Page 72 of The Vacancy In Room 10

I’m praying that we get there in time. We have to get there in time. God, please. And we’ll do whatever we have to, to stop him—push him off a cliff, run him down.

“We should probably call the police,” I finally say, realizing in my adrenaline-high that I should have thought to do that first, but I’ve become used to fixing things on my own.

“Call them and explain how we are able to track him?” she says. “Do you really want to keep connecting yourself to this? They can’t know you took time to track his car but didn’t turn him in. They’ll think you’re stalking him, maybe even have reason to set him up. No. We can do this. It’s three against one.”

Rosa never ceases to shock and amaze me with every new thing she says. She just uttered more words than I might hear from her in a month at The Sycamores. And she’s right.

I nod vigorously in agreement, and we drive silently for what seems like hours but in reality is only forty minutes outside Santa Fe. Time seems to slow down as we start to wind through the notoriously rough dirt roads that make you feel like your car is shaking apart—everything rattles as the tires dip into the deep grooves as we trudge up the incline. Rosa holds on to the door, and I’m forced to slow down.

Just when I don’t know if my crap car can make it, Rosa points to the dot on her map, and then points just over the next incline and to the right. In seconds, we catch the shape of a car in our headlights. It would be impossible to see anything out here without them, and when we catch the edge of the clearing with our headlight beams, I see a figure standing up. It’s Callum. The light captures a pale look of surprise and horror on his face.

He’s holding a beer in his hand, and he stands. His features shift from an expression of fear into a forced look of defiance—a man pretending to be in control, because what else can he do?

Rosa and I exit the car carefully, standing still for a moment, trying to take in the scene. Is Anna even here? Does he have a weapon? What the hell is he doing out here?

Then I spot Anna. I know it’s her because those were the clothes she was wearing earlier. She’s lying on the ground with a bag over her head.

“Oh, God!” I cry hysterically, until I see that she’s moving—she’s leaning against a rock, barely moving, but she’s conscious. There’s a wash of relief mixed with such hostility toward him that I can scarcely breathe for a moment. He’s just torturing her—teasing her because she has no place to run, and if she tries there are cliffs, and she can’t see. He’s keeping her without chains, but in an even more inhuman way. In this moment, I hate him more than I thought it was possible to hate another person.

Callum seems to be rendered speechless, because I’m sure he can’t fathom how anyone could have known he was here. And he’s probably trying to regroup and come up with a way out now.

Rosa looks small and helpless as she takes in the situation. We just rushed to try to save Anna, but now what? Do we attack him, run him over? That’s hard to do with Anna hostage, so what’s the next move?

Callum looks at Rosa with an expression of bewilderment. “You’re a surprise,” he says. “I guess she told you what she did to your husband. Or were you in on it together?”

“No,” I snap. “She’s not in on anything.”

“I knew it,” he says. “Of course she knew what a piece of shit he was.”

“I said, she—”

“There’s nothing you can do, Cass. You know what happens if you say anything; you did that to yourself, so I’d get the fuck out of here if I were you,” he says, and I hear Anna whimper. He must have her gagged or something, because she’s not screaming. But he doesn’t shove her in the car and run or go to her to protect her from us. He must think he has me. That’s because he knows what I did to Eddie, that my hands are tied and that Rosa was secretly involved, so he has her in a corner, too.

He must actually think that nobody will know he was involved—think there is no proof to the contrary—that all the DNA evidence was cleaned, he could blame this all on me if he really had to.

I mean, I’m sure he thinks that both of us would do whatever we needed to in order to make sure none of this came out, but if it did come out, I know he must have had plans to throw me under the bus. He wasn’t the one to kill Eddie, after all; that’s true. He just killed innocent people and got away with it. He doesn’t even look scared. He’s actually laughing right now. I scramble over to Anna.

“It’s me. It’s okay,” I say, so she doesn’t think it’s Callum and try to run. “It’s okay,” I repeat, shaking and tearing the plastic in half to pull it away from her face. I pull the tape from her mouth, and she gasps for breath, falling into my arms. He’s drugged her. Oh, my God. No wonder she’s not screaming and running. Her eyes are dilated, and she’s deadweight as I hold her up.

I hold her as she shakes and whimpers, and I tell her it will be okay as I untie her bound wrists, but the dead look in Callum’s eyes and the way he’s just letting this happen—just watching us without doing anything or stopping us from getting near them—is unsettling to say the least.

When I see Anna has severe cuts on her knees from falling, I put her arm over my shoulder and walk her the few yards to my car. Still, he does nothing.

“He’s gonna kill me,” Anna whispers, looking wide-eyed to the left of us as we pass Callum, who cracks a beer and sits on the hood of his car with a smirk on his face.

Then, in one swift move, he pulls a hunting knife out of nowhere, stands, and plunges it into the tire of my car, so we’re stuck. I hear the slow hiss as the air releases and the rubber shrivels. Then he wields the knife at us.

The three of us back up. We’re standing in between the beams of both car headlights as he lunges as if he’ll slash one more tire, but then doesn’t. Instead he laughs and makes a quick movement of both his hands close to my face as if saying boo! and laughs again, reveling in the control he thinks he has.

I don’t react to this. I hold Anna tightly to me, and Rosa stands firm on the other side of her like a shield.

“You’re screwed,” Callum says. “You’re not taking her anywhere. It’s hilarious that you think you will, though, and it’s your goddamn fault she knows too much. This didn’t have to happen like this. I tried to save you from all this, you know.” He aims that last part at Anna, who is trembling in fear.

“I’m screwed?” I say. “Look at you. It’s over.”

“All you yippy little females comin’ up here like she’s a chick at a bar I’m trying to take home, and you’re gonna cockblock me or something. You’re just not smart enough to keep up. This isn’t happy hour or playtime, whatever you chicks do. It’s too late. Cass had to run her mouth and nose around and now it’s too late, so you two can stay here. Hope ya make it through the night,” he says to me and Rosa, and then makes his first move toward Anna but calmly, like he’s had a master plan this whole time and doesn’t need to show any fear.

“You think they won’t connect you to killing Henry and Lily if you do this? I gave the cops the video of Henry,” I say, and he’s not rattled.

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