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

Day 1

“Mom? Hello?”

Taryn is rooted to the wooden planks in the foyer, the police dispatcher talking into her ear through her phone.

But I step into the kitchen. My gasp snatches her attention. My ragged sobs make my sister’s eyes well and spill over.

Two bloodied human forms lie ravaged on the kitchen floor. Their blood splattered over the faces of the appliances and cabinets.

My breath hitches as I reach toward the form that was our mother. I can’t bring myself to touch the still, lifeless twist of flesh that wrapped us in a warm goodbye hug only hours ago.

My knees knock together. “Taryn! Are they coming?” I stammer, but I can’t think. Can’t remember what I’m supposed to do in an emergency.

The squeak of a rubber sole against the wood floors makes my eyes fly to my sister’s in terror. I can’t move. I’ve turned to stone.

A man emerges from the hallway and skirts toward her. His blood-spotted face is twisted in a hungry scowl, but his movements ooze unearthly calm. Small, beady eyes move between us under thick, unkempt eyebrows. “Audrey?” he asks.

Taryn swivels toward me, mouth open in shock. “How does he—?”

Sirens wail nearby, but I can’t look away from him.

With a furious cry that I will never, ever forget, the man’s blade slashes through Taryn’s cheek. Blood spills down her neck as she tries to stop it with white fingers. I lunge toward her, my tongue twisted hopelessly.

Her wail of pain lacerates my organs to shreds.

Footsteps thud across the wood floor. The front door slams against the wall, and he’s gone.

Sirens claxon as they draw closer.

I pray they’re coming for us.

Chapter 38

Taryn

“Just let us go. Let us go and we won’t tell anyone we saw you. You can escape.”

“And give up my mate? I don’t think so.”

A sickening swoop crashes through my stomach as the Mayday Killer looks past us, his eyes locking on my twin. Did he just say… mate? This middle-aged monster thinks my sister is his match?

A menacing grin crosses the man’s face as his eyes glimmer. He’s far more dangerous than I imagined.

My fists clench. He can have Audrey when hell freezes over.

A sharp steel knife flashes as it catches the moon. It’s such a sudden, savage move that I don’t register what’s happening until the blade has slashed along Esau’s arm. Esau’s blood is almost black under the pale moon’s light as he pulls his wounded arm into his chest with a guttural yell.

In an instant the psycho out maneuvers him, whipping me around and pulling me viciously against his chest.

My breath halts in my throat as he presses the warm, sticky blade against my throat. “Any more heroics, and this one dies.”

Esau is glaring daggers at my captor, but I can’t focus on anything but the dark liquid seeping between his fingers. He’s losing a lot of blood, and if he doesn’t get help soon...

The whites of Noah’s eyes shine in the dark as he stands in front of Audrey. He’s made of more than I knew, but the resigned look Audrey gives him as she gently steps around him betrays her. I didn’t truly see Noah, but she did. She does. He stuck with her all these months, even when she evaded his questions, avoided his hints about being more than friends, and outright lied to him when she absolutely had to. I’ve listened to all of the recordings, and whatever the thing was that they’d begun between them, it’s as real as the blade against my throat.

Audrey isn’t looking at me.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she says, centering her attention on the man who has me locked in a brutal embrace. “There’s no need for that. I’m not going anywhere.”

The paunchy, pungent barrier behind me shifts. “I knew you’d understand, Audrey. You know it was all for you, right? Everything I did was to prove to you how right we are for each other.”

Esau’s face is pale as he wavers on his feet.

Audrey ignores Esau, taking another careful step closer. Her eyes are pinned on the murderer whose knife is digging into the flesh below my trembling chin. “I saw,” she whispers. “How could I not? It was all—very sweet.”

Noah looks like he’s going to be sick.

The man at my back stands up straighter. The acrid stench of rot washes over me when he laughs. “I knew. The moment you told me that you felt overshadowed by your sister, that you felt like your parents didn’t even see you, I knew. My parents didn’t see me either.”

Mr. Baugh starts as if he’s just remembered where he is, and looks down at the gun he has aimed at Noah’s chest. He blinks and glances at me, but before I can react, he looks away. The last, desperate flicker of hope I had that he would have a change of heart withers in my chest.

“Tell her what you said to me. Tell her you meant it,” the Mayday Killer urges.

The eagerness in the man’s voice makes horror dawn in the pit of my stomach. There is no way Audrey could have known—much less spoken to—this man before he eviscerated our parents, could she? She wouldn’t do that. Not my best friend. My twin sister. The gentle, quiet soul who grounded me when I needed a jumping off point to fly.

Look at me.

I will it with all my might, but Audrey’s attention is fixed on the man holding me hostage. Her expression is a mix of so many emotions I can’t hope to pick them apart. When she speaks, everything I thought was true is obliterated.

“I told you sometimes I wished I wasn’t a twin. Wished I didn’t have a mirror image reflecting all that I lack back at me. And you said you wished there was something you could do to help me. You figured out a way.” Audrey bites her lip, eyes darting toward mine and back over my head.

This cannot be happening. I am not hearing this. Audrey, my