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

I give the slightest shake of my head even as the air whooshes out of my chest.

Justin is slinking around the side of the dingy house, peeking into each window before moving on to the next. He stops, his back pressed against the building’s worn wooden siding. What horrors does he see when he looks in those windows? His lips are moving as if he’s talking to someone. With one hand, he returns his gun to the holster at his side.

A blaring crow makes me nearly jump out of my skin as it takes to the skies somewhere above. I’m beginning to hate those big black menaces. In the distance, a dog barks.

The Lopez’s attack rooster comes winging around the side of the house with a screech like a battle cry and starts jabbing its needle-sharp beak into Justin’s shins. The man growls in surprise and kicks at the bird.

A light flicks on inside the house, and someone shouts.

My eyes widen as Justin throws himself at the treeline, heading straight for us.

“We have to get out of here.”

I whirl, but Esau’s arms tighten around me, tugging me behind a girthy eucalyptus. “I’m calling the sheriff. Just let me…”

“Don’t call him! There’s no need for—”

Justin crashes through the trees mere feet away from where we’re hidden. His lack of stealth would be funny if I wasn’t so afraid of what he saw inside Noah’s house.

Instead, I’m breathless with fear as he draws level with us. Any second he’s going to glance this way. His eyes will lock on mine.

It happens just as he streaks past, leaves crunching and twigs snapping as the rooster chases him all the way to the road. He doesn’t turn back. The scent of burning rubber permeates the air as the truck peels out.

I sag against the patchy bark of the tree, frustration and relief battling within me. He’s gone. I have no idea what Justin was doing here, but I do know that if there was something bad happening inside Noah’s house, the man wouldn’t have run off.

“Let’s go,” I whisper, turning toward Esau.

Esau shakes his head. “They’re putting me through to the sheriff. They should know your favorite janitor was scoping out a student’s house.” His entire body is rigid, his phone to his ear. Through it I can hear the receptionist at the sheriff’s office talking. Esau’s eyes are locked on the Lopez house.

Noah is standing on the front porch, squinting out into the trees. “Stay inside,” he yells to someone inside. “Stay with Anza and Mattie.”

Someone answers low enough that I can’t make it out.

I pinch my eyes closed, wishing I had the power to vanish into the gathering dusk. My hands claw at the bark, wishing I could slough it off the sturdy trunk and cloak myself in it. I should not have followed Justin here.

Esau clears his throat and moves away from me, closer to where Noah is rustling through the undergrowth.

“Hello?” Noah says, his voice closer this time. “Esau? What are you doing here?”

“Saw a truck parked in the trees and thought I’d check on you.”

“Thanks,” Noah says, his voice high and nervous. “I think we’re okay, but Anza is pretty spooked. She saw a man peering in her window.”

Esau nods. “It was the new janitor at school. Justin.”

“Oh.” Noah looks over his shoulder at the house, his body visibly uncoiling.

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“Naw. I, um, forgot he was going to come by. He’s interested in some of our baby chicks. Too bad Napoleon scared him off,” Noah says with the fakest laugh I’ve ever heard. He’s such a terrible liar, it’s kind of endearing.

A pulse throbs in my neck. Justin must have come out here to see if I was with Noah, since I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. So I guess he didn’t know I was at the cornfield with Esau.

Noah is standing an arm’s length away from where I’m hidden, and I pray he doesn’t see me.

“Sheriff’s on his way,” Esau grunts. “You can explain it to him.”

Thanking him, Noah’s footsteps get farther away, back toward the house.

Esau takes my hand and leads me back to the truck. I keep peeking over my shoulder to make sure Noah doesn’t see me.

“Care to tell me what that was about?” he asks once we’re back on the road heading toward town.

“My guess is Justin went over there to see if I was with Noah, since I snuck out. Aunt Karen has him check up on me sometimes.” I won’t meet his eye, and from the way Esau’s jaw flexes, he knows I’m not telling him the whole story.

The rest of the drive is tense and silent.

It’s not until I get up to my bedroom that I discover how close I was to death in that cornfield. There’s a wide knife slash in the back of my dress and the shallow line of red that cuts across my back.

Chapter 34

Day 159, Friday

Aunt Karen went on a tear when she found out about Esau and the cornfield. She reinforced that taking off my bracelet was not an option. Then she started laying out an ironclad argument about how slipping past Justin was incomprehensibly perilous.

Then early this morning we got the call that the fire at the cornfield was arson. Someone tried to burn it to the ground knowing two people were inside. The knowledge has sent me spiraling even further into a pit of regret. All of this is my fault. My parents’ death. The deaths of the Andersons. The Chans. Every single person who has died at the hands of that psycho since May. If only I had pushed harder, made my parents listen to me about the man who showed up everywhere I went. If only I had made them listen, maybe all of this could have been stopped.

But they didn’t hear the desperation in my voice.

And I didn’t push.

Instead I let it go, and my parents were butchered.

And the Mayday Killer is