Page 72 of Twice as Twisted

Unlike the jungle-like Arkansas swamp where we left Harper to die, these are sparse pines with only a bit of underbrush growing in the hard, sandy dirt. If Jane was half as feisty as Harper, she’d make a run for it, and with how silent the pine needles are underfoot, she could probably hide behind the thick trunks and maybe sneak away.

“We won’t be coming out of here, will we?” Jane asks after a time.

“Probably not,” I say, gesturing a direction with my flashlight. Our feet whisper in the carpet of needles, but the wind sings loud in the ones overhead, the boughs tossing in the gusts.We walk in silence for another few minutes, Jane in front, as if I’m marching her to her death.

I guess I am.

“Can you get a message back to my sister?”

“Sure,” I say, stewing in my thoughts and not paying much attention to her. I know I can’t send a fucking letter to her sister, who probably doesn’t care about her anyway. If she did, she would have sent the police out to look for Jane already.

I hear a car out on the road, and I wonder if it’s Baron driving up and down again. From out here, I can’t tell how fast it’s going. I switch off the light anyway. I don’t know if someone could see it through the trees. I hear a soft snap somewhere off to the right, and I quickly turn the light back on, swinging the beam in that direction, but there’s nothing there.

“You don’t have to do this,” Jane says, her voice soft in the darkness.

“You think I want to?” I demand. “Why do you think I convinced Baron to bring you? I knew you’d die if he left you at home. I wanted to save you.”

“You still can.”

“No, I can’t,” I say, and I hate that my voice breaks the slightest bit. At least Baron’s not here to hear it. He wouldn’t call me a pussy. No one in my family would, now that Dad’s not here to be honest. But they’d all be thinking it.

Suddenly, I want to hurl the flashlight. I want to turn and run, back to the lookout, over that edge, into the water, like Colt was trying to do that day at the quarry before I stopped him.

I didn’t have to. My whole family hated him, and no one would have blinked twice if I let him fall. It wasn’t like I pushed him. There’s literally no rule that says you have to rescue someone who’s dying, but I did. I did that.

Even though he made my life hell for three fucking years, even though looking at him was like having my eyeballs rippedfrom my head and rolled in iron shavings before being shoved back in their sockets, and the smell of him was like breathing broken glass. I knew it wouldn’t go away until he was gone, but I still did it. I still saved him.

It wasn’t the first time, either. That’s the kind of guy I am. Not the kind who takes an innocent girl out in the woods and kills her for absolutely no reason.

“I don’t know how much further I can walk,” Jane says.

We’ve slowed considerably already. We’re on national forest land, and there are no hiking trails in the area. The next house is a few miles up the road, where the cliff peaks at the house of some mega-rich guy who disappeared from the public eye a few years back. I doubt he goes wandering in the woods, and if he does, he won’t come this far. No one will find her body here. It’s as good a place as any.

“We can stop,” I say, sagging against a tree. I’m so morose I wish I could be the one laying down in a grave right now.

“You could let me go,” Jane says, crossing her arms. She’s still in my hoodie, and she looks so small standing under the big trees in the moonlight, almost like a kid. In the shadows, I can almost picture Olive standing in her place.

“You have to understand, this is the last thing I want to do,” I say miserably.

“Then don’t,” she says.

“I have to,” I say, my tone pleading. “That doesn’t mean I want to. You understand, right? I’d trade place with you if I could. I really would.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Do you hate me?” I ask.

“How are you going to do it?” she asks, and it kills me that she couldn’t answer my question.

“I have a gun. I’ll make it quick. You won’t suffer at all.”

“You’ve been planning this all along, haven’t you?”

“Just tonight,” I say. “I swear.”

She nods, looking thoughtful, and leans against a thick pine. The moon grazes her shorn hair, making the angles of her delicate face stand out, and I think she might have been pretty once.

“When did you catch on?” I ask.

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