A figure barrels straight for Jesse. I lunge. His hands rise to ward off the figure. It plows into him, battering like a ram, head lowered.
Jesse flies backward. He hits the railing. There’s a crack. The old wood gives way, and he’s falling, and I’m lunging to catch him, but it’s too late. He’s falling backward through the broken railing, arms windmilling.
A stifled scream. Not from Jesse. From the figure standing in the hall. It’s Tiffany, her mouth gagged, hands bound, her eyes wide with horror as Jesse falls.
I’m already racing down the stairs, and then vaulting around the last few and stumbling to Jesse. He’s flat on his back, heaving deep breaths.
I drop beside him. “Don’t try to get up. Just stay there.”
He motions to his chest.
“I know,” I say. “I’m getting help.”
I have my phone out, and I hear the back door slap open and the sound of running footfalls.
“Jesse? Skye?” Chris calls.
“In here!” I shout.
Jesse’s trying to rise, and I put my hands out to stop him.
“Don’t move,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Just… wind. Wind knocked out.” He gulps breaths. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
He keeps rising, brushing me off and wincing as he pushes to his feet. A thump sounds behind us, and I look to see Tiffany tumbling down the last few steps.
“Help her,” Jesse says. “Chris, call the police. I… I just need… catch my breath.”
Chris is already making the call, and I’m running to Tiffany. She’s on one knee, tears rolling down her cheeks. I get the duct tape off her mouth, wincing as I do.
“I thought you were him,” she says as I untie her hands. “Owen. It’s Owen.” She looks at me. “Owen Pryor. He’s the one —” She can’t finish, choking on a sob. “I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.”
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Gone. He – He left me here. Left me to —” She can’t get out the rest, chest heaving. I finish untying her hands.
Chris says, “The police are on their way. Five minutes. They said if there’s no sign of Owen, we should stay put. I’ll watch the front.”
I lead Tiffany to a chair in the dining room. Her gaze keeps flitting to the front door, and her mouth opens, and I know she wants to go, just go. But the police are right. If there’s no sign of Owen, we shouldn’t run.
I’m not sure Tiffany and Jesse could even run. Jesse’s on his feet, helping me with Tiffany, and he’s breathing hard through clenched teeth, clearly in pain.
Tiffany glances at the door again.
“We’re fine here,” I say. “We didn’t see any sign of him, and his car’s gone.”
“I know. I just…” She straightens. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It was just…”
She looks up at me. “He left me here. He came home from work, and I could hear him making dinner, and then he took a call. From Vicki, I think. He started swearing and he said they were done, that he couldn’t finish it. When he got off the phone, he threw something. A plate or…” She sees the broken glass on the floor. “That. It must have been that. I heard it smash, and then he came upstairs, and he never said a word to me. Never opened my door. I heard him in his room, drawers opening and shutting, like he was packing a bag. Then he left. Left me bound and gagged and locked in.” She meets my gaze again. “How could someone do that?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
I really don’t.
Skye
The police arrive with an ambulance for Jesse and Tiffany. Jesse’s parents are right behind them, whipping along at the same speed. Mae follows a few moments after, as does Chris’s mom. Jesse gets taken to the hospital right away, leaving me only time to say a quick goodbye as Dr. Mandal assures me she’ll text as soon as she has news.
I give my statement, and then I hear Tiffany’s voice rising, as if in panic, and I jog over there as Mae talks to the police.
“I just want to go home,” Tiffany is saying to the paramedics. “Please. I don’t need the hospital. I’m okay, and I just want to go home.”
“You need to be checked out. Your parents —”
“I’m eighteen. And there’s no sign of my parents, is there?”
I catch a note of bitterness in her voice, but then she says, evenly, “I told my parents there’s no reason for them to come. If someone can drop me off at home, I’ll be fine. Really, I will.”
The paramedics insist. She is the victim of a crime; the police will require a full report from the hospital.
“Can I come along?” I ask the paramedics. I look over at Tiffany with a wry smile. “I’ll keep you company while you wait for a doctor. That always seems to take forever.”
“Hanging out in a hospital is the last thing you need tonight,” she says. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be whining.”
“You’ve earned it.”
“I’m just tired and…” Her gaze goes to Chris’s mom, who is hovering over him, her face drawn in worry.
“Maybe you should tell your parents to come —” I begin.
“No.” She tears her gaze away. “There’s no need.”
“You were kidnapped.” And they should have come running, no matter what you said.
“I’m fine. My stepmom works nights, and my stepbrother is only five, so Dad needs to stay home with him.”
Whatever my family issues, I cannot imagine I could keep Mom or Gran – or even Aunt Mae – away if I said I’d been kidnapped. Tiffany keeps glancing down the road, as if hoping to see headlights. But the road stays dark.
“Can I come with her?” I ask the paramedics again.
One nods, and I hurry to tell Mae.
Mae follows the ambulance to the hospital, but she’s going to stay in the waiting room unless I need her. They take Tiffany into a room where, yes, she has to wait for the doctor. I sit with her. We don’t talk much, but it’s a comfortable silence, as if we both know that any small talk right now would be awkward.
When a man shouts in the hall, she jumps, but it’s just a drunk guy, and he’s quickly shuffled off.
“You’re safe now,” I say.
“Am I?” She rubs her hands over her face. “Owen’s still out there.”
I speak carefully when I say, “I don’t think he’ll come for you. He’ll know you’ve already given a statement and identified him. I’m not sure why he kidnapped you, but this wasn’t… it wasn’t about…” I swallow. “This was my fault. He was after me. You just made the mistake of being nice to me, trying to help. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
She moves beside me and puts an arm around my shoulders. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Skye. Your coming back to Riverside just set him off. He was…” She inhales. “Unhinged, I guess that’s the word for it. He acted normal, at school, but the guy who kidnapped me was a different person. Like Jekyll and Hyde. He kept ranting about how you shouldn’t have come back, how it was an insult to the families, how he had to make you leave.”
“So why abduct you?”
“His cousin – Vicki – hacked into your cell phone. He could see all your texts, including the ones I sent. That’s how he knew you’d be at Fletcher Park. He planned to grab you there, but then Jesse showed up with you. Owen was leaving – running out – when he saw me. And I saw him. I recognized him. I asked what he was doing there… and then I spotted the knife. He came at me so fast I couldn’t… I tried to…”
She blurts the rest. “He knocked me out. He was panicked because I recognized him, and he remembered the texts – the ones where I said I knew something about the newspaper hack. I woke up with a knife to my throat, and Owen demanding to know what I found out about the newspaper.”
She gives a sharp laugh. “Do you know what it was? My important information? I remembered that the newspaper computer had a cloud-drive backup, and I found the files you saved. That proved someone tampered with the newspaper and deleted the hard-drive backups. That’s it. That’s all I had.”