Put Me Back Together(89)

This was Tommy’s killer. I was face-to-face with him. There was nobody around.

He’s going to kill me, I thought, amazed that it had taken me this long for the thought to enter my frantic mind. Unless…

“Oh, cut the crap, Brandon,” I snapped. “We both know that’s not true.” Those burning eyes flared again and I took a step to the left. I needed to get away from the wall of the building and onto the path. I needed to be as clever as Lucas said I was. I needed a plan.

“You’re telling me to cut the crap?” Brandon said. He smiled, and this time it seemed genuine—until I saw the knife in his hand. One look at that knife and any plan I’d been putting together went right out the window. “Why don’t you say it again?”

I ran.

Right away I knew I’d taken the wrong path. If I’d turned left around the side of Ontario Hall I would have reached the street in a minute, but instead I went straight on the path that went behind the library. I was aiming for union       Street where I could see a car pulled over and several people getting in. I should have screamed right away, but all I could see was red and all I could think was, Run. I could hear the thudding of his boots as he came running after me, both of us pushing against the wind that seemed to want to hold us back. Run, run, run! By the time I opened my mouth, the car doors were already slamming shut and I was still ten feet away.

“Wait, I—” I called out before he clamped his hand over my mouth, the rest of my words drowned out by my high-pitched scream.

He pulled me tight against him, yanking me backwards until we were hidden behind one of the building’s ornamental buttresses.

He panted into my ear, his breath and body giving off a smell of dirt. It was as though he’d literally just slithered out of a hole in the ground.

His other arm was locked around my middle and I struggled hard against it. Then he raised his hand and the knife glinted in the light from the streetlamp and I fell still, my eyes following the blade. It wasn’t the same knife. I knew it couldn’t be. But it looked just like it, right down to the colour of the wooden handle. For a moment I imagined I saw a smear of blood across the blade and wondered if it was Tommy’s.

“Tell me, Katie,” Brandon rasped into my ear, “what was it like waking up to find Tommy’s body? I’ve always wanted to know. I couldn’t watch, of course. I had to disappear. But I wish I could have been there to see you discover my present.”

I closed my eyes in disgust. The smell of dirt got stronger, filling my nose and mouth, pressing into my throat. Then I realized it wasn’t dirt I was smelling at all. It was the smell of the woods.



I open my eyes to the fireflies. They swim across my vision, their blinking lights making me think of flashlights bobbing through the trees, of rescue. But there is no one coming.

Pushing myself up on my knees, I feel warm wetness running down my face and wipe it away. It’s too dark for me to see my own blood. I can’t see anything at all except the fireflies. I can’t hear anything but my own hectic breathing, and that’s how I know I’m alone.

I need to find Tommy.

Swaying on my feet and stumbling repeatedly, I walk down the tracks in the direction I think will take me to the street. I’ll get some help and come back. I’ll bring the police and those huge spotlights. I’ll bring dogs and helicopters. I’ll find Tommy. I’ll find him in time.

I throw up once, then again. I’m off balance and my right arm feels weirdly heavy, but I ignore all this. I know I have to keep moving. I have to get help.

Then I slip in something slick and fall on my knees, gasping loudly. A rail cuts into my shin. I move my hand and it sinks into something I cannot describe. Something wet and a little gooey. Something that was warm a little while ago. Something I don’t understand until my fingers run over the long, soft fur and I realize it’s not fur at all. It’s his hair.

As I run I scream his name.



I whimpered and kicked at Brandon with my feet, wrenching against his grip even as he pressed the blade to my cheek. I needed to get away from him and his smell. I needed to get away from that night more than anything.

“What was it like going to school and walking the halls, everyone feeling sorry for you, when you knew you were to blame? And on TV, watching me get labelled the Kindergarten Killer when you knew, you knew…”

He pressed the tip of the knife into my cheek, twisting it ever so slightly, and I felt it break the skin. His hand smothered my screams.

“What was it like to get away with it, Katie Kat? Tell me, because I’ll never know. Did it feel like this?” He moved the knife to the other cheek and again I felt the blade twisting, cutting. My blood was running down my neck. I could smell it.

“Or like this?” The knife disappeared and instead I felt his clumsy fingers groping at my breast, a hard and cruel jab that felt nothing like Lucas’s gentle hands. The revulsion that wracked my body snapped me back into the present, and the same instinct that had taken over that day so long ago took over once more: animal fear.

I sank my teeth into his hand.

He howled and released my mouth, but unlike that fateful day six years ago, he didn’t let me go. I guessed that was a lesson he didn’t need to learn twice. His right arm held me around my ribs with a brutal strength that terrified me more than the knife. If he could hold a full-grown woman with just one arm, what could he do with two?