Page 57 of Passerby: A Psychological Thriller

My phone chimes again. Thank God for small favors!

I shake my head. It appears a favor is what got me into this, and a favor is going to have to be what gets me out.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Ruth

My hands shake. Cold sweats sweep over me. Perspiration dampens the small of my back, the edges of my hairline, everything. I have to get out of this room.

The walls feel like they’re closing in on me. It’s hot as hell in here, and it feels like I’m in one of those fun houses at the festival where the floor shifts and the walls are made of mirrors and nothing is as it seems.

This must be what shock feels like. In every sense of the word. The fear animals must experience right before they’re slaughtered. I will probably live. Not only because I still have the ability to run, but because this isn’t about me. I’ve just gotten caught up in the middle.

I don’t know how this is going to turn out, only that I am most likely about to have to sell my soul to the devil. Any minute now, Roy is going to take those stairs light-footed and two at a time. He’s going to find me in here. Me and two dead bodies. And when he does, I have to be prepared. I’m going to have to cut a deal.

I will have to marry him and have his babies.

Assuming he’ll have me.

Whatever it takes.

I consider my options. I consider all the ways I could get rid of him. I could put in a 9-1-1 call about kids fighting down at the beach. I could mention teenagers vandalizing the courthouse. Or suggest a welfare check way out on the outskirts of town. I could do a number of things—or I could simply face the music and let the chips fall where they may.

As I contemplate this, my eyes shift toward the bed. I can’t help noticing that Ashley looks good naked, even dead. I know it’s a weird thing to think at a time like this, but this is how women are. Everything is a comparison. Standards of beauty are drilled into us at an early age, and that conditioning is hard to escape. Or maybe it’s just the things that seem forbidden tend to look the best.

I take it my brother knew a thing or two about that.

The problem is, looking at Ashley forces me to look at him, and I can’t bear it. Not again. I saw his face, or what was left of it, and once was enough. I half expect him to leap up, to tell me this is all a joke, a delicious prank that we’ll recant over Thanksgiving dinner for years to come. Everyone will laugh. Sometimes even me.

Please, I plead with God. With the universe. Don’t let this be real.

Johnny has always been the strong one. The older, protective brother. The one with all the answers. And now, he isn’t saying anything, when there’s a whole lot I need him to say.

For one, how did this happen?

Not in a trillion years did I ever see this coming.

But also, how did I not see it?

The question reminds me of a conversation I had with Cole once after we’d made love in this very bed. It was just a few days after Ashley arrived, a day or two after the Watermelon Festival. Casually, I’d asked if he had any ideas on how I might go about getting rid of her.

“I don’t know,” he told me. Knowing him, he probably referenced The Art of War or some other book, but if so, I can’t recall. I only remember what he said exactly as it applied to my situation. He stroked my hair and said, “Stick your head up and get it cut off, and you serve as a cautionary example. People will be terrified of the result and will cower in fear. You have to keep cool and resist intelligently.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked.

“It means that every bit of resistance in the system drags it and slows it down. Eventually, with enough resistance, it overheats and grinds to a stop. That is the time for action. That is the time to make your move.”

I looked at him like he’d lost his mind, like he might as well have been speaking Romanian. “What are you talking about?”

He studied me closely before he answered in that keen way of his. It probably seemed to him like I wasn’t all that interested, but I couldn’t have been more riveted. With a charming, easy smile, he whispered, “Subvert. Evade. Survive.”

“Sounds like you’ve been reading too much dystopia.”

“Civilization is not a very good paint job,” he said with a shake of his head. “Three days without food and it will flake off. We are predators, Ruth, and we will hunt. Prey is anyone, or anything, who can't defend themselves. Dystopian literature barely touches exactly how bad it can get.”

It may seem like what I’m saying, like our conversation, has nothing to do with finding my brother and Ashley Parker bludgeoned to death.

But, I assure you, it has every bit to do with it.

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