uncertain at first, but then I scratch and pull until the color splinters. When my fingers come away with a dime-sized layer, I see for sure that that’s all this is: a layer. That beneath the brown paint is something else. I grab the flashlight, point it toward the door—and yes. Yes.
It’s red.
Red like a firetruck. Like the cross on an ambulance. Red like an open wound.
It only takes a second for my heart to catch up. It pounds so loud I hear it like a fist knocking against the wood. But now I hear another sound too. Distant but approaching.
The crunch of tires. The rumble of an engine.
A beat of silence in which I hold my breath.
A car door slamming shut.
I act without thinking. Close the basement door. Turn off the flashlight. Curl into myself.
Seconds pulse by. Then hinges squeak. Footsteps thud.
“Hello?”
I’d know his voice anywhere.
He’s come through the screen at the back, like I did, and he’s tracing my steps toward the front of the cabin.
I’ve left my scent all over this place. I’ve always been so easy to catch.
“Brierley? Are you here?”
I pinch my lips together. Hold my hand over my nose and mouth.
“You shouldn’t be,” Cooper says. “I didn’t want you to see this yet.”
The whole cabin seems to shake with the weight of his steps. But then he pauses, and everything goes still.
“Are you up there?” he asks. “Hang on, I’m coming to get you.”
When his footsteps thump again, they sound so close it’s as if we’re in this basement together. But then the ceiling rattles, dust sprinkles onto my head, and I realize he’s above me now, climbing the stairs to the second floor—the one place I didn’t check.
I breathe only once before making a break for it. I swing open the door and run toward the back of the cabin. I don’t care about the noise I’m making. As I hurl myself through the screen, I know he’s heard me, I know he’s in pursuit. But I have a head start and I’m almost inside my car. I nearly burn myself on the scorching metal of his truck, pulled so close beside my driver’s side, but I make it behind the wheel, turn the keys, and slam it into reverse.
That’s when I see him rounding the corner of the cabin—when it’s too late for him to snatch me up. I push the gas pedal to the floor, whoosh backward along the path that’s barely visible through the trees. And all the while, I don’t watch his face or his eyes, or even my rearview mirror. I stare at his tattoo, dangerous and disturbing as it’s ever been, but becoming smaller and smaller as I back away.
When I whip my car onto the main road, I reach into my cupholder for my phone. It’s not there, of course—I left Ted’s house with only my keys—and anyway, it wouldn’t work here. But I have to call the police. Have to tell them to look for Astrid on the second floor of the cabin.
I’m driving so fast I make it back to Ted’s in less than two minutes. Then I spurt from the car, race into the house and up the stairs. I only stop when I see that the phone isn’t on its base in the hall, and I remember that I threw it at Ted’s back, seething with an anger I’d never indulged before.
Ted’s office door is open, but he isn’t inside. I search for the phone, but it’s not on the floor where it must have landed. It’s not on Ted’s desk or chair. I pick up Astrid’s book, let it clatter onto the floor. Pick up a pile of jacketless hardcovers and let them fall there too. Now I notice a sheet of paper that bulges on top of a stack, and as I pluck it up, I uncover the phone.
The paper is warm, as if its words have just been branded onto it. As if it’s been ripped from the typewriter so fast it generated a spark. Or maybe it’s the heat of this room, closing around me like before.
I turn on the phone. Press 9, then 1. Then a phrase on the paper hooks my eyes.
The subject is thirty-two years old, but she still behaves as an adolescent.
The subject. I’ve seen this kind of language before, whenever he would read back his notes to me as I sat in the interview chair. He was looking for praise, I think. Admiration.