Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

Then, a crunching sound, unmistakable. A sound that should remind her of sledding and snowball fights and drizzling maple syrup over freshly scooped snow in a bowl, but instead sent knives of fear slicing down her skin. Before she could even scramble to her feet, he had her by the back of her neck, his hand a hot clamp on her skin.

“Very clever,” he whispered. He swung her into his arms like a baby, like she’d fainted and he was helping her. Her eyes darted around in the gray morning light, but she only saw suburban houses with closed doors and curtained windows, just like every other house in her neighborhood and probably every neighborhood in Minnesota. Nothing stuck out. She had no idea where she was, and no one knew she needed help.

She opened her mouth to scream, but his voice cut her off, low and threatening. “If you even so much as squeak, I will pull every tooth out of your mouth and save your tongue for last.”

Her teeth clicked together as tears flooded her eyes. He opened the front door with his hands still underneath her body and began to walk through the house. The smell of bleach and broccoli made her stomach churn.

She was still frozen, unable to move or protest, when he threw her back on the filthy mattress. In the dim light, he looked down at her as if she was a misbehaving dog.

“‘You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God.’” His voice boomed in the cramped basement room. “You will not run from your purpose. You will not defy me. No one will defy me again.”

Then he left, locking the door behind him. A few moments later, she heard a loud crash outside, followed by the sound of the drill.

He was sealing the only exit shut.

38

Elle

January 19, 2020

When she finally set off for the drive to Falcon Heights, Elle was feeling foggy, thick-headed after taking a nap for a few hours at Tina’s insistence. Her body was crying out for more sleep, but she could only answer with the large travel cup of coffee in her hand.

As she took another drink, Elle’s phone buzzed in the console. Missed calls and texts were coming through every few minutes. At a stoplight, she glanced at it; notifications from journalists and bloggers she’d interviewed in the past filled her screen. There were emails from her podcast network, from Detective Sykes, from about a thousand listeners. Her old name, her real name, was trending on Twitter. A text from Angelica, Martín’s sister, was the only one she opened.

PROUD OF YOU. REPORTERS AT MY HOUSE BUT I’M NOT SAYING ANYTHING UNTIL WE TALK.

“Shit,” Elle murmured. She typed back a quick thanks and promise to tell her sister-in-law more soon. Putting that episode up had been so clearly the right decision this morning, but she hadn’t even paused to consider that it wasn’t just her life that would be affected when she told the world who she was. There were no texts from Martín, but he was probably being inundated too.

She powered the phone down and put it back in the console. At some point, she’d have to face the questions—but there would be time for that later.

When she arrived at Dr. Stevens’s house, the curtains were drawn and there were no cars in the driveway. Elle walked up and tried to peer through the windows in the garage door, but it was too dark to see whether there was a car inside.

She started up the path to the house, but then stopped, looking down at the ground. Leading away from the front door, there were footprints in the snow, slightly covered by drifts. With another glance at the front door, she turned and followed them around the house, thankful she had worn boots.

On the side of the house, the footprints stopped next to the indentation of a snow angel. She remembered being young, before TCK, before her childhood stopped, when she would rush outside after a blizzard and sink into the flakes, eagerly swiping her arms and legs up and down to create angelic shapes in her backyard.

Dr. Stevens had a child—or maybe a grandchild, considering his age. That shifted something in Elle’s brain, and doubt swept through her. Maybe she shouldn’t be here. It looked like Dr. Stevens wasn’t even home, and she wasn’t sure what she would ask him if he was. He might loosely fit Danika’s description, but so did a bunch of the other men in the faculty. He wasn’t even fully bald; his picture showed a dark ring of hair around his head. A power donut, as Tina had called it, making Elle laugh until she cried.

Still, it had to mean something that both Leo’s murder and Amanda’s kidnapping investigations had now led her here. She had to at least knock on his door. Otherwise, it would always be an incomplete task in her head.

“It’s just ticking a box,” she murmured to herself, walking back around the house. She knocked on the front door.

After a minute, a woman about Elle’s age answered. She opened the main door, leaving the screen shut, and stared at Elle through it. “Yes?” she asked.

Her hair was a wild mess of wispy blond. Shadows carved gray spaces underneath her watery eyes. She wore only a T-shirt and cotton shorts, despite the freezing weather.

“Um, hi. My name is Elle Castillo. I’m wondering if I can talk to Dr. Stevens.”

“He’s not here.”

Elle’s eyebrows drew together. Strange that he hadn’t mentioned this woman when Elle came here before, asking about Luisa. They must have already been together by that time, if the man trusted her to be in his house alone. Then again, if he was having an affair with one of his graduate students, it was understandable he’d want to keep that quiet.

The woman started to shut the door.

“No wait!” Elle held