Heartless Read online

  Eli smuggled me back down the stairs and out the fire door. He shivered beside me in semi-hostile silence while we waited for Adam’s squad car to appear. In Lucy’s absence, Eli was really stepping up to help me, and while he froze in the early morning wind, I whispered, “Thank you.”

  I might as well have remained silent. He ignored my gratitude, the single tender moment from earlier in the night blown to bits by the news that Lucy was gone.

  Strong’s squad car appeared exactly ten minutes later. Eli mumbled something under his breath.

  “What?” I said.

  “Military precision,” he said. “Cop drives me nuts.”

  I nodded, and ducked my head to get into the back seat when Eli opened the door. He walked around to the front seat, climbed in, and we were off. Adam never bothered to say good morning.

  The sky brightened as we headed down the mountain in silence. As soon as the sun peeked over the jagged horizon, it bounced off the stark white snow and the sky exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors and textures and light. I loved living in these mountains much more than I ever expected to, and I stared out the window at the rainbow sky and tried not to worry about Lucy. It was hard, though, in the pressure-cooker silence surrounding me. I needed someone to do something, to say something, but I felt paralyzed with fear, as if nothing I could do or say could possibly help.

  After fifteen minutes of driving away from campus, up and down winding mountain roads, Adam pulled into a parking lot designated a “national lookout spot of the White Mountains.” I had to admit, the view was amazing, but I had no clue why we stopped.

  Eli and I sat still, expectant and silent, while Adam looked out at the snow-covered valley below. It was dotted with picturesque farmhouses and log cabins, picket fences and barns, like a Currier and Ives puzzle I’d put together with my grandfather when I was a child. We waited, Eli and I, for something to happen.

  Finally, after checking his watch three times, Adam spoke. “You know,” he said, making me jump, “I’ve gotten used to your smell, Jo. Either that, or you’re so far gone even the stink has left you.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I stared at the bars between us and pretended my feelings weren’t hurt.

  “What happened, Adam?” Eli said. “You need to tell us what’s going on.”

  “They took her.” He shrugged.

  “We know.”

  Strong turned back to look at me. His face was twisted with rage, a Halloween caricature mask of his normally handsome face. “So what I need to know from you is…what do you know that you haven’t told me? Who else knows what’s going on? You’ve hidden stuff from me all along.” He raised his voice, a cruel mimicry of my own. “Oh, I’m Jo, and I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just having a girls’ weekend, it’s not that my face is falling off.” Louder, and angrier still, he continued, “What are you still hiding?”

  “I…I…I don’t know anything else!” I said. “Don’t your cop friends know more than me by now? Didn’t they investigate the cabin? I have pictures of the other girls on Lucy’s phone. Can we use them? I have it here. Did you send them to the station?”

  “No more questions!” Adam roared, and this time even Eli jumped. “I want answers! What do you know? Who else have you talked to?”

  “Jesus Christ! Officer Strong! How strong is it, to yell at a girl like Jo? She’s trying to help!” Eli reached across the front seat and shoved Adam into his door, then opened his own and got out into the thin morning air.

  He opened my door. “Come on,” he said. “We can find her ourselves.”

  Eli spoke like a petulant child, but I preferred his petulance to Adam’s fury. I walked with him to the fence at the edge of the overlook, afraid that Adam would follow, but equally terrified he’d leave us there on the mountaintop. I tried to tell myself it was going to be fine, that his fury was that of a Romeo who’d lost his Juliet, but this felt different. Off, somehow. I shook off my confusion and turned my attention to Eli.

  He wouldn’t look at me, but I didn’t blame him. I was barely a shadow of the girl he’d once maybe, possibly, cared for. I was an ugly, wretched, pitiful beast. We stood beside each other, shoulders almost-but-not touching, and I felt the fury emanating from his body. Fury at me? I wondered. Does it matter?

  After a moment, Eli took my mangled, broken, gloved hand into his, pulled it to his lips, and kissed it gently. “What I said before? Yesterday? About you, you know, dying?” He gulped, and closed his eyes.

  I nodded. “I know. You don’t have to…”

  “Yes, I do. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. You’re a victim in this, just like all those other girls. Just a victim.”

  I stepped away, pulling my hand from his. “I’m different, though. I’m a dangerous victim. I poison people. You shouldn’t touch me.”

  “You’re not dangerous. Not really. Not on purpose, anyway.” He shrugged, and reached out and pulled me back to him. “Besides, you have gloves on. I can hold your hand.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know why you’d want to.”

  “Because I love you.”

  “What? Are you crazy?” The butterflies in my absent stomach may not have been real, but I felt them as though I was a normal girl and this was a normal conversation. Eli had never told me he loved me.

  He smiled and kissed my hand again. “I mean, I know we broke up the other night. I don’t know if we’d have gotten back together. I don’t know if, if we did, we’d have made it dating another week. Maybe it’s just regret, but I’d like to think we’d have made it, as a couple. Who knows. But no matter what, Jo, I do. Love you, I mean. As a friend, as a girlfriend, and as Jo. I just thought it was time for you to know that. I should have said it a long time ago.”

  “I love you, too,” I said, my voice almost failing.

  “Good,” he said, smiling. “Now that’s settled, we should get back to finding Lucy.”

  “Yes, let’s,” said a deep voice from right behind us. Strong’s voice.

  “Jesus, dude! Don’t sneak up on us like that.” Eli dropped my hand and stepped away, almost stumbling over the knee-high fence that protected visitors from the steep drop-off beyond it. I grabbed his coat and held on, but made a face when I heard something rip from inside me. Just another body part to try to repair later. I knew full well I was lying to myself.

  Strong looked down at the ground and shuffled his boots through the snow. “Sorry. For scaring you, here and back there. I know better than to lose my cool like that. But, this is too much. We need to find her.”

  I walked to him, then past him, patting him on the shoulder. “The phone’s in the car. That’s the best place to start looking. We need your friends to look at the pictures, figure out what other girls are missing. Maybe that’ll give us a clue for where to go next.”

  I showed Strong the photos on Lucy’s phone. He studied each one carefully, and then emailed the complete album to a detective at the station. His cell phone rang thirty seconds after he hit the send button, and Eli and I waited in the car while Adam paced around it, holding the phone slightly away from his ear, looking more and more frustrated, and talking back into it.

  “No, it has to be now…This has taken too long already!...Yes, safe with me…No! Now!”

  The words filtered through the windows, over gusts of wind that rocked the car like the baby in the treetop. Adam’s voice grew louder until he shouted, and the conversation pulsed onward, a dissertation about my entire case. But finally, he was done. He shoved his phone deep into his coat pocket and climbed back into the car. I was busy flipping through the pictures again, one at a time. Flip, flip, flip. I stopped and toggled between two of them, pictures of the desk and the tackboard from the room below the lab.

  “Blonde, brunette, blonde,” I mumbled quietly to myself. It all seemed like nonsense, and the pictures were so small it was hard to see anything. “Brunette, blonde, redhead, brunette. Crap! What the hell do all these people have in common, and how do we find Lucy?”
I threw the phone at the door, and it crashed to the ground. The battery popped out and landed beside it.

  Both Eli and Adam jumped, and turned to stare at me. The car idled in the parking lot, waiting, like the rest of us, for the next move.

  “What?” Eli said. He sounded exasperated, exhausted. I understood.

  “I’m just trying to figure this out,” I said. “And I’m getting nowhere. The cabin, the papers I saw, it was nonsense and I hate it! I just want my life back! I want Lucy back!” The world suddenly felt like it was closing in on me. My brain slowed down and I felt myself shutting down. “Guys, I need to recharge.”

  “We’re not going back to the dorm,” Adam said. “We’ve got to start looking for Lucy.”

  “I need my car charger then. It’s in Lucy’s car. Can we go get it?”

  “Where’s Lucy’s car?”

  “2959 Primrose Path.” My words were slurred, slow. “The cabin. Go now.”

  The darkness closed in, but I felt the car peel out of the parking lot and speed away. I hoped we were headed toward the cabin, but Strong’s and Eli’s words, coming from the front seat, sounded like they traveled through mud to get near my ears.

  A minute later, I blacked out.

  The next thing I knew was warmth, cozy like a hot tub on a cold winter’s day. I was in the front seat of the squad car, hooked up to my charger. Eli stood outside, but Strong was beside me.

  “Morning,” he said in a sandpaper voice. I wondered if he’d been yelling again while I was out. “Feel better?”

  I tried to nod, but only succeeded in rocking my head back and forth. “It takes a few minutes,” I slurred.

  “We’re at the cabin,” he said. “Or what’s left of it. Since we’re here, when you’re up for it, have a look around what’s left. See if it sparks a memory that could help find Lucy. We’ve got some time while my guys at the station look into a few things.”

  “Have we looked inside?” I tried to say. There was no way the whole underground fortress was burned out. But no actual words came through my numb mouth.

  So we sat in silence, Strong and I, while my strength came back and Eli’s head floated past my window again and again as he paced around the car. Finally, I felt my strength return, and I pulled myself up to look out the window.

  I promptly fell back against the seat, because the cabin? It was gone. Poof, I thought. Gone like magic. Only police tape marked the area where it had once stood, indicating that the root of my new existence ever stood at all. Police tape, and the black ash and soot that flurried over the melting snow.

  The view of the mountains and valleys beyond the empty expanse in the ground was spectacular, though. Breathtaking, if only I’d had breath to take. Snow-covered fir trees in the distance, blue sky, the storm of the day before only a distant memory. The place which had caused so much pain had been replaced by a place of overwhelming beauty.

  It was cathartic, in a way. There was no inside in which to look for Lucy. There was just a big, gaping scar in the earth, and I wondered how deep it ran. Regardless, the memory of the flames consuming everything in our wake was fresh. There’d be nothing left, even deep underground. Lucy wasn’t here. She was gone.

  But it was also a death sentence to me. Through all the hours I’d spent since waking up on the table in the cabin, I’d still maintained a slight kernel of hope. Maybe they’re not all bad guys. Maybe someone there will take pity on me. Maybe, even though it looks like I’m so far gone there’s no returning, they can still fix me. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  With the end of Primrose Path came the end of all my hope. That tiny kernel withered. It shriveled up. It died.

  I am nothing but a pile of dust.

  I bit my lip to hold my mouth closed and to stop myself from screaming. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. I was nothing.

  But Lucy? Lucy was something, and I had to do everything I could to save her.

  Unaware of the tempest raging in my silent, decrepit head, Strong rolled down the window and waved Eli over to the car. “Come on, get in. She’s awake again. We need to start canvassing neighborhoods.”

  “Wait, what?” I slurred. “I thought you wanted me to look around?”

  Adam groaned as Eli climbed in. “Can you walk yet? No? I didn’t think so. And I’m tired of sitting here, stewing in your stink.” He paused and then started the car, blasting the heat on so high his blond hair blew back from his forehead. “I waited, though, because if I didn’t make you see that this goddamn place was burned to the ground, you’d keep asking to come back, to look for Lucy at a place which no longer exists!”

  I jerked away as I fought the urge to cover my ears with hands that didn’t cooperate with my instructions anyway. Something about his tone frightened me, made me feel like a little girl staring down a man offering me candy from the open door of a large, gray van. I didn’t like the feeling.

  The car flew down the steep driveway, Strong’s foot heavy on the gas pedal. We drove away from Lucy’s little Honda and the pile of ash that destroyed my life. I froze in my seat, by choice this time, afraid to move lest I set off Strong again. I tried to see Eli’s face through the rearview mirror, to gauge his thoughts, but the mirror pointed toward the ceiling. Then Eli punched Strong’s seat, shaking the whole car. “Hey, stop the car and let me out! Stop!”

  I figured he had decided to go get Lucy’s car and search on his own, but when Adam let him out, he went only to the mailbox standing at the bottom of the driveway and opened it.

  “My team has already been through that, I’m sure,” Strong said. “You won’t find anything worthwhile.”

  But Eli’s hand came away from the mailbox full of envelopes. “Sure, maybe yesterday, but not today.” He opened my door and tossed me a handful of mail. He sounded more cheerful than he had in days. “Strong, you drive. Jo and I can investigate.”

  They got a lot of mail at the cabin. My pile was mostly catalogs, a strange mix of electronics, home improvement, and women’s clothing, all addressed to “Resident.” Somehow that felt like the right mix for Primrose Path, though. Just bizarre enough to make sense. I flipped briefly through a Gap catalog, eyed a red dress that would have looked fabulous on me two weeks earlier, but then snapped the catalog shut. No dresses for you. The girls in the catalog seemed to have it all: beauty, nice clothes, cute boys by their sides. I remembered how I used to feel like one of those girls, as my wasted hand rose to my nose-less face, and I cringed. I had none of that anymore. I had nothing. I was nothing.

  I dropped the catalog to the floor. As it fell, a postcard fluttered out and landed beside on my lap. On the front was a tropical beach scene, all blue skies, teal water, and white sand. I flipped it over.

  It was addressed to Sandy. Just Sandy. The original address was crossed off, and was forwarded to Primrose Path. I jumped when I realized the original address was a campus address.

  Dearest Sandy, it said. Remember going to the Bahamas when we were little? This picture reminds me of being all sandy with my Sandy. Why won’t you write me back? I miss you, little sister.

  There was no signature. I guessed, though, that a sister wouldn’t need one.

  Sandy. Sandy with my Sandy. Something tickled my brain over the name Sandy. Sandy wasn’t just the bobby-soxer from Grease; she was a clue, a name, a name that sounded familiar, like déjà vu. It was on the tip of my tongue but nowhere closer, and I couldn’t come up with a face for the name Sandy.

  I looked backward. “Eli, do you know anyone named Sandy?”

  Strong sneezed violently. “Excuse me. Did you just say you found a name on the mail?”

  “Well, no, I didn’t quite say that, but yes, I did. Sandy. It was addressed to a Sandy. I almost feel like I know a Sandy, but I don’t guess I do.”

  “Me either,” said Eli. “And all I have are bills. There’s a name on them, but I somehow doubt Michael Smith is going to be helpful.”

  “Eli, shut up a minute. Jo, repeat: we have a suspect name? Sandy?” He
was straining to drive down the winding, icy roads while turning to look over my shoulder at the postcard I held. “What is that?”

  I read them both the message on the postcard. Then I said, “And it was forwarded. There’s an older address here. It’s a campus address.”

  Adam slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to the side of the street. “Campus? Are you serious? That can’t be right.”

  “It is,” I insisted, and I thrust the postcard toward Eli, who pulled it from my hand and scanned the back. “See?”

  Eli nodded. “Yeah, she’s right. We should go check it out.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Adam said. “We should be out walking the streets.”

  “That’s stupid,” said Eli. “This is our first real clue, Officer. Shouldn’t we follow it? Don’t they teach you to follow leads in the police academy?”

  “Yes.” Adam turned scarlet again. “But on campus? That makes no sense. We won’t find anything.”

  “Please,” I said. “Please. We have to try everything. We have to find Lucy.”

  Adam slammed on the brakes. The car skidded across the road. I yelped and grabbed the door handle. “Fine,” he said. “I can tell you now it’s a waste of time.” He jerked out his phone. “I’ll do this now to placate you two. But I need to call it in first.”

  We sped toward campus in silence.

  In the front seat I continued to charge, the warmth of electricity a welcome feeling. But it was impossible to ignore: I was drying out. Whatever embalming fluids had been used to preserve me, they were wearing out. My body was stiffening, even getting crumbly in spots like the tips of my remaining fingers and my chin. I flaked off in clumps, leaving pieces of me on the car seat, dandruff of the damned, ashes that would eventually wind up in a vacuum bag.

  Beside me, Adam’s eyes never left the road, and his jaw never unclenched. His fingers gripped the steering wheel so fiercely that his entire hands turned white. The driver’s side window was cracked, and his hair flew about in the breeze.