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

My heart kicks into my throat. Mr. Baugh is back, and there’s no telling what he’ll do now that he has both of us trapped. Esau, too. Swallowing, I put a hand on his arm. Wait until he meets my gaze. “If you get the chance, run. Tell Aunt Karen what happened to us. You’ll do that, won’t you?”

Esau’s eyes blaze. “You think I’m a coward?”

“Yes, if you’re so willing to believe that what we had didn’t mean anything,” Taryn bites off.

I shoot a look at my sister, annoyed at her caustic attitude, even though I know it’s a front she’s using to hide behind.

“It’s not cowardly to go for help,” I say to Esau. “Please.”

We fall into a hushed silence as something scuffs right outside the locked door.

He’s coming.

I’ve been running from the demons in my mind for six months, but it ends now. I’m not going to run from this. If Mr. Baugh thinks he’s going to help the Mayday Killer do whatever he has planned for us without having a fight on his hands, he’s mistaken. Hiding the rusted chisel behind my back, I square my shoulders.

“Megan?” someone whispers. “Are you in there?”

I know that voice. Relief floods through me as the chisel hits the ground with a plunk. I’m at the door before I can blink, hands pressed to the gnarled wooden planks. Rough splinters dig into my fingertips, but I don’t care.

“Noah, we’re in here. Help us!”

“Get away from the door, and be ready to run.”

I take a big step back, confused by why he’d—

BANG

The door convulses and flies open, slamming against its frame. Fragments of wood scatter through the air. My hands fly up to cover my eyes. I peek out from between my fingertips and my mouth falls open.

Noah stands in the doorway with Esau’s rifle hitched to one shoulder. His wild curls fall over his forehead and the sleeves of his flannel are shoved up over his elbows to reveal the capable arms underneath. Did he just shoot the lock off the door? I gape, staring, and can’t seem to stop.

Beyond him, the barn door hangs partially open to reveal the pitch dark of the night beyond. Bats fly across the moon.

“I’m sorry, but I followed you guys. I’m here to rescue you…” Noah trails off when he sees who else is in need of rescuing.

“Thanks, Noah,” Taryn says as she passes him in the doorway. “Let’s get out of here.”

Esau snorts as he moves to follow, prompting me with one hand between my shoulders. Despite the anger flaring across his brow, Esau doesn’t take his gaze off my sister’s back.

Noah blinks, eyes skirting between my twin and me as the four of us approach the barn door on quiet feet. He hands the rifle to Esau and falls into step beside me since Esau is like a wall behind Taryn. Esau snaps the gun’s loading chamber open, finds it empty, and closes it again.

Noah gulps, something akin to hurt in his eyes. “There are two of you.”

I focus on the ground as we creep through the wild backyard toward the side of the house nearest the street. The house is quiet and unlit. Maybe we got lucky and Mr. Baugh had to go out, missing the blast of a rifle being fired in his backyard.

Noah’s presence is like a spectre beside me. Unfocused and immaterial. For the first time, I wonder what it must feel like for Noah when he looks at me. What thoughts and emotions are coursing through him now that our duplicity is plain. For the first time, I can admit that we led them on, Taryn and I, without thinking ahead to how it would make them feel. I tried to keep things with Noah platonic, but I didn’t entirely succeed. And based on the photos of Taryn and Esau that Justin got, my perfect sister failed spectacularly at keeping our director at arm’s length.

I reach out and take Noah’s hand, needing the warmth of human contact. When he doesn’t pull away, I whisper, “If you’ll let me, I’ll explain everything. Later.”

With a gentle flick of his wrist, Noah lets go. He adjusts his glasses and averts his gaze.

The tatters of my heart tear asunder. Whatever was beginning to sprout between Noah and me, it’s blackened and dead now. Rotten from the roots.

“Well, isn’t this adorable?”

Up ahead, Taryn gasps, the tall weeds and grasses pawing at her hips.

Esau curses, shoving my sister behind his back to shield her from the two shadowed figures blocking our access to the street and our only avenue of escape. One of them holds a flashlight in our eyes, nearly blinding us.

Noah shifts his weight in front of me so I can only see a sliver of the phantoms over his shoulder.

As the two figures come closer, their shapes come into focus. Two men. Both armed. When they’re a few feet away from us, the one holding the flashlight lowers it.

My vision sharpens. My breath floods out of my chest, leaving me agape in shock and horror.

One of them, the one with the flashlight, is Mr. Baugh. My favorite teacher turned kidnapper. But until this moment, I didn’t understand why he did this to me. Why he used the pretense of the Lopezes being hurt to lure me into his car earlier tonight at the corn maze and absconded with me to this broken-down house out in the boonies.

The other man is heavier, bearded, with a bedraggled appearance that suggests an unpleasant smell, but the juxtaposition of him with Mr. Baugh shakes something loose. If they stood side by side, they’d be nearly identical.

This man has hunted me for months, making my every waking hour a nightmare impossible to wake from. He looks at me with intensity in his gaze, and I realize that I wasn’t a player in this game.

No, I’m the prize awarded to the winner.

The Mayday Killer has revealed himself at