Page 45 of In Her Mind

Amber’s thoughts were sluggish, scattered. Fear was there, somewhere in the mix, but it was faint, overshadowed by an overwhelming fatigue.

“What are you planning to do?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper, rough with disuse.

“That’s up to you,” he responded calmly. Then he leaned closer,. “You remember, don’t you? You admitted to being Lisa,” he said, a hint of urgency creeping into his voice. “You even told me you’d be Nancy if I wanted.”

Amber’s breath caught in her throat. She had only said those things to buy time, to survive.

“And now, I want us to end this like Sid and Nancy. In a blaze of glory,” Hartley continued, his eyes gleaming with madness. He lifted the pistol and added, “First a shot to your head, then to mine. A beautiful murder-suicide. The stuff of legends.”

Amber didn’t understand. Whatever story he was tilling, it wasn’t her story. She wasn’t Lisa. She wasn’t Nancy. She was Amber Stevens, and she clung to that truth.

“What if I refuse to play this game?” Amber’s defiance surprised even herself, her voice steadier than she felt.

The briefest flicker of distress crossed Hartley’s face, a crack in the facade of certainty. He clearly had not expected resistance, not at this stage. Not when he thought he had crafted the perfect conclusion to his delusion.

“Then …youwill … still go out in a blaze,” Hartley said, but his conviction was wavering, the gun in his hand not quite as steady as before. “But I … I will go on.”

Amber searched his eyes for some shred of the teacher she once knew, some vestige of rationality. But all she saw was a broken man clinging desperately to a distorted past.

“Lauren Knox thought she could defy me too,” Hartley’s voice was almost conversational. “She wouldn’t play Lisa for me either. But that didn’t save her. It just left me here all alone.”

Amber’s breath caught in her chest. She understood that she wasn’t the first of

Hartley’s victims. She was cornered in a narrative written by a madman, where the ending would be her death, one way or another.

“Once you’re gone, I’ll just have to wait longer for Lisa to come back to me again,” he murmured, lost in his delusion. His words were a twisted serenade to a ghost only he could see.

Amber felt the weight of her choices pressing down on her. To succumb to Hartley’s demands meant to become an accomplice in his suicidal finale; rejecting them meant that shewould die anyhow and he would still be alive. The cruel irony of her predicament settled around her like the darkness of the cellar.

As she lay there, her mind raced, evaluating the bleak options before her. If she played along, became “Nancy” in Hartley’s deranged reenactment, maybe he really would kill himself too. It might bring an end to his cycle of violence. The thought of her captor continuing to walk free, to breathe, to perhaps ensnare others in his morbid fantasy, ignited a fierce resolve.

Then she imagined her father, hands stained with grease from a day’s honest work, her mother’s gentle smile as she tended to their home—never knowing what had become of her. They deserved answers, closure, but there seemed to be no hope for that now. If the monster lived, maybe someday he’d be caught, and at least they’d know what had happened to her.

“Time to decide.” Hartley’s voice was eerily calm, a stark contradiction to the madness in his eyes. He got to his feet, holding the gun aimed at her.

And she did decide. It would be better for Hartley to live on solely in the hopes that her loved ones might someday know her fate. Amber struggled to a sitting position and stared up into her captor’s eyes.

“I’m not your Lisa,” she said loudly and firmly. “I’m not your Nancy. I am Amber Stevens, and I will not be the echo of your past mistakes.”

***

“Attic is clear,” Jenna said.

“Basement’s clear, too," Jake added.

“Nobody anywhere,” Frank grumbled, his jaw set, a testament to their shared frustration.

“Let’s split up and check the grounds,” Jenna decided. Without another word, they filed out the back door, stepping into the sprawling expanse surrounding Hartley’s home.

They split up again, Frank taking the left, Jake moving right, and Jenna heading straight toward the heart of the property. As she walked there alone, she saw it—a weathered wooden door half-concealed by overgrown bushes. The old door fronted a small stone building half-buried in a slightly sloping hillside.

She recognized it from her dreams—that standing doorframe where Lisa had stood, calling through the door, “You’ve made a mistake. She’s not the one you want. Don’t hurt her. I’m here.”

The dream—no, the warning—now felt like a piece of the puzzle clicking into place. Jenna stood before the door, knowing that the answers that had evaded them lay just beyond it. Then she saw the sliding metal piece that had been fashioned to cover a peephole. She reached out and carefully slid it aside.

Through the narrow opening, she saw what looked like impending doom. There he was—Bill Hartley, standing over a woman who was sitting up on a cot. The gun in his hand was steady, pointed at her.

Jenna’s gaze fixed on the captive, a woman whose eyes danced with confusion and fear. She knew it was Amber Stevens, looking disheveled and delirious but unmistakably alive.

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