First Girl Gone(102)

He’d probably be out a while after the beating she’d doled out. He’d have a nice headache too, but… something still bothered her.

It was the glass. All the broken shards of mirror. He could use those to cut his ties, maybe. Probably. If he tried hard enough, and he would.

She dug back in the bag. Got out the handcuffs.

Grasping him by the ankles, she dragged him back to the entrance of the Hall of Mirrors. Laid him out in that strangely tapering hallway. Slapped one side of the handcuffs around his wrist and the other around a metal handrail mounted to the wall.

There. Better.

The combination of zip ties and cuffs held both of his arms up over his head awkwardly. Made him look like someone in traction in a hospital, hands elevated due to some injury.

She smiled at that image. Her eyes lingered on the plastic bands pinching deeply into his flesh like a length of twine cutting into a pork loin, the meat bulging around them.

It was almost too bad, Charlie thought. Part of her wanted to watch him wriggle through all that broken glass like a worm, desperate to get a hold of one of the shards to cut himself free.

Now she dug his car keys out of his jacket pocket. Clenched them in her fist.

She zipped up the bag. Slung it over her shoulder. Maybe the serial killer summer camp kit would come in handy for her next task.

Because now she had to find the girl.





Chapter Eighty-Nine





Charlie stumbled down the steps of the funhouse onto the asphalt outside. She was too busy staring at the phone in her hand. Todd’s phone.

She’d unlocked it by jamming his thumb to the screen.

Now the phone glowed in her hand, shining back at the stars above. Her fingers traced over the smooth surface. Dialing.

She brought the phone to her ear. Listened to the ringing.

Something about this felt like an out-of-body experience after the fight. Like it was impossible that she could be doing something so mundane as making a phone call after something like that. Like life should stop or change after the most dramatic moments. It couldn’t just go back to anything resembling normal, could it?

Zoe answered. And Charlie got so excited she barked out a cough instead of words. She had to swallow before she could spit it out, but when the words finally came, they sounded normal. Too normal. Detached. Calm. Almost pleasant.

“Zoe. It’s Charlie.”

Charlie heard a faint click on the other line. For a second she thought Zoe couldn’t hear her and had hung up. The thought brought a tinge of fear, of being forgotten here, lost, unable to make her way back to society somehow. A surge of that icy adrenaline feeling stung her hands.

But then Zoe did speak, urgency in her voice.

“Charlie, Jesus Christ! Where are you? Are you OK?”

“I’m fine. I’m at Poseidon’s Kingdom. Standing outside the funhouse right now.”

This time Zoe’s words came out in a rush. “I don’t know what happened, Charlie. I waited, like you said, and then another car came around the park, so I figured I should keep an eye on it. By the time I went in after you, you were gone. I couldn’t find you, so I called in a team to search the park, but there was nothing there.”

“Zoe. Stop,” Charlie interrupted. “Ritter is the killer. Todd Ritter. I’ve got him detained here. Cuffed to a safety railing inside the funhouse. Face got busted up pretty good, too.”

“Ritter,” Zoe said, and Charlie could almost hear her brain trying to catch up. “Amber’s stepfather?”

“Right. Just send a team out here to get him, OK? We’ll figure out the rest later.”

Zoe answered this, her voice shaky, but Charlie could only hear the first syllable before her finger swiped left and ended the call. It left a smudge of blood on the screen.

Charlie had an idea of what to do next, where to look. And it wouldn’t wait.





Chapter Ninety





Charlie rushed back through the darkness, retracing her steps from earlier in the night. She ducked back through the slit in the fence, crossed that frozen pond of a parking lot.

Then she began mounting the hill in reverse. Slipping toward the top, slowing and kicking up snow just like last time. But then she was over it, building speed once again, gliding back the way she’d come.

Following the gashed tracks in the snow made the whole thing easier than her first go round with this terrain—that and the fact that she had Todd’s flashlight now. Her hands not being bound by the zip tie was a nice bonus.

She pictured Todd as she’d last seen him. The blood-smeared face. The limp arms strung up above his sprawled form, linked to the rail by the cuffs.

And she remembered bludgeoning him, red spatter flying off of him with every stroke, the bloody gun still tucked in her belt even now. She gritted her teeth as she remembered, the savage part of her wanting to go back and finish the job.

But no. It was better this way. Better for her soul, she thought. And maybe better that he suffer a long while in prison. No parole. Death could be considered a mercy compared to that.

The light bounced along in front of her. Piercing all the dark it touched. Vanquishing the gloom one little slice at a time. The glow reflected off the branches, icy crystals sparkling everywhere.

Eventually she could see the hulking form of Todd’s vehicle ahead. A dark hunk of twisted metal cast in silhouette, its front end bent impossibly around the trunk of the tree like some sort of modern sculpture.