Page 29 of Stranger Session

Or what if she took too much of the drugs?

My chest tightens at the thought of something badhappening to her. Just to make sure she didn’t leave her phone at home, I call into her job. I get a curt greeting from the other end.

“Hello, is Mariah working today?”

“No, she never showed up,” the woman says, sounding really flustered and busy.

Panic clenches my gut as I hang up. Running on autopilot, I get into my car and rush over to her house. The fear that she overdosed remains in the front of my mind. I shouldn’t have left her alone. She was waking up by the end of my night with her, and I thought she’d be okay. Oh god, this is all my fault.

Her front door is still locked, just how I left it, and her car is still in the driveway. The prospect of finding her dead in the bed fills me with an indescribable fear. I climb through the window again and nearly fall onto my ass because my sweat-coated palms are too slippery. I rush to the bedroom, and what I find strangles the air from my lungs.

She’s not in the bed, but a large red stain is.

I drop to my knees and my face comes within inches of the red stain on the tan sheet. The splatter drags from where I left her to the edge.

Oh god, where is she?

I stand up and look around. I don’t know what to do or how to find her, but I’m certain Sam is somehow behind all of this.

I drop her phone onto the nightstand and rush back out the door. I don’t even bother locking it. When I get into my car, I blindly drive to the familiar house in the woods. Would he have her at their house? Doubtful, but it’s the only lead I have.

No one appears to be home as I sneak back inside theisolated house where this all started. I dig around the office again. Instead of looking for Mariah’s information, I’m looking for something that will tell me where Sarah’s nitwit brother would have taken my girl. There’s paperwork about his parole stuffed in a drawer. In another, I find a book of deposit slips for checks. There’s a photo lab that has deposits every month. Are they renting this place?

There’s only one way to find out.

Mariah

Cloth restraints bind my wrists together behind my back. Itchy, dried blood cakes my temple. I look around and blink to adjust to the darkness. Pictures line the room. Pictures of me and Del, but Del’s face has been scratched out in each image.

Fucking Sam.

He came into my room this morning, startling me awake despite my heavy, drug-induced haze. I still tried to fight him off, but then he hit me with something, and I woke up here. In this room.

“Help!” I scream. “Can anyone hear me?”

My question goes unanswered, which may be a good thing. The only person who would respond is the person who put me here in the first place.

I jerk my body, and the chair squeals along the floor as I try to get out of the restraints. Both of my legs have been secured to the chair. Everything is immobile. For being blind, he sure can tie a person up.

“Hello, Mariah,” Sam says as he walks into the room.

Light outlines his form, casting him in deep shadows. That means it’s daylight outside. Would anyone even know I’m missing? My coworker probably hates me and thinks I overslept or something. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Sam, you have to let me go,” I say, raising my chest with feigned confidence.

He laughs. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“All you had to do was let me love you and it wouldn’t have come to this.”

“You don’t love me. You don’t even know me!”

Sam turns away from me and steps toward the pictures. His fingers graze an image before he rips it down and stares at it.

He stares at it?

“You can see that?” I ask.

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