Page 74 of The Whisper Place
Jonah
“Kate! Kate Campbell! Kate, where are you?” I bellowed into the stillness of the woods, zigzagging through trees. Branches cut me on all sides, scraping my face, my hands. I kept screaming Kate’s name at the top of my lungs.
Max and Valerie had fallen behind, trailing me far enough back that I lost all sense of them. It was a relief, but it put me on edge, too. If I couldn’t feel their presence, I didn’t know if they were all right.
Max, being Max, had liked the plan, but of course he wanted to be the one to execute it.
“If anyone’s out there being bait, it should be me. I’ve got the combat training. I’ve got the gun.”
“Which is why you stay back to protect Valerie and cover me when we draw out Theo. Besides,” I tapped my temple, “I’m the one with the built-in radar.”
He didn’t agree so much as I left before he could argue and began shouting into the dark, green void.
I kept jogging, hurdling over fallen tree trunks, powering up hills without losing my breath, not slowing down as I yelled intoa world distilled into endless columns of brown and green. Eve would be proud.
I hit the creek at one point, probably the same creek where Max and I found Andrea Kramer’s body in the hole of the fallen tree. Valerie hadn’t said anything about crossing water, so I doubled back along a different route, yelling until I was hoarse.
The crack of a branch sounded like a gunshot behind me. I faltered and stopped. It could’ve been Max and Valerie, our paths crossing because I changed my route, but it didn’t feel like it. I cut over to a large trunk and pressed my back against it, listening, opening up to whatever was following me. It came in a creeping darkness, the dull crunch of leaves. The bait had worked. There was a predator in the woods, the contracted focus of single-minded intent. I closed my eyes and drew careful lines, staking boundaries between me and it.
The energy paused, hesitating. I turned around, bracing myself against the tree, and yelled again.
“I’ll find you, Kate. I know you’re out there.”
They moved again, getting closer. I looked on either side of the trunk, gauging the distance of the sounds, the clarity of the approaching energy. I could feel it clearer now, the anger of being interrupted, the need to stop me before I interfered any more than I already had. And that desperation gave me a shot of hope.
Because it meant that Kate might still be alive.
A blink of movement came on my left, a shift of color in the trees. I pivoted behind the tree trunk as a painfully skinny young man—barely more than a kid—barreled out from behind a bush and swung a shovel at my head.
I ducked. The shovel hit the tree, sending bark flying. Pulling back, he lunged again. This time I caught the metal with both hands, grunting as the tip caught me square in the chest. The kid’s eyes were lit up, red-rimmed and crazed. My head was nothing but a skull to him, something to be smashed and spilled open.
He tugged the shovel, but I held on and used his force to swing him into the tree. He winced and the noise was high, like a child’s. He hated it. Self-loathing and rage seethed out of him. Kneeing him in the groin, I shifted my grip and used the handle to pin him against the tree.
“Are you Theo?”
The ping of recognition and fear was confirmation enough. An ugly gash bloomed on his temple, half hidden in his hair. He was taller than me, but weak, held together by tendon, bones, and hatred.
I glanced into the woods. There was no sign of Max or Valerie. Maybe I’d lost them when I doubled back at the creek.
“Where’s Kate?”
He smirked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shoved the handle harder into his chest, feeling the give of young, flexible ribs. He winced again and one of his hands let go of the shovel, dropping to his side.
“Kate Campbell. The woman you abducted who gave you that ugly gash on the side of your head. Where is she?”
Her image flashed through his head, reflecting in mine. A pale, dirty face staring up from a hole in the ground. Calm. Dissociating from the world above her. Then the face was gone, cut off with a slab of wood and covered steadily with shovelfuls of dirt.
A grave. Oh holy fuck, he’d buried her alive.
I slumped, losing my grip on the shovel as the image assaulted me. I didn’t feel him move, didn’t register his intent until the blade flashed gleefully through his mind. I jerked back, but it was too late.
Theo pulled a knife out of his pocket and stabbed me.
Kate
Kate!
