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

Audrey, would never join up with this psycho. She would never heap kindling and fuel on his hatred in an attempt to build it into a fire capable of murder. But by the determined look on her face, I guess I was wrong. I don’t know anything about this girl. Not anymore.

I cringe and try to pull away from the killer’s punishing grip, but I can’t as the blade at my throat begins to cleave my skin. Maybe it would be better if I died quickly, before the true horror of my situation comes to fruition. Still, I can’t look away.

The knife bites deeper, and I close my eyes. My heart is a sledge-hammer behind my ribcage, each punishing beat forcing the blood through my body in a gush as it surges toward the small cut at my throat. The man threatens to pull it wider with a flick of his fingers.

“Are you ready?” he asks, his tone less hungry, more placating.

Audrey nods. “But don’t kill Taryn. She doesn’t deserve it.”

The knife backs just a hair’s-breadth away from my skin, and I take in a slow, careful breath.

“Let’s move inside,” Mr. Baugh says. “We can have the ceremony in the living room.”

“I, I think I’m going to—” Esau topples into the mud and doesn’t move.

“What ceremony?” Noah asks in a strangled voice.

“You’ll see,” my captor says, shoving me toward the house’s warped back door.

“What about the boy?” Mr. Baugh asks from somewhere behind me, not even deigning to say Esau’s name. Anger starts to spark low in my belly. Audrey may be lost to me forever, but I won’t lose Esau too. He’s the only person I have left to fight for, and I will never give up.

“He dead?” my captor asks his brother.

When he fell, Esau made no move to catch himself. His body was so still, and there was so much blood...

“Not yet.”

“Leave him.”

“No!” I cry. “Let me go, you freak.” I kick and yank with every bit of strength I can call forth. The man at my back hisses as my heel connects with his kneecap. His fingers on my upper arm loosen a fraction, and if I can just—

My vision goes white at the hot, shearing pain at my throat. The man’s breath is moist on my ear, and revulsion works its way through every cell in my body.

“Not yet, girlie. I need you and the scrawny boy as witnesses.”

Inside, once Noah and I are zip tied hand and foot and shoved on to a musty plaid couch, I realize how truly screwed we are. I stupidly left my phone in Esau’s truck. Audrey isn’t wearing her bracelet, although if she was planning this with that murderer, she probably left it off on purpose.

Was all of this an act? The fear that crowded her expression when Mr. Baugh shoved Esau and me into that concrete cell he built in his barn. The dirty tear streaks on her cheeks. The fact tools were left on the workbench where we could reach them.

If Noah hadn’t arrived and shot the lock off the door, would Audrey have magically figured out how to get the door open and feigned helping us escape? Were Mr. Baugh and his twin lying in wait for her to lead us right to them?

Now, Mr. Baugh is across the room leaning against the smoke-stained brick fireplace with his gun leveled at Noah and me. He checks his wristwatch and steals a glance toward the back bedroom where his brother disappeared a minute ago.

Audrey, too, stepped away into the bathroom, leaving Noah and me alone out here, gaping like idiots. A fist clenches around my stomach, making it gurgle in acidic protest. There has to be a reason she’s going along with this. But what?

Could she really be as angry and hateful as she sounded outside?

I wished I wasn’t a twin.

The reverberation cuts as deeply as it did the first time I heard it. I never wished Audrey wasn’t my twin. But maybe that’s the problem. I always thought of her as my twin, as someone whose existence was attached to mine. Not the other way around. And our parents? They fawned over me, I’ll admit, but they never treated Audrey badly. Not that I noticed.

In my peripheral vision, Noah adjusts his shoulders. A pungent cloud is dislodged from the couch cushions, making me wrinkle my nose in disgust. It smells like a hundred cats lived and peed in this house.

Noah’s mouth twists in a grimace as he attempts to shift his arms. He looks pained at the way they’re wrenched and tied behind his back. He’s been oddly silent since he arrived, not that I blame him.

“You okay?” I whisper.

He’s staring at our teacher, eyes narrowed.

“Years ago, when my brother… died. The security video from the gas station was really grainy, but… Would it be crazy if I told you it looked like the Mayday Killer?” When his eyes meet mine, so full of the extreme sadness I can only imagine is the result of years of open-ended wondering, it takes my breath away.

My hands are tied, so the only thing I can do to comfort him is lean over enough to press my forehead into his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Noah. I wish I could get you out of this.”

Noah’s breath hitches, making me whip around.

The killer has emerged from one of the bedrooms wearing an old, ill-fitting tux. Its ruffled shirt looks like it was plucked right out of the 1970s. Or a Dumb and Dumber movie. He makes the final adjustments to his bow tie in a scratched mirror that hangs over the dust-coated fireplace.

Noah’s eyes dart from him to me. “What is happening?”

My mouth goes dry when Audrey exits the bathroom wearing a yellowed, floral wedding dress and veil. The gown is loose along the neckline and at the hips; it was obviously made for a taller, curvier woman.

Slowly, she steps up beside our parents’ murderer and gives him a tentative