her apartment without jumping at her own shadow, but it’d also been a long time since she didn’t glance over her own shoulder repeatedly out of habit alone.
She located the package of round stickers she needed and took them to the self-checkout lane. As they were heading out of the store, Josie caught sight of the flyer she’d put up two weeks before advertising the sale. Her footsteps stalled and she frowned, walking over to the large bulletin board where community members posted things under the headings the grocery store management had put at the top of the board: For Sale, Help Wanted, Coupons, etc. Next to her flyer, was pinned the printout of an old newspaper article. Josie’s heart stalled and her mouth went dry. The headline read: Missing College Student Escapes Torture Chamber, and the subheading under that: Raped, starved and impregnated, Josie Stratton begs public to help find her missing son. The accompanying picture of her was jarring—expression vacant, eyes huge and haunted in her gaunt face, hair unkempt. It was a still photo from the news conference she’d given from her hospital bed, begging the public to come forward with any information they might have. She’d tried to clean herself up, thought she’d looked halfway decent, but looking at it now, she saw that in actuality, she’d looked like a raving lunatic. That day came back to her in all its wild desperation. A vise gripped Josie’s ribcage and squeezed. She let out a labored breath, pulling the printout down, including the flyer for the garage sale she’d planned, the flyer that included her address.
With both pieces of paper clutched in her fist, she walked quickly out of the store. Blood roared in her ears, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered the heavy footsteps of Jimmy following along behind her. She didn’t dare glance at his face, didn’t want to know if he’d read the article printout before she’d snatched it down. Hated that he might have seen the picture, but hated even more that half the world had once seen her that way.
She got in her car and so did Jimmy. To her great relief, he didn’t utter a word, just sat with his big hands resting on his thighs, staring straight ahead as she started her car and pulled out of the lot. She drove the few blocks to the town library, and though it wasn’t open yet, she got out of her car and walked to the window where various flyers were hung on the inside of the glass, including hers. Just as at the grocery store, the same article printout had been placed right next to the flyer, overlapping it slightly so that it would be impossible to look at one without also looking at the other.
Josie’s heart sank like a piece of lead.
Why?
In a daze, she turned, walking back to her car. Jimmy followed, head hung slightly, his hands in his pockets.
She drove to the end of the main street where people regularly hung flyers on a telephone pole and parked next to it. She got out of her car, swallowing down a small sob as she tore the flyer she’d hung along with the same article.
She got in her car again and pulled from the curb, her tires spinning and then squealing as she jammed on the accelerator too hard. They drove in silence for a few minutes before Jimmy asked quietly, “Any idea who would do that?”
Josie sucked in a shaky, labored breath. She felt so damn breakable. Exposed. Skin peeled back, soul showing. She’d had so much hope that this move was going to be good for her, just what she needed. A place to settle. A purpose. She’d felt almost like a caterpillar finally shedding its cocoon, ready to spread her wings and fly. Here, even though it was less than an hour away from the city where the crime against her had occurred, she didn’t think people knew her name, or if they did, it only registered as something that might sound familiar, something they couldn’t exactly place. After a while, she’d dared to hope she’d just be Josie, the woman who ran the bed and breakfast outside town. She’d escaped Marshall Landish almost a decade before. She could finally be anonymous. Or so she’d thought.
This morning, that dream had crashed and burned.
“Josie?” Jimmy prompted. Her mind snapped back to the detective sitting in the seat next to her. Any idea who