DRIFTING
Harper
IT’S ABSOLUTELY PISSING IT DOWN. And it’s fucking cold. I’m used to being outside in miserable weather, but in the daytime. Being alone in the dark and the pelting rain is another matter entirely. It’s pushing me a little too close to thoughts of a past I try my best to forget. It reminds me of that first gasp of freedom after terror so consuming it had eaten everything good left in me, leaving only a raw alloy behind. Something that could be fashioned into a blade but was still too weak to be deadly. I had only seen the forge.
I’d not yet been embraced by its flame.
I grip my shovel tighter where it rests across my shoulder as I walk on the unlit path that leads to the Ballantyne River and the floodplain. Though the footing is uneven, marred by rocks and roots, I’m not paying much attention to the trail or the hazards in the dark. I’m still caught on the past, even though I hate thinking back on that time. Not just the derelict house I’d been dragged to, or the oppressive cold of the cellar, or the smell of piss and shit, fear and death.
It’s not just the memory of the heavy footsteps above us, or the way desperation and despair chewed through my soul when Adam was torn from me. It’s not just the sound of the chainsaw or Adam’s screams or the maniacal laughter of the man as he murdered my boyfriend a floor above me. It’s not the memory of pressing the heels of my hands so hard to my ears that I hoped I would crush that sound out of my skull. I hated those first days after I’d escaped from that hell house too, when I was sucked into
the whirlwind of police and lawyers and reporters. When I was forced to face my vulnerabilities.
The truth is, I didn’t feel like a survivor. I felt like a failure.
I wanted to be like the woman who’d been thrown into that cellar with me the day Adam died. While I was stammering a helpless chant about Adam’s death, she was cool and calm, even though her face was streaked with blood and her shoulder was badly dislocated. “Yes. He killed Adam,” she’d said. “And I promise you, Adam will be the last person Harvey Mead
ever kills.”
Then she gave me her fucking shirt.
Sloane Sutherland. She wasn’t just a survivor, she was a warrior.
Courageous. Determined. Indomitable.
You’d think I’d look back on my first moments of freedom after escaping that cellar with a sense of relief, or maybe even pride. But I don’t.
Because as I hid in the rain to watch Sloane and her now-husband exact their revenge on that fucking monster Harvey Mead, I understood how weak I really was. Sloane wasn’t just tough, she was a killer too, one even more dangerous than Mead, something I didn’t fully grasp until I tracked her down and uncovered her deepest secrets. The infamous Orb Weaver, a killer of killers, a woman who hunted serial murderers and made them into art. But even in those earliest moments, just watching her and Rowan bring down the man who had abducted and nearly murdered me, I realized I had so far to go to become a woman as unconquerable as she was.
Maybe I never will.
I’m sure I’ll never be exactly like her. She probably never sleeps with a light on. I bet she’s not afraid of being alone in the rain and the dark. I bet she would have killed Nolan ten times over already. She would have said, “Fuck you and your skinbook and your murder dimples and your stupidly beautiful eyes. I won’t be swayed by a hot psychopath.” Then she would have plucked out his eyeballs, slit his throat, and exhumed all the bodies by herself. She’d know what to do with Sam and how to protect Arthur without getting caught. She wouldn’t need anyone’s help.
A heavy sigh passes through my pursed lips, the air cold enough for my breath to leave a plume of fog among the raindrops. I’ll definitely never be
exactly like her. Because I almost regret telling Nolan to leave me alone back at Maya’s shop. I’d rather have him around during these exhumations, even if he’s just another asshole who wants to kill me. That’s so fucked up.
And what’s even worse is that I’m not just angry with him about the drone or his lapse in fending off Sam, or his cutting words about Arthur, or even all his erroneous beliefs about the things I’ve done. What truly burns is the hurt beneath all that. I think I’d started to convince myself he gave a shit about me when he gifted me that bear spray, or when he met my eyes as he took off his clothes to swim across the river, watching me in a way that was meant to leave heat behind. I swore I felt a thread pull tight between us, energy crackling across the fragile filament. But the reality is, that’s only a ruse. He’s just helping me so he can get his book back. And I guess he doesn’t care too much about that either, seeing as how he didn’t text or call or pick me up for our nightly excursion.
I just wish I could remember that every kindness he offers, no matter how small, has only one purpose: to get him closer to his objective. Kill Harper Starling.
I gnaw at my lip and hike the strap of my backpack higher up my shoulder, then turn off my headlamp as I near the quiet road, the rain reflecting off its surface in the ambient light. Nolan’s car isn’t here. He usually parks on a narrow section of gravel that dips into the property so it’s not as obvious and out of place, though there’s hardly ever traffic on this road anyway. A conflicted swirl of emotions tugs at my guts. I’m relieved.
I’m dismayed. And, thankfully, I’m enormously pissed off. Anger is the only useful emotion of the bunch, so as I march across the road, I focus my attention where it belongs. On fucking up Nolan Rhodes.
How dare he squirm his way out of our deal? How dare he assume the worst of me, even though I’m also a serial killer and clearly protecting another serial killer? How fucking dare he give me bear spray and then leave me to walk alone in the night when there could be bears to use it on?
How dare he … make hot chocolate …?
I draw to an abrupt halt at the edge of the floodplain. Nolan is at the left by the boulders where we always ditch our tools, sitting on a folding stool beneath a tarp suspended on the branches that stretch above him. He’s bent
over a small camp stove, stirring steaming liquid in a pot. Two mugs and a can of whipped cream are resting in the glow of the lantern next to his feet.
“I was starting to think you weren’t going to show,” he says as I come closer to stare down at the scene before me. He doesn’t let his attention linger long enough for me to read anything from his expression. I let the silence stretch between us, determined to hold on to the rage that still simmers beneath my skin. I just stand there, the rain pelting the hood of my coat, my hands shoved into my pockets. Nolan darts a wary look my way and I raise my brows in an unspoken question. “Figured I’d make some hot chocolate to keep us warm. If we’re going to work in the rain, might as well make it worth our while.”
I could find other ways to do that, I think as the image of Nolan stripping to his swimsuit in the rain appears in my mind. I shake my head to clear the unwanted thoughts, the motion deepening the crease between his brows.
“No hot chocolate?” he asks, and though he tries to look nonplussed, I think I still catch a wisp of disappointment in his face.
I want hot chocolate. But I also don’t want to take a single thing he has to offer, that fucker. I know his game: He’s just trying to get back in my good graces so I don’t mail that scrapbook off somewhere. So I shake my head. “I’m fine, thanks,” I reply as I set my bag down, unzipping it to grab the lantern from its depths. As I do, my fingertips graze a bottle in the bottom of my bag. I pull it out to check the label. Berry Blissful Bloodbath.
Maya’s strawberry-flavored fake blood.
It’ll change your life, she’d said to Nolan in my backyard the other day as he stood there with severed hands clutched in his grip.
I’ve tried her edible blood before. And it will, indeed, change your fucking life.
“You know what,” I say as I set the lantern down and pop the cap of the bottle, giving it a sniff. The sweet scent of strawberries floods my nostrils. I can’t detect the earthy, musky smell of the other ingredients. But I know they’re there, and I keep them and the red warning label on the front of the bottle hidden beneath my fingers. “Maybe I will have some. We can put some of Maya’s Bloodbath on the whipped cream. I haven’t had it in ages.
She was right when she said it’ll change your life.”
Nolan’s eyes sweep over me, leaving a tingling current behind. I don’t react. I try not to look too interested in the prospect of hot chocolate, as though I really don’t care either way if I have some. But suddenly I do. Very much.
“Okay,” he says. I detect a measure of relief in his voice as he turns the stove off and grabs the mugs, pouring the steaming liquid into them. “This is the packaged chili hot chocolate from the Bean. I hope that’s okay.”
I try not to let my smile stretch too far. “Perfect.”
Nolan shakes the can of whipped cream and dispenses a healthy dollop of white foam onto the top of each mug before passing one to me. I deposit a couple of drops of the strawberry blood onto my whipped cream before reaching over and drenching his with a generous drizzle of the viscous red liquid. “I’m not a huge fan of the strawberry flavor,” I say with a saccharine smile as I continue squeezing the bottle until he finally pulls his mug away.
“I prefer raspberry, but most people enjoy the strawberry more.”
“Thanks,” Nolan says as he looks down at the crisscrossed red streaks on his whipped cream. When he looks my way, I take a sip of my drink.
“Thank you, for this.” I raise my mug as though giving him a toast. “It’s thoughtful of you.”
Nolan nods. When he takes a sip of his drink and downs a mouthful of the whipped cream, I struggle to smother a wicked smirk. “The rain is supposed to let up in about half an hour or so,” he says, casting a thoughtful frown across the floodplain. “Maybe we should hang back a bit. No point in making it worse than it has to be.”
“Sure.” I bring my cup to my lips, positioning my finger to sweep it beneath the cloud of whipped cream. When Nolan isn’t looking, I flick it into the shadows behind me. He must still notice the motion in his peripheral vision, because his gaze shifts to me with a hint of suspicion in the crease between his brows. “The bugs of Cape Carnage,” I say, flapping a hand in front of my face as though waving a mosquito away. “They’re not deterred by a little rain.”
He nods, pulling a second folding stool out for me before shifting his over to make room. Even still, there’s not much space beneath the tarp when I join him. I can feel his heat at my side. His presence seeps into my
skin despite the layers of fabric between us. We don’t speak for a long while. It shouldn’t be a comfortable silence, but it is. I’ve grown accustomed to his quiet countenance in the night. I’m not sure if he actively tries not to talk to me, like I try not to talk to him. Or maybe this is just his nature. Stoic. Sparing with his words when he doesn’t have any desire or need to be charming. But as much as we try to keep our conversations impersonal and centered only on our work, there’s often still a pull to say more. At least, there is for me.
“Bet when you were a kid you never thought you’d be here,” he says, not taking his eyes from the pan of silt that stretches into the dark. I follow his focus. Our recent excavations are hard to discern in the darkness, the disturbances in the soft and sparsely vegetated soil washed away by the heavy rain.
I take a sip of my drink. “Can’t say it was on my dream boards, no.”
“Did you really have those?” I dart a questioning glance in Nolan’s direction and find he’s watching me with more interest than I expected.
“Dream boards?”
“Yeah,” I reply, a wistful smile tugging at my lips. “I did. For a long
time, actually.”
“What was on them?”
When I look over at Nolan this time, I let my attention linger on him as I push the hood back off my damp hair. Why is he asking? Does he genuinely want to know? How much do I say? How much do I keep to myself when that thread between us tugs at me like a plea to give a little something to see what I might get in return?
“Disney princess shit at first,” I say. “I wanted to work in a zoo or train animals. So it was a lot of outfits for my dog when my parents finally let me have one.”
“I didn’t peg you as a dog-wardrobe type.”
I shrug, shifting my attention away. “Different life. Different time.”
“Did your parents indulge your dog-wardrobe fixation?”
A bittersweet smile flickers across my lips. “While they could.”
I don’t elaborate. I don’t even look in his direction. I just keep my eyes trained on the graveyard that stretches before us. Looking back, I feel as
though every time I begged for death to leave me alone, it only dug its talons in deeper. And when I finally decided to embrace it, I found death was the key to living. I’m immersed in it now. Wielding it. Protecting it.
Fighting for it. But that first sting of loss? That first kiss of grief? I’d still trade anything to not feel it.
“You don’t have them anymore,” Nolan says.
“The dog outfits? No. I got rid of those when Pips attacked Mr. Taylor’s pant legs and then shit on the stage during my sixth-grade talent show. I was forced to face the stark realization that I was a pretty crap animal trainer.”
Nolan chuckles. It might be small, but it’s a genuine laugh, and I haven’t heard one from him since the first day we met in the coffee shop. It hits like a dart, scrambling my senses. “I would have paid good money to see that.”
“Yeah,” I say with an eye roll, “I’m sure you would have reveled in my humiliation.”
I take a sip of my hot chocolate, and I feel the weight of Nolan’s gaze on the bandage that covers the back of my hand. His presence looms in my periphery, and at first I think he won’t push me for more. But then he says, “I didn’t mean the dog outfits. I meant your parents. You don’t have them anymore?”
I swallow. Shake my head. “No.” I look down at my hands as though there’s something I’ll find there that I haven’t seen before. “It was a car crash. Drunk driver. I was at a sleepover so they could go to dinner for their anniversary. We were having pancakes when the police showed up at Caroline’s house.”
I’m just staring down into my mug, blinking, fighting away the memories. I’m sure Nolan thinks a thousand horrible things about me.
Maybe some of them are true. I might not have been the one to hit Nolan, but I did see him on that road. I did leave him there to his fate. And my moral compass was skewed long before we met. Because since the day my parents died, all I could think about, all I could wish for, was the destruction of those who had done evil deeds. Even if I had to become like them.
“Is that why you left when you hit me on Division Road?”
I turn to face him, my motion slow and purposeful. He stares right into me. Just like every night, the light is too dim to make out the wedge of
brown in his eye. But I saw it today. The way its darkness seemed to deepen when he thought he’d struck a mark with his comment about La Plume.
And I wonder if that’s what’s happening now too.
He will never think anything differently of me. So why fight to convince him that I’m a better person than the one he thinks I am?
I only give him one word in response. And I deliver it with precision, and clarity, and finality when I say, “No.”
I’m the first to break our connection, shifting my attention back to the shoreline as I force us into silence. I finish my hot chocolate but hold on to my mug, and Nolan does the same. We don’t talk as the rain gradually diminishes to a drizzle and the drum of droplets eases to a gentle patter on the tarp above us. I’m thinking about voicing a suggestion to start working when I hear a sound in the distance, something from the direction of the
road.
I sit straighter, twisting on my stool.
“Did you hear that?” I whisper.
“No …”
I strain to listen, hoping that it was just my imagination, but then I hear it again. The sound of a car door or trunk closing. That unmistakable clunk so deeply ingrained into daily life that it’s still recognizable despite the
distance.
“What’s going on?” Nolan asks.
“I heard something. It sounded like a car door.” I duck from under the tarp to look in the direction of the road. There are too many trees and thick bushes to see anything from here. I take a step in that direction, straining to listen for any other sounds. “It could be nothing …” I say. But I never discount my instincts. And my instincts are telling me that I most definitely heard something.
I take another step toward the path that leads to the road.
“Did you see that?” Nolan asks, and he sounds so genuinely freaked out that I spin around to find him crouched down, staring at the lantern with his
mouth agape in shock.
Oh shit. “Umm … see something …?”
Nolan edges closer to the lantern, his head weaving side to side as though he’s searching for something within the light. “It moved.”
“I’m sure it’s just the wind.”
“No.” He frames the lantern with his hands, disbelief painted across his face. “There was some kind of … creature … inside the light. Did you see it?”
“Shh.” I wave a hand in his direction and strain to listen for anything coming from the direction of the road. “It’s your eyes playing tricks on you.
Lack of sleep, probably.”
“No, Harper. I’m not making this up. Look at it.” The distant sound of a quiet voice reaches through the trees. We’re not alone. “It’s moving—”
I yank the lantern from him, tossing it over the bank and into the water to
the sound of Nolan’s horrified gasp.
“It’ll drown, you monster—”
I drop to my knees and slap my hand over his mouth, catching his distressed protests in my palm. “Listen to me right now, Nolan Rhodes,” I hiss. His eyes are wide with alarm, and I stare into them in an attempt to reach whatever deteriorating clarity might be lurking in their depths. “There is nothing in the fucking light, okay? No creature or fairy or sprite or whatever. It’s all in your mind. I might have … given you something.”
His muffled question vibrates through my hand.
“When Maya said her fake blood will change your life, she wasn’t fucking around.” I keep my hand clamped to Nolan’s face and my eyes trained on him as I reach for the hot chocolate pot in my peripheral vision and toss it into the water. The stove quickly follows. “It contains psilocybin.
Magic mushrooms.”
Nolan tugs my hand free of his mouth. “You drugged me?”
I shrug. “Maybe a little bit,” I admit, chucking both our cups over the embankment. “And by a little bit, I mean probably a lot. Who knows.”
“What do you mean?”
“I kind of free-poured, you know? It’s not like I measured your BMI beforehand, is it?”
“You’re a terrible person,” he whisper-snarls.
“You already knew that, remember?” I yank the stool from where he’s about to plop himself down so he can probably question all his life choices and hurtle it into the water as his ass hits the damp earth with a thud. “But you can take it up with me later, because someone is here, and we need to hide. Now.”
“I can’t believe you fucking drugged me,” he says, his eyes wandering over our surroundings as though he’s seeing a whole different world than the dark and dreary one that envelops us.
“And I can’t believe you’re moving at a fucking glacial pace when I said I heard someone approaching our little gravedigger situation. Get a move on.” I toss my backpack over one shoulder and his over the other, and then I grab hold of Nolan’s wrist and tug him to his feet. I thrust my shovel into his hand. “You were a dick in the shop today. What did you expect?”
“I was?” Nolan’s brow furrows, his eyes tracking to my hand as I scramble to pull the tarp off the branches. A fresh bandage covers my blistered skin. “I was just worried about you.”
My motion slows as his words take root in my mind, warmth blossoming in my chest. And I’m sure that’s exactly what he’s hoping for, even though he looks as though he’s telling me a truth that’s emerged in a drug-induced haze. But it’s a ploy. He wants the book. He’ll say anything to get it.
I shake my head and refocus on my task in the hope the heat still slithering around my heart will wither and die. “I’m not going to have you sent to jail for a little burn, Nolan. You were weird about the hand, sure, but you were a dick about Arthur.”
I tuck the tarp under my arm and survey the terrain around us, but I’m not sure there’s a good place to hide. The trees are too sparse. The rocks are too exposed. If we make a break for it across the plain, we might be seen, and even if we’re not, we’ll leave a fresh set of tracks behind in the mud.
Nolan takes my hand. “Come on,” he whispers as the voice draws closer.
He pulls me along after him, heading toward the bank and the river that
snakes through the woods.
“No—”
“It’s the only place left to go.”
He’s right—it’s the only viable hiding spot. And I’ll be even more vulnerable there than I will be sitting out in the open. Because I can’t swim.
Adrenaline bursts through my veins as I clutch his hand tighter and follow him down the slope to the narrow shore. Nolan doesn’t stop at the water’s edge, he just keeps going into the inky water, pulling me along as though he can’t feel the hesitation of my steps or the tremor in my hand. A cold current fills my boots and sweeps around my ankles. It rises up my calves to swirl around my knees. I manage to transfer my phone into the chest pocket of my jacket before the water reaches my hip. By the time the river grazes the bottom of my breasts, I’m shaking, whether from the cold
or the fear I don’t know.
“Stop,” I whisper.
Nolan turns, his eyes slowly dragging over me. It’s not his usual sharp, scrutinous stare, but he still seems to understand through his psychedelic haze that I can’t go any farther. He opens his mouth to say something, but a voice comes from the dark to stop him.
“… drone footage to follow the river,” a man says from the bank above us, “with a voice-over about the purchase of the property following the
disappearance of the previous owner …”
“It’s Sam,” I whisper.
Nolan nods and tugs on my hand to pull me closer, shielding me from both the current and the view of the bank. “I saw him today, coming out of the Viceroy office on Main Street.”
“That’s the company that bought this land.”
“… dusk shots, fog or heavy cloud. Bring a metal detector …”
We remain still and silent in the river, Sam’s voice growing more distant as he continues scouting the grounds that he doesn’t have permission to be on. My lips tremble. I keep my focus trained on the direction of Sam’s words, even though it becomes harder and harder to hear him above the hiss of rain on the water and my heartbeat humming in my ears. Though I feel Nolan’s eyes on me, I don’t meet them. Not until he whispers something so unexpected that the threat of Sam suddenly seems like a distant memory.
“You’re so beautiful.”
I meet Nolan’s eyes, trying to decipher his expression despite the shadows. “You’re just saying that because I’m made of light worms or some shit.”
“No.” I don’t know if he realizes he’s still holding my hand beneath the water. Or that his thumb is tracing a repeating pattern over my bandage. Or that he could hurt me if he wanted to. Just a little pressure against a wound, a reminder, a clear communication that we’re still enemies. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he raises his other hand, moving slowly as though not to scare me, and traces the curve of my cheek to leave the scent of the river behind. “I mean, now that you mention it, there are light worms in your face.”
“Great.”
“But I thought you were beautiful the first time we met too.”
His caress follows my jaw, lowering to my neck to glide down the pulse that hammers through my flesh. He watches the progress of his touch, one that feels as reverential as it does forbidden. I fight to keep my eyes from drifting closed. My heart erupts beneath my bones. “And then you realized
who I was.”
“It didn’t change anything.”
“No. It changed everything.”
He meets my eyes, his palm resting on my neck. He could so easily wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze. It would only take a heartbeat to subdue my body beneath the river. Only moments to force the air from my lungs and fill them with water.
Maybe he thinks about that too, because Nolan holds my gaze as he lifts his fingers one by one, then lets his hand fall away. It feels like a shadow descends between us. Something dark and cold and otherworldly. We’re still staring at each other when Sam’s voice returns as he seems to backtrack toward the road. Our connection doesn’t break as he passes by. Not even as the car door closes a few moments later. It’s only once we hear the car travel over the nearby bridge that the thread between us snaps, and we walk back to shore.
But it’s not until we’re standing on the rocks at the top of the bank, staring down at the graveyard before us, that he finally lets go of my hand.
