Don't Look Behind You (Don't Look Series Book 1) by Emily Kazmierski (summer reads .txt) 📗

When I knock, the door swings open. Huh. It must not have been latched all the way.

“Hello?” I say, peeking my head inside while carefully keeping my feet outside the threshold. No answer. Maybe he’s in the back of the house and didn’t hear me? I consider going out and around the building that way, but a blue flicker on the wall catches my attention. There must be a TV on, so he’s got to be home, and I really need to get to Noah’s.

Despite the goosebumps rising on my arms, I go in. My heart is thrumming in my throat. I’ve never been in what is effectively a stranger’s house, and I keep expecting the boogie man to jump out and yell, “Boo.”

The hallway is bare. No furniture. No family photos. It’s as if no one actually lives here. As if Justin is a ghost simply passing through.

But what I find in the living room of the small house makes me wish I’d found a ghost instead.

It’s not the reflection of a TV I saw from the front entryway. A long folding table spans the entire wall of the dimly lit room. Dingy curtains cover all of the windows. Unease slithers up my spine. The curtains might be there to keep the light out, but they also keep the darkness in.

The long table is lined with computer screens. Black cords snake along the floor and end in a coiled mess of surge protectors with red glaring lights. Underneath, there’s a clump of computer towers and external hard drives. Each of the monitors shows a different view from a security camera. Aunt Karen’s front porch. Her garage. The back door. The grove of eucalyptus trees. The entire exterior of the house and land is visible through the screens.

My breath comes in quick pants as panic starts to close its icy fingers around my lungs. I blink rapidly, but the view from the screens doesn’t change. Justin has a stalker’s command center in his house. And his subjects? Aunt Karen. Me. He’s got a front-row seat to everyone who comes and goes from the old house.

I was right. Justin is the one who’s been watching. I have to tell her. I have to get out of here. Now.

I gasp for air, trying to run, but my feet won’t budge. They’ve been cemented to the crusty planks that make up the floor. Digging down deep for the inner strength Aunt Karen says I’ve got, I turn away from the stalker’s paradise.

Oh god. My stomach lurches. The other wall is worse. Justin’s got a murder wall, and this one is much larger than Noah’s. Shock nearly knocks me over as I register that it isn’t Aunt Karen in the hundreds of crisp, color photos. In fact, there aren’t any of her at all.

Images of me are plastered all over the wall. At school. The library. Noah’s house. My mouth drops open in a gasp as I’m drawn to a cluster of photos near the bottom corner of the macabre collage. They’re newer, pinned partially on top of others. In them Esau is sitting on his tailgate almost smiling. Talking to a girl. Me. I’m grinning down at my lap. Between the camera and Esau’s truck is a well-manicured orchard lined with trees. Almond, I’m pretty sure.

I scan photo after photo, trying to establish a timeline. My eyes snap wide as they land on one from that day at the boardwalk. Taken while I was swimming in the ocean.

Terror clamps its hand over my mouth and nose. I try to suck in air but my mouth opens and closes ineffectively like a dying, beached fish. I can’t breathe. I’m going to suffocate right here. Heaving, I take great gulps that scratch and claw down my throat. My lungs refuse to inflate.

Justin is the one helping the Mayday Killer. He’s the one who has been passing me threatening notes. He was there at the beach that day. And at school. He had all the opportunity. And somehow he’s completely fooled Aunt Karen.

I have to get out. I know exactly what this sicko will do if he finds me in his house. Truss me up and lead me like a lamb to the slaughter. My gaze cuts to the kitchen, to the butcher block full of shiny-handled knives. Unbidden, my hand rises to the white scar that mars my cheek. I know if I look down at my fingers they’ll come away bathed in blood.

Through the archway on the left, a door opens and slams shut. Footsteps make the wooden floor vibrate beneath the soles of my shoes.

He’s coming.

If I don’t move now, he’ll catch me.

When the time is right.

Move. Move!

Wrenching my legs into motion, I run.

Chapter 20

The sun set while I waited, shivering, for the sheriff to arrive. When he did, there were no flashing red lights. No sirens. Instead of breaking down the door of Justin’s house and barging inside like they do on TV, he parked his Bronco in front of Aunt Karen’s house. Stared up at it for a beat before mounting the porch and knocking on the door.

Aunt Karen admits Sheriff Lamb and closes the door securely behind him. The sheriff’s hands perch on his hips as his appraising gaze lands on me. “Walk me through what you saw.”

So I do. I explain that I was running late to meet a friend and Aunt Karen wasn’t home, so I walked across the street to Justin’s house. How the door swung open when I touched it. I describe the computer bank of surveillance footage of the house we’re standing in. The wall of photos—proof that he’s been stalking me all over town. I explain about the notes and the fact that he had the opportunity to pass them to me without my noticing.

A chill runs down my spine and I dig my fingers into my arms, clutching them against my