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

Esau’s mouth curls into a snarl, and his angry eyes smolder a glare at the man just behind my left shoulder. “Don’t touch her.”

“Inside. Now.”

“Run!” someone cries from within the dimly lit concrete room.

It’s the proof I’ve been looking for. With my heart thundering in my ears, I lunge inside.

There’s a scuffle at my back. A grunt. A curse. The squelching of metal hitting flesh. Esau stumbles into me, holding a hand up to his bleeding nose. His lip is split and crimson dribbles down his chin.

At our back, the door slams closed. There’s a scraping as the lock is thrown in place. We’re trapped.

Esau’s eyes land on me. “You okay?”

I stare at him blankly as my tongue struggles and fails to catch up with my fishtailing mind.

Rustling against the far wall draws his gaze, and he freezes. The color drains out of his beautiful face. His carefully constructed facade of calm control shatters into pieces.

Knowing what I’ll find, I look.

In the corner, tied to a chair, her cheeks stained with grime and tears, she sits.

The person responsible for all of the unfortunate events that have slowly embalmed us in misery, despite the fact that I’m kicking and screaming at the closed coffin lid, begging for air.

My mirror image, minus the scar that mars my cheek.

My twin sister.

Audrey.

Chapter 37

Audrey

Bafflement contorts Esau’s face. Hurt flickers behind his eyes as they bob back and forth between Taryn and me. I’m sure the makeup I used to draw on a fake scar is smeared by this point, adding to the mental wallop Esau is experiencing right now. His hands flex at his sides as realization works its way through his features.

My eyes fall to my wrist where my tracking bracelet is supposed to be. My plan to lure the killer out of hiding backfired, and now three people will pay for it instead of just me.

I turn my attention to my twin. “Where is Aunt Karen? Is she coming?”

“I don’t know,” Taryn says, shuffling her feet.

“Are you wearing your bracelet?” I ask, my last tinge of hope staining the words.

“I stuffed it in my pocket, but…” Taryn turns out both her jacket pockets ruthlessly; they’re empty.

My expression crumbles.

“So she has no idea where we are,” Taryn says. “This is it. We’re dead.”

I shake my head. “Untie me. Please. Now that you’re here, we can find a way out. There are tools on the workbench and—We’ll figure it out.”

Taryn doesn’t make a move. She glares in my general direction, but I don’t care. She’s acknowledging me. Talking to me. For the first time in months. Even with her arms crossed tightly like a shield over her chest, I’ll take it. It’s something. Hopefully, a new beginning.

When a beat passes and Taryn still doesn’t move, Esau lumbers over. Kneeling behind the rickety wooden chair I’m sitting in, he begins working at the knotted, rough cord.

“There are two of you,” he growls as he works. “Which one of you was Megan?”

The tender skin at my wrists pinches as he pulls at the rope, and I wince.

Esau huffs, which I take as an apology.

“We both were. We’re identical twins,” I say, straining against my urge to yank at the ropes, knowing it would not help Esau untie my bound hands any faster. After a minute, the ropes fall away and he moves to the side to work on the rope twined around my left leg. I bend to untie the one on the other side.

Nostrils flaring, he glares at me out of the corner of his eye as he works.

“I’m sorry.”

Esau yanks his gaze away.

A shuddering sigh escapes my lips as the last of the bindings falls away and I’m able to stand. I stumble toward my sister on wobbly legs. Pins and needles shoot through my calves as feeling returns to my muscles. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” I whimper, moving to put my arms around her.

She stands limp in my embrace, and it hurts as if she’d stabbed me straight through the heart. This distance she’s put between us since our parents were killed. We were always so close, thick as thieves our mom would say, and the distance Taryn has insisted upon the past five and a half months has been nearly unbearable.

It’s impossible to say how long I was strapped to that chair, and being left alone in a dank, dimly lit cage nearly pushed me to panic. But that’s not me anymore. I may have made the mistakes that led us here, but over the past few months I’ve gotten stronger. Bolder. Before Taryn and Esau showed up, I had begun to believe that I was skirting the cliff overhanging death. But having them here has snapped me out of it.

With a little shake, my sister pushes me away.

“Taryn, please. I’m so sorry…” I trail off, guilt choking off my throat. I should have said that a long time ago.

Something in my twin finally snaps.

“You’re sorry?” She spits, her visage a contorted mask of anger. All of it comes spewing out of her at last. All the words I knew she’d been bottling all the time she refused to speak to me. Any relief I might have felt that she was finally talking withers beneath the heat of the unadulterated fury in her eyes. “You’re sorry? Well I’m sorry, but that isn’t good enough. Your sorry can’t fix the fact that our parents are dead. They were murdered in our kitchen because you just had to show your stupid teacher that camera you’d been eyeing. You don’t even use the stupid thing. My face is ruined because of you. I can’t even look in the mirror without going back to that day. Our lives are ruined. Because of you. And now the Mayday Killer’s lackey has trapped us in a concrete room, again your fault, and he’s going to kill us.”

She