Don't Close Your Eyes (Don't Look Series Book 2), page 15
“A calculated assault on a local bakery ended in tragedy today when a seventeen-year-old girl was killed. Our reporter is in downtown Hacienda, waiting for law enforcement to make a statement. Elise?”
The view switches to a blustery day outside a long, low tan building with a sheriff’s shield painted on the side. A wooden podium has been set up and is littered with microphones.
“Thank you, Margo. I'm standing outside the Sheriff's Department waiting for Sheriff Lamb to provide information on a shooting that occurred today in this normally quiet town. A shooting that has everyone shaken. We have no word yet on whether there were any casualties. As you can see from our footage, the usually bustling streets are now empty. A well-loved bakery, in chaos. The question on everyone's mind is, ‘Who did this? And will they strike again?’ The shooting comes after a string of threatening messages which have dominated local headlines for the last three weeks. Could the cryptic words be connected to today's violence? Speculation is rampant here outside the sheriff's office as we—Here is Sheriff Lamb now."
A middle-aged man with a slight paunch underneath his tan uniform shirt steps up to the microphones. A worn brown cowboy hat perched over a furrowed brow. Rough palms land on the edges of the podium, as if the man about to give the answers to the waiting crowd of reporters and onlookers needs the support of the solid wood. Sheriff Lamb’s piercing blue eyes survey the gathering. Clearing his throat, he speaks.
“I’m here to address the shooting that occurred on Main Street earlier this afternoon. Unfortunately, the lives of one of our bright local youths was lost. Taryn Miranda Thomas was injured at the scene, and was transported via ambulance to the hospital, where she later went into cardiac arrest. She was pronounced dead four hours after arriving at the hospital. Her next of kin have been notified.
“Transported along with her was her twin sister, who was also critically wounded in the attack. Although she is expected to make a full recovery, she remains in the ICU for the time being.”
Sheriff Lamb’s hands tighten on the podium as he meets the eyes of someone in the crowd. “I can assure the people of Hacienda that, at this time, the department does not believe this was a random attack. Hallmarks of the crime have lead us to believe that it was calculated to focus on the Thomas twins, specifically. With that in mind, I can assure you that we do not believe more attacks are imminent. However, caution is advised. Avoid downtown for the rest of the day if you are able.
“I won’t be taking any questions at this time.”
Shouts and comments erupt from the swarming reporters as the sheriff spins on his boot heel and stomps inside the building. The camera cuts back to Margo. “You heard it here first. One person died in the attack this afternoon, and we’ve been told that further attacks seem unlikely. But as I stand in an almost deserted downtown area, I have to wonder. Will today’s attack prove to be the only one? Stay safe, folks.”
Chapter 24
Day 331, Wednesday
Audrey
Jabbing at the TV remote, I turn it off. It’s been three days since the attack in the bakery, and the local channels have run Sheriff Lamb’s statement at least fifty times. I practically have the entire thing memorized by now. The sheriff is a natural liar. It must come with the territory. When dealing with criminals every day, he somehow learned to spin tales like one.
I shift on the hospital bed where I’m sitting cross-legged in a pair of leggings and my favorite hoodie. After Justin woke up from surgery and Karen had berated him about getting shot (and kissed him when she didn’t think anyone was watching), he convinced her to go home and get some sleep. He didn’t argue when she came back half an hour later with a duffle bag full of clean clothes and a toothbrush.
“You doing okay in here?” Karen stands in the doorway to my hospital room, one palm gripping the frame. Dark circles under her eyes make it obvious she’s not getting much more sleep in this place than I am. I don’t blame her. I’ve seen the cot she made them put in Justin’s room. It’s so short it probably wouldn’t be comfortable for a ten year old.
“I’m critically ill. Haven’t you heard?” I shoot her a wry look. “I believe I was promised ice cream?”
Her attention cuts from me to the empty bed beside mine.
I shrug.
Clicking her tongue, Karen tosses a brown paper bag onto the foot of the bed. “Here. One of the deputies just brought it in.”
“Thanks.” Opening the bag, I scoop out a pint of chocolate peanut butter crunch ice cream and a bright pink spoon. “If Twinkle’s Emporium ever goes out of business, this entire town will probably collapse in on itself.”
“It could be worse. They could be dead.” Taryn waltzes past Karen and plops down on the empty bed. “This dying stuff is so boring. It’s literally killing me.”
“You aren’t supposed to leave this room.”
“I had to go to the bathroom.”
Karen’s gaze moves pointedly from Taryn’s face to the private bathroom angled in the corner.
My sister matches Karen’s glare with one of her own. “There’s nothing to do in here.”
“Play cards.”
“Audrey has already beat me at Uno way too many times.”
“Watch TV.”
“Sheriff Lamb’s statement is not exactly must-see programming.”
“Take a nap.”
“And miss all the machines beeping?”
They bicker back and forth for a couple more minutes before Karen throws up her hands. “I don’t know what to tell you. It is what it is, so you’ll just have to make the best of it.”
Taryn chews on her lip. “I want to go home.” As if on cue, her phone pings in her hand. She takes a peek before shoving it under her pillow. It’s probably another fake heartbroken message from one of our friends. For some reason, they think it’s hilarious to make up fake obituaries for us. I have to admit, some of them have gotten Taryn and I laughing when we really needed it.
Esau, on the other hand, has continued texting Taryn like normal, although Viv reports he’s playing the bereaved boyfriend well when he does venture into town. Mostly, he’s been holed up at his uncle’s farm for the past three days. I don’t blame him. If he’s getting any of the scrutiny Taryn and I do sometimes, I get it.
I chafe under the restlessness making my skin itch. When Karen and the sheriff told us the plan, I agreed immediately, because if it draws our tormentor out into the open so they can catch the psycho, I’m all for it. Anything to put an end to this hell. But it’s been three days, and not a single suspicious thing has happened at or around the hospital. I’m starting to hope that the shooter was hurt in the shootout and crawled in a hole somewhere to die.
Taryn frowns, watching me dig in my pint for a big chunk of peanut butter. Sliding off her bed, she climbs onto mine. “I want some too. Got another spoon?”
“Here.” Karen hands my sister a bag neither of us noticed.
Taryn squeals when she opens it. “You’re the best! Finally something good to eat around here.” Pulling out a pint of half brownie batter and half cinnamon swirl, she digs in.
“Glad to help. I’m going back down the hall. Stay inside, okay?”
Taryn swallows her bite before looking up at our agent. “This is getting old.”
“I agree. How much longer do we have to do this?”
“Give it a couple more days,” she says.
When we’re both silent, Karen takes that as our consent, and goes.
I chew on a chunk of frozen peanut butter, savoring the sweet and salty ripple on my tongue. Sneak a look at my sister. Take another slow bite.
“What?” Taryn’s eyes are locked on me. “If you want to ask me something, just do it.”
“Where were you really?”
My twin’s eyes tighten, and she’s suddenly fascinated by the swirls of brownie in the pint in her hand. She casts around for a big bite of fudge for so long that I don’t think she’s going to answer. “Did you know there’s a growing pile of stuff outside the hospital? People are leaving candles, flowers, teddy bears, that kind of thing. There are even signs, which of course I can’t read from the sky walk up on the third floor.”
My first instinct is to scold her. Remind my more reckless sister that we aren’t supposed to go anywhere near the public areas of the hospital, in case someone sees us and leaks the truth behind the ruse we’re perpetrating over the entire town. Over the entire world, really. But I don’t. I don’t want to hide like a threatened animal anymore, either. Every second we wait in the hospital is one more our aggressor steals from us, never to be gotten back.
In the hours after the attack, Lamb cooked up this scheme. We needed a way to draw out the killer, he’d said. Instead of waiting for them to strike again, we’d find a way to make them come to us. Karen backed him up, the zeal apparent in her eyes. I understood—the man she loved had to have surgery to remove a bullet from his shoulder, where it had nicked one of his major arteries. If the ambulance hadn’t arrived so quickly, that day would have turned out very differently.
I agreed to the plan right away, but was surprised when Taryn did too. Then it occurred to me that since Esau was at the bakery that day, he could have been killed just as easily as the rest of us. Looking at my sister in that moment, with my mouth open in shock at Lamb’s idea, I knew what she was doing. She might have been able to pretend away the danger up to that point, but once Esau got put in the line of fire, she couldn’t hide from it anymore. Couldn’t use her acting skills to assert that everything was fine. The expression she was making—the one I thought was annoyance—was fury. It was resolve hardening into something so firm, so solid, that only catching the sicko who’s torturing us would be able to soften it.
Taryn has finally abandoned denial. She wants to catch them as much as I do. Maybe even more.
So do many, many others. The crush of headlines about Taryn’s supposed death over the last three days has been overwhelming, but in a good way. There are people all over this green earth rooting for us. Rooting for me. Mourning another tragic death. It’s been encouraging, despite the fact that it’s all based on a lie. The reporter I was going to give an exclusive interview to has reached out, too. Yesterday. Just to see how I’m doing. She didn’t even mention the interview. It felt… nice. I haven’t responded since I’m supposed to be in intensive care, but I will. I want to tell my story, share it with others. Maybe all of the awful crap I’ve gone through will help someone else keep fighting.
Taryn is watching when I refocus my glazed eyes on her. Looking into my sister’s face, into eyes that match mine stroke for stroke, relief that she is safe floods me. “What if someone visiting the hospital saw you?”
“They’ll think I’m you,” she whispers. Sticking the lid on her pint, she tosses it and the spoon into the bag. Gestures toward where my ice cream is slowly melting in my hand. “You done? I’ll take it down to the nurse’s station and sweet talk them into putting it in the fridge in their break room.”
Shaking my head, I hold out my hands. “I’ll go. You’re dead, remember?”
Taryn’s arms shoot toward me. “Brains. Must. Eat. Brains.”
Laughing, I push her off and stroll in the direction of the nurse’s station. At the far end of the hall, one of Lamb’s deputies is posted at the door to the ICU. No one gets in without approval. They’re hiding us on this floor because visiting hours are so strictly enforced. It’s easier to keep track of everyone who walks these halls, unlike some of the busier wards.
I’m returning from chatting with a very kind older nurse when a flurry of alarm bells goes off in one of the rooms. The nurses go running, leaving the counter unattended. I could say this is the first alarm in the three days we’ve been sequestered in the ICU, but I’d be lying. I haven’t had the heart to ask how many people have died while we’ve been sheltering here. It’s kind of morbid, hiding here and pretending to be critically ill, when people are actually losing their lives rooms away.
It could so easily have been Taryn. Or Justin. Esau. Me.
A doctor steps out of the staff elevator and into a patient room, masked and gloved up. I hope he’s able to give the necessary help and care.
My fists clench as I pivot into our room. I hope the son of a bitch who’s been stalking us does show their face, so we can end this. Spring the trap we’ve laid.
Once when Taryn and I were little, our mom and dad took us to a cabin in the mountains for a family getaway. The cabin was small, and there wasn’t much to do. The ancient TV didn’t even work. When we bugged Dad about being bored, he gave us the makings for a crude snare and the instructions to put it together. We spent the rest of that weekend catching squirrels, chipmunks, and blue jays by luring them into a box to get peanuts, and snapping the twine tied to the stick to drop the box and trap our prey inside. Watching the animals chitter angrily at us when we lifted the box and let them go made us giggle endlessly. That weekend, we were the hunters.
Every day for the past year I’ve felt like one of those squirrels. Frightened. Angry. Trapped in a dark corner with no way out. Prey waiting for the trap to be sprung.
In the past three days, we’ve become the hunters once again. Our snare is baited and set. We wait, grasping that long piece of twine in our hands, waiting for our quarry to show themselves. To creep into the box and grab a juicy metaphorical peanut.
Taryn and I are the hunters.
We’re also the bait.
“What’s going on out there? It’s pretty quiet.” Taryn looks up from her phone, quickly pushing it face down into the scratchy hospital blanket when I try to look.
“Anything from Esau?”
Smiling, she holds out the phone. A photo of a furrowed field fills the screen, green shoots barely breaking the surface of the moist soil. A second shows Esau, grinning in front of the field. “They planted the corn for the maze a couple weeks ago, and it’s started to sprout. His uncle is pretty excited about their design for this year. He’s being stubborn and won’t tell me what it is.”
“He tried to tell me, you know, that day.”
“He what?” She screeches, laughing. “So not fair. There I was, dying, and he was telling you about the corn maze.” She flops back onto her bed, hand thrown dramatically across her brow.
“He tried to tell me. I had a lot going on.”
She quiets. “I hate this. I just want it to be over, so we can finally move on. This year has been ridiculous.”
I swallow, tracing the quilt’s lines. “I’m glad we’re finally talking… about this. I thought you’d never stop pretending everything was fine. I felt alone, Taryn. You weren’t shunning me anymore, but…”
Taryn’s eyes are wet when they find mine. My eyes immediately start to water. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way. It’s just that—this year has been so hard. Pretending it was better, that all of this crap was over, was the only way I could keep going. But once Esau got hurt…”
“It’s hard to pretend it away when someone you love is hurt. I felt that way when the Gemini Killer threatened Noah and his family.”
“Yeah. Hard to ignore, isn’t it?”
“But sis, last year, when I tried to tell Mom and Dad about the car I kept seeing everywhere, when I tried to tell them I was being followed, you didn’t believe me either.”
Taryn bites her lip. Penitence knits her brow. Sighing, she reaches out a hand. I take it. “I won’t make that mistake again,” she says. “I should have believed you, and I’m sorry.”
We both fall silent, thinking.
After a minute, I realize something’s still bothering me. I finally speak up. “Even if Esau was never hurt, you couldn’t keep pretending everything was fine. Denial isn’t healthy. I mean, we’re going through a giant mountain of crap, Taryn, and I needed you. I need you. You can’t stick your head back in the sand like a stupid ostrich, okay?”
Wiping her eyes, she nods. “Okay.”
Shoving her over, I scoot onto her bed and pull her in for a hug. “Good.”
Taryn chews on her lip. “Esau and I have been fighting. A lot, you know? And he’s even less compromising than usual. It’s like we’re back at square one. The other day he tried to renege on letting me try different props for the scene we were working on, after he specifically told me I could. It’s just so frustrating.”
Rubbing her arm, I give her half a smile. “Hey. Esau is always frustrating. And you’ll get through it. He loves you, remember? He said so.”
Despite herself, Taryn can’t stifle a smile of her own. “I had to tickle it out of him. You should have seen his face.”
“But he did say it.”
“He did.”
“Hold on to that, and try not to let the rest get you down, okay?”
Taryn skims the cloudy sky outside our window, looking for something I can’t see. When she turns to me, she sticks out her pinky. “Swear?”
We pinky swear on it. “Want to work on your lines?”
My offer perks Taryn up. She jumps out of bed and digs through her bag, tossing me her script. She strikes a pose in the middle of the floor, pretending to be her character in the play. I grin, watching her worry fade away as she focuses on the task I’ve set. I read the first couple lines of the scene, doing my best Esau impression, and Taryn barely manages to hold her serious expression. “Is that how you think he sounds? Wow, that’s terrible.”
I scoff. “Hey, I’m an amazing actor.”
“Right.”
“I had everyone fooled last semester.”
“That was a team effort.”
“Go team,” I say, waving an imaginary pom-pom in the air.
Taryn’s laughter turns serious. “It is really quiet out there. There haven’t been any alarms in a while.”
“Maybe everyone is making a miraculous recovery. What? It could happen.”
“You’re right. It could. After all, I’m going to rise from the dead pretty soon. Still, I think I’ll just go scope it out. Be right back.” Taryn waltzes over to the door, but she doesn’t make it past the frame. A doctor shoves her back into the room. Following, he shuts the door. The lock snaps into place.
