I was not the optimistic, fresh-out-of-college, naïve social worker this time. No. I was Shelby Thompson, dissertation and triathlon finisher, Jonah-lover, dog mom, and Bootlegger.
I would not go down without a fight.
It felt like a zip tie binding my wrists behind me, and I focused on the hard plastic biting into my skin rather than the hand that was caressing the backs of my thighs as I was carried.
There were footfalls on wood and then a long slow creak. A door of some sort?
He flipped me over, placing me in a chair. Fear and adrenaline had my entire body trembling.
“I know you’re awake, Shelby,” the voice said calmly. And then suddenly there was light.
He pulled the hood off my face, and I saw him in the dull yellow light of a single bulb. He was older now and—God help me—even bigger. He’d always been a big kid. Now he was a big man.
We were in a cabin, a shack really. There were gaps in the walls and mismatched furniture that had seen better decades. It was hot and stuffy inside.
It stung when he ripped the tape off my lips. Lips that had said “I love you.” Lips that had kissed Jonah and made promises just hours ago.
“Hello, Christian,” I said quietly.
I paged through my rusty memory banks. Christian Harrell. Patterns of aggression, delusions, paranoia, and obsessive behaviors.
His family had been one of the first that I worked with fresh off my bachelor’s degree. Diagnoses aren’t usually made in the teens, but Christian had been showing early symptoms of schizophrenia. His diagnosis had been made officially at the mental health facility he was remanded to after he attempted to fatally stab his caseworker. Me.
Guilty but mentally ill. And as a juvenile, he’d been remanded to a hospital until he turned eighteen. My family thought I’d put the whole thing behind me, tucked it into a box and wiped my hands of it.
I preferred that they think that. But I’d kept tabs since. That’s what you did when someone who tried to end your life still existed in the world. You watched, and you waited.
He’d moved with his family to Illinois where he saw a therapist regularly, and his medication was monitored. He worked in a grocery store. And now he was squatting in front of me, toying with a knife.
He liked knives.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Shelby.” I flinched at the voice. He’d been a kid the last time. But he was a man now. “Hiding from me. Whoring yourself out. I’ve been watching. You know what I’m gonna do when I’m done with you?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’m gonna find your roommate.” He traced the tip of the knife down my cheek. “He thought he could take you from me.”
“How’s your mother, Christian?” I asked suddenly. Keep him talking. Distract him from the knife. He’d always been close with his mother. She was his protector. “Does she know where you are?”
Did anyone know where you were? Where we were?
“Mom’s stealing from me. She’s taking money out of my room.” He scratched the back of his head with the hand that held the knife.
Delusions. He’d always had trouble with thoughts about people taking things from him.
“Mom’s stealing,” he repeated.
“Does she know you’re here?” I pressed.
He laughed, an unhinged, inhuman sound.
“Did you bring your medicine?” I asked.
He stood abruptly, shoving into my space, his forehead pressed against mine. “It’s not medicine. They’re trying to control me,” he hissed.
He was sweaty and shaking, and I felt the first lick of despair. I couldn’t talk him down from this. Couldn’t appeal to him or make him let me go. I was going to have to fight for my life. He was mentally ill. And I was going to have to hurt him if I wanted to see the sunrise that was just starting to change the light through the shack’s dingy window.
Something flickered outside. A shadow. Something moving.
Crap on a cracker. Were there bears up here? Was I going to have to fight off Christian and then a bear? Could a girl not catch a break?
He backed away and slashed the air with the knife, ranting incoherently.
Okay, deep breaths. He’d bound my hands but not my feet. That was a good thing. The zip tie was good, too. But I needed to get that knife away from him long enough for me to break the tie and unlock the door.
Difficult. Yes. But not impossible. I’d completed a damn triathlon