full? I feel like I’ve been eating for hours.

“So where are you headed?” asks Drew.

“North,” I say. Maybe I should have said south, the opposite of what the cop told him. “If I can get my car running.”

“I’ll help you with that,” he says. “I’m good with cars.”

“A cook, a mechanic, running a hotel,” I say. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Plenty.”

There’s another small carved wooden statue on the table that I hadn’t noticed until now. A crow. I lift it and examine it.

“These statues—”

“Oh, they’re mine. I make them in my woodshop.”

It’s beautifully wrought—the eyes, the feathers, the delicate beak.

“My father had a predilection for taxidermy, which used to give me nightmares when I was a kid. I prefer to give life to reclaimed wood. I sell them in the shop.”

It’s sitting on a little card that just has a website address: FriendsoftheSleepTightMotel.com.

“I sell them online too. The fish do well. The bear is my most popular; the kids really like that one. And the owl. The crow, not so much.”

“I think he’s beautiful.”

“Well, then,” he says with a gracious nod, “he’s yours.”

“Put it on my bill.”

“A gift,” he says. “To thank you for your company.”

Now I’m blushing. My mother always told me that if you’re embarrassed by a kindness and don’t know what to say, keep it simple. “Thank you.”

“You know,” he says. He reaches for my hand, and I let him place it over mine. His touch is warm, sending energy up my arm. “You can stay. As long as you want. You’re safe here.”

Oh, but I’m not. I’m not safe anywhere.

“It’s a beautiful place, and you’re lovely,” I say. “But I should be getting on.”

Before that cop comes back. Before Erik finds me. Before I poison Drew’s perfect little world.

He nods, seems to get everything I’m thinking without my saying a word. “Well, let me do the dishes and I’ll meet you in the barn.”

“Can I help?”

“You can keep me company if you want,” he says. “There’s hardly anything to do.”

Everything here is simple, in working order, nothing fancy but not run-down either. The kitchen, like the rest of the place, is spotless. He lets me dry the plates, then shows me where to stack them with the others. A rhythm sets in quickly, and the place, his energy, even the squeak of the silverware drawer is familiar. Have I been somewhere like this before? Long ago?

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

Maddie.

Girlfriend, I am seriously worried. Your voice mail is full. The police were just here. What they’re saying you and Erik did—I know you. I know it’s not true. Call me. My dad, he can help you. He wants to.

Maddie thinks her daddy can fix anything. Big-city power lawyer to the stars. He can’t fix this. Some things cannot be fixed. Sometimes there’s only one way out. My dad knew that.

“People are really attached to those things, aren’t they?” says Drew, drying his hands on a white dishcloth.

I look down at my phone; it’s heavy in my hand. “This? You don’t have one?”

“Don’t need one here.”

“Must be nice,” I say. “To be apart from all the chatter of the world.”

“There’s something to be said for it, I suppose.”

I shove it back in my pocket, oddly protective of it suddenly, then follow Drew as he leaves the kitchen.

Drew’s woodshop is also in that barn. While he tinkers under the hood, I look at all his tools, the rows of wooden creatures. I hold the crow in my hand, have been since he was given to me. His weight and smoothness offer an odd comfort, like a worry stone.

“The Native Americans in this area thought that the crow ushered spirits to the land of the dead,” says Drew from under the hood. “Other cultures saw the crow as a creature of foretelling, that when he appears you should be aware of messages that will awaken you to your authentic self.”

The crow seems to be watching me. I flip him over and see tiny words carved on his belly, nearly hidden in the feather work: Nothing escapes the keen sight of the crow.

“Others still saw him as a custodian of ancient magic and mystical law.”

I shove the crow in my pocket. I don’t want him to see my authentic self.

“So, you run this place all by yourself, and the online business,” I say, changing the subject.

There is a tidy shelf of flat mailing boxes, labels, a jar of Sharpies, packing tape. About five boxes are packed and ready to go.

“My mother died a few years back from a heart attack,” he says softly.

“I’m sorry.”

“And since then, yes, I’ve been alone here.”

On his worktable, a half-formed owl emerges from a block of wood, a carving tool beside it.

“Mostly it’s pretty manageable. And once the snow comes, well, it’s really just me then. A lot of the time, I can’t get in or out. I just stock up and hunker down.”

“Do you get lonely?”

He turns to me and shrugs, face sweetly clueless. “I don’t know. It’s always been like this. And,” he says, nodding toward the carvings, “I have my animal friends.”

I turn to look at the rows of owls, beavers, bear. They seem to stare back at me in gentle inquiry. I return my gaze to Drew, and he cracks up laughing.

“Just kidding.”

I laugh too, for the first time in—months.

As if on cue, my phone pings once, twice, three times. Erik.

A pretty blonde bought a protein bar at a gas station yesterday. She was driving a beat-up old Mustang.

I’m

Right

Behind

You

Bitch.

That delicious breakfast turns to acid in my gut.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I lie.

“Everyone’s probably wondering where you are.”

“Yeah,” I say. “No worries, though.”

He closes the hood and turns to face me. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This is beyond my abilities.”

My hands are shaking, Erik’s text a menacing whisper in my ear. I can’t focus on what Drew just said, and my expression must communicate that.

“The car,” he clarifies. “I can’t fix it. I’m not even sure why it’s not running.”

I get in the driver’s seat and turn the key again. Once, twice, three times. Dead. Not a sound except a desultory click, click, click. Please. Please. Please.

“I can get a friend of mine out here,” he says. “He owns the garage in town.”

“No,” I say, too quickly.

Drew, standing beside the car, gives me a level gaze. “He can be discreet.”

Of all the things you hear about small towns, their ability to keep secrets is never chief among them. Gossip and rumors are the lifeblood of a place where nothing ever happens. First, it’s the mechanic, who tells his wife, who tells her girlfriend, who tells her sister, who’s dating the cop who was here. I grew up in a place just like this. I know something salacious can travel like wildfire. A strange girl up at the Sleep Tight, a broken-down old Mustang that she’s hiding in the barn.

I rest my head against the wheel, try to breathe.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“The less you know, the better for you,” I surprise myself by saying.

“The cop said a young woman and her boyfriend are missing,” says Drew. “Apparently some money was stolen from the nightclub where she worked. Someone was killed. Later, another man was killed for his car. Police are not sure if the girl is an accomplice or a hostage.”

Can you be both? I wonder. Is it possible to be complicit and acting against your will? Aren’t a lot of things like that? Maybe my whole life is just a reaction to the things that have happened, me doing what I had to do to survive and thrive in circumstances as they were thrust upon me, starting with Dad’s suicide, which led me to work two jobs while going to high school so I could help Mom, which made my grades suffer, which caused me to go to community college, where I had to work even more shifts to pay for that and help Mom too. My life hasn’t been like Maddie’s—the adored, protected child of privilege. I scrambled to become. Become what? A manager at a nightclub, social media expert, party promoter—all the things I did for Sandy, who paid me well and treated me like a daughter. Poor Sandy.

“She’s probably not sure either,” I say into the steering wheel.

“Sometimes we fall in with the wrong people,” says Drew. “But sometimes we fall in with the right ones. And if we let them help, things go easier.”

I don’t say anything. He’s kind, maybe a little naïve, a man living out in the middle of nowhere all his life. What does he know about the kind of mess I’m in?

“I’ll let you think about it.”

I nod.

“Don’t forget your crow.”

He hands me the bird, which I thought was in my pocket, but I must have left him on the roof of the car when I climbed in. I take him and stare into his beady eyes.

Drew leaves me. That silence, it thrums in my ears.

I should take my bags, leave the car, and just start walking. People do that, right? Just get on the road and start walking. Sleep where I can. Maybe get another car somewhere. Just keep going and going.

“Where will we go?” I asked Erik. I half believed that it was a play-pretend, a fantasy scenario we were acting out.

“Anywhere we want.”

Sandy kept $250,000 in the safe in his office. Also, a bag with a gun, his passport, some other documents. He called it his bug-out stash. Who do you think might be coming for you, Sandy? I’d asked. You never know, kid. You never know.

“It’s not that much money,” I said.

“It’s enough, some places. It’s a nest egg. From there we do—anything.”

When I met Erik, I thought he had money: those Rag & Bone jeans, the Rolex, the Bruno Magli shoes, the wad of cash he used to pay for my drink. If I’m honest, it was part of the attraction. That first night we made love in his Tribeca loft all night, then watched as the sun came up over the East River from his rooftop, sipping prosecco in Tiffany flutes. He asked if I wanted to go to Paris next weekend. Only it wasn’t his place; he was house-sitting. Even the clothes on his back belonged to the artist who owned the loft. We never did go to Paris.

But he got his hooks in deep, and fast. I don’t even know how. It felt like an ancient relationship, wasp to flower, bow to string, predator to prey. By the time he started asking me for money, I wanted to give it to him. Then it was: Get another credit card. Ask your boss for a raise. Did you inherit any money when your parents died?

“That old man has so much money,” said Erik. He was half-naked, smoking. He looked as if his body had been sculpted from clay, every line a study in design, a feast for the eyes. Why did God make him so beautiful?

“He’ll never call the cops on you,” Erik went on. We lay in the dark, the city noise loud outside. “You know that.”

I’d seen Sandy punch another man right in the bridge of his nose, a bouncer named Rick who’d grabbed me in the back room and tried to force himself on me. Sandy, bigger than the big man by far, grabbed him by the shirt, threw him against a wall of shelves, knocking supplies everywhere, and rammed his school ring right into Rick’s face. Blood everywhere, Rick wailing like a little boy. Oh, how the mighty fall. The other guys tossed him on the street.

“You okay there, little girl?” asked Sandy, so worried. “You okay?”

I was shaking, still feeling Rick’s hard grip on my arm, the sandpaper of his stubble that rubbed my face raw as he pressed his lips to mine. The taste of him—it made me sick. Sandy held me. I closed my eyes and pretended he was my dad.

“He’s tougher than you think,” I told Erik.

“He’s in love with you.”

“He loves me,” I said. “It’s not the same thing.”

“I’m in love with you,” said Erik. He brought a hand to my face, twisted his fingers through my hair. “I’d do anything for you.”

I knew it wasn’t true. But I wanted it to be true so badly that I let the words be enough. His grip was too tight lately. He wasn’t always nice. The sex had gotten a little rough—some slapping, holding me down so hard I couldn’t move. One night, he’d grabbed me too tightly by the wrist when I’d tried to leave during an argument. What were we even fighting about?

He rested his hand on my throat, the weight of his body pressing down on me. I couldn’t have gotten away from him if I wanted to.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I love you.”

Then he was inside me until I was helpless and moaning with pleasure. I did love him, sad as it was. I did.

“I hate him,” said Maddie the next night. “He’s taking you away from me. You’re not even here now, always checking your phone.”

If I miss a call from him, or a text, he’ll be mad, I wanted to say, but I knew how bad it sounded.

“I’m here,” I told her. “Nothing’s changed. You’ll always be my best friend.”

She looked down into her cosmo. “Promise?”

“Of course.”

I could already feel the tide of our lives pulling us away from each other, Maddie headed in the right direction, me caught in some dark current, slipping out to sea.

I’m getting out of here. I leave the car and walk through the thick fog to my room. I slip inside, check my bags. Everything’s there, untouched. The money, the gun. Wait. How did the bags get here? They were in the trunk of the car, weren’t they?

Drew. He must have carried them back. Right?

There’s a note on the dresser.

Have dinner with me tonight, get a good night’s sleep. And I’ll help you move on in the morning. Okay? —Drew

No. It’s a bad idea. I should go. If Erik was at that gas station, he’s only a day behind me. He’ll come this way and stop here to ask about me. Maybe he’d hurt Drew. Or, maybe, if he’s still in that Lexus, maybe the police will pick him up. Maybe they’ve picked him up already. There’s the first glimmer of hope I’ve had.

I should turn on the news. But when I try the television, it doesn’t work. There’s just a screen full of static, filling the room with oddly comforting white noise. I muck with it, turning it on and off, checking the cables in the back, messing with the remote. Finally, I sink onto the bed in frustration.

Fatigue, it’s a weight pressing down on my shoulders, my eyelids. My limbs are filled with sand. I fall back, close my eyes. Just for a minute. Just one minute. So I can think, clear my head, come up with a plan.

When I open my eyes, it’s dark.

And someone’s screaming.

I scramble for my gun again as the door to my room slowly starts to drift open.

Sandy’s office is dim. I’d walked him out as was my custom, to the waiting town car in front of the club.

“Don’t let Bob and Pete leave until you’ve locked up and they’ve seen you into the car,” he reminds me, like he does every time I’m scheduled to close up. “It’s not safe. This is one of the last cash businesses out there.”

“I won’t let them go,” I promise.

He looks tired, has been leaving earlier and earlier, relying more and more on me.

“You’re a good egg, Evie.”

He pats me on the shoulder and disappears behind the tinted glass. Back upstairs, the thrum of the music comes through the floor. Sandy’s office is lit only by the glow of his saltwater aquarium stocked with tropical fish—bright-yellow tangs and clownfish, a seahorse, an angelfish. It’s peaceful. I sink into his chair, look at the picture he keeps there of his wife and daughter, who have both passed—a car accident many years ago. I’m not going to steal from this man. I’m not.

“Second thoughts?”

I nearly jump out of my skin. “Erik.”

He’s standing behind the door in the shadows.

“I’m leaving tonight. With or without you.”

“Okay,” I say. “Without me.”

He’d hit me that morning, a hard slap across the face when I told him I didn’t want to steal from Sandy. He’d shoved me, pulled my hair hard when I tried to walk away. The violence had been escalating. The nasty comments about my body, about Maddie. There was a weight on me when he was around, a fatigue.

The sting from that slap was with me all day, inside and out. I wasn’t okay with it. My daddy loved me; he never lifted a hand to me. I wasn’t one of those women who confused pain and fear for love.

“I think you should go.” My phone is in my hand; I’m ready to dial Pete. They don’t call him Semi for nothing.

Erik pushes the door closed.

“Don’t do this,” he says. “Please. I don’t want to lose you.”

Something in me has gone numb.

“Erik,” I say softly. “You need to go. I want some space to think about things.”

He’s on me before I can move, knocking the phone from my hand and pulling me harshly to my feet by the arms. He is so strong, his fingertips digging painfully into my flesh. The flash of a blade; he spins me around. I feel the sharp edge of a knife cut the delicate skin of my neck. I scream, but because of the music and where Sandy’s office is, Pete and Bob won’t be able to hear me at the door. No one can hear me.

He puts his hand over my mouth, pushes me toward the safe.

“Open it and give me that bag.”

He forces me to my knees. I land hard, my head snapping painfully down and back again. He kicks me in the ribs, knocking the wind out of me, and I topple to the ground, gasping for air.

“Anybody ever robs this place,” Sandy always said, “give them everything. No amount of money is worth your life.”

“Get up and do it,” says Erik, so calmly he almost sounds bored.

I obey, entering the combination and opening the door. The bag is there as it always has been.

“What’s going on here?”

Sandy fills the doorway. I see it then, his briefcase, by the desk. He’d left it. Oh God.

“Sandy, run!”

Erik is a wraith in the semidark, moving swift and silent. I lunge for him, but he knocks me back. He’s on Sandy in the dark, his arm jabbing, spinning the big man around. Then he draws the knife across Sandy’s throat.

Sandy falls with a shuddering thud, a horrible rasping sound filling the room. Erik lunges for the bag, whipping it out of the safe as if it weighs nothing, grabbing me with his other arm, and dragging me like a child.

I reach for Sandy as we pass, but his eyes have gone glassy and blank.

I scream his name, a wail that fills the night and splits me apart inside.

“Maddie, Maddie,” says Drew in the doorway, slowly lifting his hands. “Are you okay? You were screaming and screaming.”

I stare at him, on my knees on the floor, breathless, clinging to the gun.

“I knocked, but you didn’t answer. I had to let myself in.”

He drops to his knees too. “Hey, put the gun down, okay?”

I lower it, let it drop.

“Nightmare?” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I get them too sometimes. The bad stuff, it really stays with you, doesn’t it?”

“I’m sorry,” I manage.

The room, the world, it’s spinning. Past and present, one big ugly jumble. The future a total blank, void even of hopes and dreams. Oh God, what am I going to do?

“What time is it?” I ask.

The room, the world, it’s spinning. Past and present, one big ugly jumble.

“It’s time for dinner,” he says gently. He offers a hand and helps me to my feet. If he’s unsettled by the fact that I pulled a gun on him, it doesn’t show. “Walk with me.”

“Let me get cleaned up.”

“You’re perfect,” he says, and he seems to mean it in some easy, come-as-you-are kind of way, not as flattery or false assurance. “It’s just us here.”

I reach for my phone, but Drew has my hand. “You don’t need that.”

I leave it and let him lead me out the door and into the mist.

He’s lit a candle at every table in the small dining room, the lights low.

“My mother was German, and this spätzle recipe was her specialty,” says Drew. “You’re going to love it.” He disappears into the kitchen, then reemerges with two plates.

It’s another heavenly meal: savory buttery dumplings, chicken, bacon. There’s crusty bread, and a crisp, fresh salad of dark greens and plump tomatoes. Again, I eat and eat, but the food seems to have no end.

“Who is Sandy?” he asks.

Even the sound of his name hurts.

“A friend. Someone I used to work for.”

“I think that’s the name you were yelling.”

I nod, put my fork down. “He passed away.”

“You miss him.”

“I do.”

He takes a breath, a drink of water.

“I think these days that honor the dead, like Halloween, I think that’s why, you know?

“Because they’re still with us—in our memories, our dreams, in our wishes and prayers. No one ever really leaves us. Maybe it’s a way of expressing that, the way life and death mingle.”

I’m going to leave right after dinner. I have to. I can’t stay here.

“Are you staying the night?”

“Yes, if that’s all right?” Another lie.

I’ll wait until he’s closed down for the night. I don’t want him to see which way I go or offer to help any more than he has. I’ll leave him more cash in the room. He can probably get something for the Mustang. I’ve imposed on him, taken advantage of his kindness.

“Of course,” he says. “As long as you want.”

After dessert, a decadent German chocolate cake, he walks me back to my room. He’s gentlemanly and kind, no smarm or hint of a hidden agenda.

At the door, he takes my hand. Everything about him is warm, his gaze, the skin of his hand.

“So,” he says, looking back toward the office. “I’m just down there. If you need anything. If you want to talk. Anything.”

It’s an invitation, one that acknowledges that I’m in a tough spot, that he won’t take advantage.

“Good night,” I say. I wonder if he hears the regret in my voice. Another time and place, I might have taken him up on it.

He starts to walk away, then turns around.

“Did I tell you about my mom and dad?”

“A little,” I say.

“Dad was here alone, my grandparents had both passed. He was running the hotel just like I do now. My mom, she stopped in here one night. She had just left a bad relationship, was at loose ends. He offered her a job; she stayed on. They fell in love.”

“Are you offering me a job,” I say with a smile.

“What do you do?”

“I’m an event promoter, a social media manager.” What a stupid job. My mother wanted me to be a doctor, not that there was money for that.

“Huh,” he says. “Just so happens that we have an opening here for that very thing. You know, the Friends of the Sleep Tight Motel don’t sell themselves. And our parties—well, they’re not very well attended.”

I laugh.

“Good night, Madeline.”

I want him to call me by my real name. I wish I could tell him.

“Good night, Drew.”

I take a shower, change my clothes. I make sure I’m fully packed, bags by the door. I’m not going anywhere near that bed. With the gun in my lap and all the lights out, I move the chair so that it faces the door.

If he comes, I’ll be ready.

If not, I’ll be gone before the sun comes up.

Sorry, Drew. This is no love story.

I sit in the passenger seat beside Erik as he drives. My thoughts are a manic tumble.

Why didn’t I fight harder? Why did I let Erik drag me out of the club through the back alley, to the car he had parked nearby?

I can’t stop crying, thinking about Sandy’s dead eyes. I don’t do anything but weep in the passenger seat while Erik drives us out of town. He’s blank, doesn’t even seem to hear me.

Maybe it’s shock. Maybe that’s why I feel weak, powerless, a prisoner. But, no, there is something clinging inside me, something grasping. It didn’t happen, I think. He’s not this. There’s been a mistake; somehow, he’s going to be that beautiful, romantic, tender man he was in the early days of our relationship.

The man Erik pretended to be—he was the prince they tell you about. The one who was coming to rescue me from the doldrums of a normal life. What Maddie wanted—the successful husband, the towheaded children, the city apartment and weekend beach house—I never wanted. I didn’t want to stay home by the fire. I wanted to burn it up. Erik was my personal brand of Prince Charming.

“You killed him.” My voice is a whisper.

Erik doesn’t say anything right away. I think that he’ll apologize, that he’ll look at me and something in his eyes will make it all right. But when he turns, and I really see him for the first time, there’s nothing there. His eyes are black holes, swallowing light and sound, swallowing me, and everything I wanted from my life.

“And you’re my accomplice. We’re in this together now. You knew what I was planning. You told no one.”

He’s right. I brought Erik into my world. I am responsible for Sandy’s death, a man who’d cared about me and treated me well. Erik did the deed, but I opened the door.

We drive and drive. I don’t remember stopping for gas, though we must have. The night is endless, as if the sun will never rise. Then, on a dark, deserted road, we come across a motel, and he pulls into a parking space.

I startle. Did I drift off? Wait. What motel was that? Wasn’t it strangely like this one? Or maybe it’s just that all motels in the middle of nowhere seem the same.

My cell phone rings. It’s Maddie. Her face smiles out at me from the shattered screen.

I pick it up to answer. I have to hear her voice.

But when I do, there’s only a loud, hissing static. I try to call back, but the call fails again and again, although there’s service and a strong signal. Maybe I’m just too far away from the world, in the outer space of irreversible consequences.

I should leave now. It’s late enough. But I’m so tired that I just sink back into the chair. I’ll stay just a little while longer.

Erik comes back to the car, locks the bags in the trunk, tucks the keys into his pocket.

“Try getting these keys,” he says as he drags me out of the car. “I dare you.”

Inside the room, it’s dark. He doesn’t turn on the lights, just walks to the bathroom and takes a disgustingly long pee. Then he pulls a chair in front of the door, sinks into it, and pins me with his gaze.

“Lie down,” he says. I obey, because I’m just a lamb to the slaughter.

Minutes pass, and I lie shivering. Then his breath comes deep and even. I know how he sleeps. Like a cat, with one eye always open. The minute I move a muscle, he’ll wake up.

My brain goes to work. What do I have?

I have Maddie’s driver’s license. I’d switched it with mine a few days ago. She’s been calling all night. Erik, in some oversight, hasn’t taken my phone, so I have that.

The keys are in his pants. The bag is in the trunk. Sandy’s gun is in the bag.

I get up and approach Erik. He opens his eyes as I come to stand in front of him. I start unbuttoning my blouse.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. He smiles.

Shit. I must have dozed off again. Something woke me. I sit up, gun in hand, and listen to that humming silence. And then I hear it again, a thunk against the wall, something heavy being dragged. Muffled voices, angry. A crash.

Every nerve ending tingling, every muscle tense, I walk to the door and open it. The fog—it obscures everything. I hear a strangled scream, but it’s distant and strange. The door next to mine is ajar.

I’m dreaming. Am I dreaming? The gun is heavy in my hand.

I stand, breath ragged, as a form emerges from the mist.

“Don’t come any closer,” I say, but it’s just Drew. And he looks so, so sad.

“Eve,” he says.

The sound of my own name disappears into the fog.

“Don’t go in there.” He reaches out a hand. “Just—let’s talk, back in the office.”

“Someone’s hurt,” I say. “I heard screaming. Something being dragged.”

“Yes.”

I walk toward the room beside mine and push the door open with the barrel of my gun.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Erik. He smiles, comes to his feet.

I wrap my arms around his neck and let him kiss me. I should be revolted by his touch—he’s a monster, and I see that now. But I’m not revolted. I still relish the feel of him, the taste of him. The body wants what the body wants, and sometimes the heart and mind are nowhere to be found. Addiction. When the pathways in your brain, those firing synapses, that blissful flood of pleasure chemicals betray all your higher knowledge, all your best intentions.

I am alive with desire as he pushes me onto the bed, stripping his shirt and letting it fall to the floor. The ripple of the muscles in his arms, the chiseled lines of his face, those powerful hands as they roam my body, tear at my clothes. I wrap my legs around his, and then he’s inside me. My arms around his back, his lips on my neck, our bodies entwined, enmeshed, electric with pleasure.

“I love you,” he whispers. “Don’t leave me.”

Oh God, I think. He means it. He thinks he loves me, that I could love him. He’s that empty inside, that divorced from any idea of what love means.

“I won’t,” I lie. “I’ll never leave you.”

He sleeps, and when he does I slowly pull on my clothes, grab the keys from his pants where they fell to the floor, and start to run.

I pull the door open and almost make it through. Another step, another second, and I would have been out. His fingers snake through my hair, and he yanks me back hard. I fall back against him and feel that blade at my neck.

“Where do you think you’re going, Evie?”

I drive my elbow back into his ribs. He falls hard against the dresser with a crash, the old television topples, smashes against the floor. The knife flies, landing soundlessly on the bed. I try for the door again, the metal of the keys digging hard into my hand. He smashes into me from behind, and I knock my head against the sharp, hard corner of the bedside table. The world starts to wobble.

He drags me by my ankle into the middle of the room. I grab for the chair, but it just comes with me, making a loud squeal against the floorboards.

He climbs on top of me, a Halloween monster, face bloody, mouth pulled into a grimace, eyes dark with rage. Then his hands close around my neck. My arms are butterfly wings, powerless against his sheer weight and strength. My kicking legs do nothing.

Beside me on the floor, there’s a crow, beautifully carved from a piece of wood. He watches me with one beady eye.

The world blacks out around the edges, and there are stars—a million sparkling points of light, infinite possibilities in a multiverse. All the fight drains from my body, and for a lovely second, I’m on the dance floor with Maddie.

“Let’s go,” she yells over the music. “I’m tired.”

“Okay,” I say. And then we’re out in the night, cab racing us uptown toward home.

I disappear into Erik’s black eyes.

I stand at the doorway and watch, with Drew at my back. She’s beautiful, that girl. Or she was. She was smart in some ways, foolish in others. She was too trusting, too sure of her own power. She was too alone in the world; no one taught her the hard lessons well. She had to learn them for herself. She would have been okay, though, if not for him.

When she stops thrashing, he climbs off her, panting. He stands for a long moment and stares at her lifeless body. Then he slowly gets dressed, carefully gathering up all their things.

Drew and I step aside as he leaves the room and walks to the car, opens the trunk, and moves the bags to the back seat. He looks around.

Then he returns to the room, wraps her in the bedspread.

I rage and rail at him, screaming, pulling at him. But he and I don’t occupy the same dimension anymore, the same moment in time.

Drew stands patient, waiting. We have all the time in the world.

Erik carries her outside and puts her in the trunk, stands a moment looking, shaking his head as though the dead girl has been a bitter disappointment to him, then closes it with a heavy thud. He gets in the car and drives away, leaving the door to the room ajar.

I drop to my knees, my keening voice ringing through the mist, then swallowed by it. He’s gone. She’s gone. I’m gone.

Drew stands behind me in the utter silence that follows. I turn to look at him. I don’t understand. But I do.

“We all have to come to terms with this in our own way,” says Drew, solemn. I don’t even ask him what he means. “It’s not always an easy transition.”

The taillights get smaller and smaller until they disappear. An odd calm settles, like that fog over the treetops.

“Are you hungry?” he says into my silence.

“Starving.”

He offers me a hand, and I climb to my feet. I walk back into my room, feeling as though I have forgotten something. But there’s nothing there. Just the tidily made bed and orderly dresser. No bags. No cell phone. No gun.

“You don’t need any of those things anymore,” Drew says gently. “You can let it all go.”

I linger a moment, the last tendrils from my life drifting away.

I follow Drew to the office, where the television is on.

KILLER APPREHENDED, reads the bold, sensational graphic. In smaller type: YOUNG VICTIM FOUND IN THE TRUNK OF HIS STOLEN CAR.

I watch the screen as Erik is led away in handcuffs, face bruised, head hanging. I got my licks in, I’m gratified to see. Didn’t go out without a fight. The car is surrounded by police cruisers, an ambulance; a crowd of onlookers has gathered. It’s like so many stories I’ve seen on the news, another ugly, tragic tale. People doing wrong to each other, to themselves. When will we figure it out?

I reach for my phone again, a habit, a tic. I remind myself that it’s gone, that it has been gone for a while.

Also gone: my rage, my fear, all the things I thought I wanted, all my regrets and loss and sorrow. I’m wearing faded jeans and an easy cotton tunic, things I don’t remember owning or putting on.

“Given any thought to that job offer?” asks Drew from behind the counter, where he hangs my key back on the board with the others.

“Some,” I say.

“At least stay on for the next couple of days,” he says. “Halloween’s kind of a big deal around here.”

The sun is coming up, rising golden over the tips of the towering pine trees. The mist recedes. On the windowsill, a row of carved wooden animals stares—an owl, a beaver, a bear, and my old friend, the crow.

Don’t miss the riveting new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger.

It’s been a year since Poppy’s husband, Jack, was brutally murdered during his morning run through Manhattan’s Riverside Park. In the immediate aftermath, Poppy spiraled into an oblivion of grief, disappearing for several days only to turn up ragged and confused wearing a red dress she didn’t recognize. What happened to Poppy during those lost days? And more important, what happened to Jack?

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Available wherever books are sold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Unger is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been published in twenty-six languages worldwide and whose essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and NPR. Unger lives in the Tampa Bay area of Florida with her husband, daughter, and labradoodle.