In the Woods Read online

  She thought back to the man who’d taken her—the same man who lay dead on the ground before her now. The way he’d told her about the other girls had been strange, as though he was recounting events without any emotional attachment toward what he’d been saying. Now she understood why. She’d thought he’d been telling her the stories of each of the other women because he hadn’t had anyone else to tell, but now she understood how wrong she’d been. He hadn’t been recounting the stories because she was the only person he’d been able to tell. He’d been recounting them like that because he was the one who’d heard the stories from someone else. Someone else had told him how the girls had died, and what they’d been like during their final moments. The man whose body she’d been chained up beside had never been the one who’d killed them all.

  She didn’t know how the two men had met. Perhaps he’d got talking to this real killer in a bar one night, and the murderer, desperate to finally speak to someone about his accomplishments, had told the other man everything, including where he took the girls to kill them, and where the bodies were buried. The knowledge had been enough to reasonably copy the real killer.

  Cass gasped.

  Memories of when she’d been taken and the hours leading up to that moment burst into her head. She’d been going in to work that morning as usual. It had been early, with no one else around. She’d gone around the back of the coffee house and let herself in through the rear door. Everything had been just as it always was, and she’d set up the coffee shop in preparation of opening.

  Then she’d gone to the front door and unlocked it. Only someone had been waiting on the other side. The moment she’d unlocked the door, it had burst inward, throwing her off her feet, and someone had landed on top of her.

  She’d felt a stab in her arm, followed by the almost immediate effect of the drugs, the world fading away.

  The next thing she’d known, she was waking up inside the small airplane.

  But that wasn’t all she remembered.

  You asked for this, the first man had told her. At the time, she’d thought he was just making a generalization about women, but now she realized he’d said it in a more literal term.

  There had been a reason she’d been the one he’d chosen.

  It all came back to her—those hours before she’d been kidnapped.

  Her depth of self-loathing had reached its lowest point. She’d read an article online about all the women who were suspected to be victims of the Magician—photographs of their faces, with small summaries of what kind of person they were beside it. They’d all seemed so perfect—career women, and cheerleaders, mothers, and high school prom queens. She’d stared at their faces, imprinting them to mind, and asked herself why it was those kinds of women who fell prey to men like that. What had they ever done to deserve it, when women like her were still getting up and going to work in the morning like usual? She was a no one. Even her own parents wouldn’t know or care if she was missing. It should be women like her the Magician was taking, not these innocents.

  And when, in her moment of self-hatred, and on a self-destructive spiral, she’d posted on social media inviting the murderer to come and kill someone who deserved to die anyway, the copycat had seen it and decided to take her up on her offer.

  Perhaps, in his obsession with the real killer, wanting to emulate everything he did, he’d done a search and come across her post. It would have been easy enough to see where she worked—she had it on her profile—and watch the coffee shop for when she came in.

  But she didn’t want to die. She knew that now as surely as she’d ever known anything. Her brother’s death had been an accident, and no amount of blaming herself changed that or would bring him back to life. Her parents had blamed each other, and ultimately that had destroyed them. She’d lived her life in the wake of all that tragedy, never pushing herself, never creating a connection with anyone important enough to miss if something happened to them.

  She had asked for this, but she knew how wrong she’d been now. She wouldn’t have wished this upon her worst enemy, and certainly not herself. What had happened hadn’t been her fault, and she deserved to have a life, just as much as anyone else.

  Cass had thought the killer was dead.

  She was wrong.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cass’s heart thudded, each beat increasing the pressure in her ears and resonating through her whole body. The blood drained from her face, taking with it all sense of heat, as though gravity had pulled it downward and out through the ground beneath her. Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension, and she glanced down to where his fingers dug into her arm.

  She weighed up her options. Did she even have any? She was in bad shape, while this man—the real Magician—was fit and healthy, as far as she was aware. Her ankles were still chained, so she couldn’t run.

  She had a knife in the bag. When she’d shoved the contents back in the bag, the bigger blade the man who’d kidnapped her brought with him had been with everything else. She needed to go on the offensive, and not allow another man to put her in a position of utter helplessness.

  What if you’re wrong?

  What if her instincts had messed up on this one, and he wasn’t the killer at all? She might not be thinking straight, and if that was the case, then he could actually be her rescuer, and she might be about to hurt him. People would look at events leading up to this moment and determine she’d lost her mind. They’d say, ‘poor guy, he was only there to help her, and she attacked him.’ They’d throw around ideas about how she must have been so traumatized by what had happened that she’d have attacked any man who’d approached her. If she killed this man, believing him to be the real Magician when he wasn’t, she might also be sealing her own fate. She would no longer have someone to rescue her, and she would die out here, alone, just as she’d believed she would all along.

  But if she waited long enough to find out the truth for sure, it could be too late.

  She needed to get him to admit what he’d done. One thing she knew from when her kidnapper had brought her here was that these men were proud of what they did. It must be the worst kind of torment for people like them, to want everyone to know who they were and what they were capable of, and yet be unable to tell a soul. Except, he had told someone, hadn’t he? Both of them had. Her rescuer must have told her kidnapper, and her kidnapper had told her.

  The man spoke, and she jumped at the sound of his voice. “Did he tell you his name?”

  Instinct told her this man wouldn’t be happy about the other man pretending to be him. These women and their murders were his legacy, not that of the man lying dead on the ground. If she wanted to be certain, she needed to get him talking.

  She shook her head. “Only that he was the Magician everyone was talking about. He told me all about the other women before he died.” She spat the final words. Her disgust wasn’t difficult to fake. “He was so proud of himself for what he did to them.”

  Her rescuer’s eyes narrowed beneath the shade of his baseball cap. “He told you about them?”

  “Every detail. He was keen to talk about them. It made me sick to my stomach. What kind of man does that to women and boasts about it? It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s told others about this place.”

  His grip on her arm tightened. “Why would you think that?”

  She managed a shrug, though her entire body was wound tight with anxiety. “He was so proud to be the Magician. He spoke as though he felt like it made him superior to other men. Like he was better than everyone else and didn’t have to play by the rules.”

  The man beside her stiffened. His nostrils flared, and a muscle ticked beside his eye.

  She thought to the knife in the bag slung across her shoulder. The knowledge a weapon was so close burned into her, and she felt as though it glowed like a beacon. He still had a hold on her, and to an outsider it would appear as though he was trying to support her, but it felt completely wrong.

  “I...
I think I need to sit down for a minute,” she said. “I’m dehydrated, but I have water in the bag.”

  The bag, she’d said. Not my bag. Had she made a mistake? Had she made it obvious the bag didn’t belong to her and may contain more than just a bottle of water.

  He looked at her, as though considering if she might be a threat, and then released his hold.

  Cass sank to the ground, her legs folding beneath her. She wished she could trust her judgement. Was this the killer, or just a man with bad people skills—something he surely didn’t deserve to die for? If she attacked, and he never had any intention of hurting her, he would be forced to fight back. She could be putting an innocent man in the position of harming a woman. But she needed to act quickly. If there was time for him to fight back, she’d lose. She was in a bad way—dehydrated and half-starved, covered in mosquito bites, and having lost blood. If it came down to a physical fight between the two of them, she had no doubt that she wouldn’t be the one to come out on top.

  Cautiously, she unclipped the front of the bag and folded open the flap, and then squeezed the plastic part of the drawstring to widen the top.

  The man twisted on his feet in front of her, suddenly leaning over her. “I’ll get that for you.”

  Cass grappled at the bag, trying to keep hold of it, but with only one good working hand, he easily snatched the rucksack out of her hands.

  Her stomach sank. He had hold of the bag now.

  But to her surprise, he opened the bag the rest of the way, and reached in to pull out the bottle of water. “You look like you need this.”

  Confusion rippled through her. She’d thought he was taking the bag from her so he could make sure she didn’t have any weapons, but it seemed he was only trying to help her because of her bad hand. Were her instincts wrong?

  “Yes, I do. Thank you.”

  He removed the lid and handed her the bottle. She lifted it to her lips and took a couple of grateful gulps. The water was almost gone.

  I was wrong.

  She sagged with relief. Thank God. Perhaps she didn’t need to be so worried about conserving water now. This man would help her back to his plane and get her to safety. In a few hours, she could be in the hospital, hooked up to a drip and on her way to recovery.

  “I think we should go now,” she said, moving to get back to her feet. “You’ve seen everything you need to.”

  He took a step closer, his shadow falling over the top of her. “Oh, we’re not going anywhere.”

  The menace in his tone was unmistakable. Cold terror plunged ice into her heart.

  “Well, I am.” His head tilted to one side. “But you’re not.”

  No, no, no. She’d been right.

  She wasn’t going to die now, not after everything she’d been through. It was too cruel, too wrong. She’d had enough of men thinking they could get away with doing whatever they wanted to her.

  He might have taken the bag, but the knife she’d used to cut her hand and free herself was still lying on the ground at the base of the tree. Had he seen it? It was dark with blood, the blade no longer shiny or catching the sunlight. It had landed in a small patch of grass which helped to cover the handle.

  “No, please.” She shook her head and scrambled backward, back toward the tree she’d spent days trying to escape. “You’re him, aren’t you? The real Magician?”

  A slow smile of triumph spread across his face. “Yes, I am.” He gestured toward the body. “This useless piece of shit here is a nobody, no matter what he told you.”

  “Please,” she begged. “You can be better than he was. Let me go.”

  He gave a cold laugh. “I think we both know that’s not going to happen. You know far too much. Besides, even if I let you go, you’ll still die out here. At least this way, your death will have meant something.”

  Cass pushed back with her heels, increasing the distance between them, but he took another step closer, reducing it again. She kept her injured hand close to her body, not wanting to start the bleeding again. She couldn’t barely believe this was happening. How unfair could her life get? She’d worked so hard to get free, and she was going to end up right back where she started.

  “How will it mean something?” she dared to ask, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.

  “I will be talked about for years to come, and by default, so will you and all these other women. Your lives were nothing but trash before I came along. None of you would ever do anything worthwhile with the gifts of your existence, but now you have.”

  She shook her head, the air escaping her lungs in sharp, shallow breaths. “How can you say that? Susie Banks was going to be a lawyer. Maria Moore was the mother of two children. Their lives meant something. All of their lives meant something.”

  She was almost at the tree now, so close she could have reached back and touched the trunk.

  Cass shuffled back a little farther and put her hand down on something solid. Her heart missed a beat. She closed her fingers around the handle of the knife. Her right hand was all but useless, with her limp thumb and forefinger, and so her left hand was going to have to do.

  “None of you mean anything without me.”

  The Magician towered over her, his upper lip curled in a snarl. He leaned in to grab her, and she let out a scream of fury. She swung her arm, aiming the knife at his neck, but her movements were sluggish—dehydration and exhaustion affecting her worse than she’d thought—and he lifted his arm to block her. Their hands collided, and she lost her grip on the knife. It flew out of her grip and landed in the dirt to his right.

  No!

  The Magician lunged for the knife. He was stooped over, his back bent and head down, as he reached for the blade.

  Cass didn’t hesitate.

  Remembering how she’d taken down the first man, she didn’t even bother trying to go for the knife as well. She knew that was a tussle she was never going to win. Instead, she dropped backward again, so she was in the same position as she’d been when she’d been shuffling back to reach the knife, and swung her legs toward the man’s head. She had no intention of kicking him, however, and her right leg carried over the top of his head. Her foot knocked his baseball cap off, and it fell to the ground, and the chain joining her ankles slipped around his neck.

  Not pausing for a moment, Cass yanked her feet back.

  The chain tightened around his neck. Immediately, he stopped reaching for the knife and lifted his hands to his throat instead. She shrieked in animalistic fury and pulled harder, crossing her ankles to tighten the chain. Leaning back with her entire body weight, she wrenched his neck back, too. His back was an inverted arch, his hands clawing at his throat.

  She hadn’t thought she’d had any more strength left in her, but she discovered her desire to live outweighed her fatigue. She streamed every ounce of energy and focus into keeping that chain pulled as tight as possible. She yanked her knees back toward her chest to make her position more rigid. The Magician wrenched his head from side to side, trying to dislodge her, but the hold she had on him was too strong. He swung his arm back, trying to bat away her feet, but he couldn’t budge them, the position too awkward. Even when he wrapped his fingers around the chain to try to pull it away, all he succeeded in doing was making it tighter. She felt like a cowboy riding a bull at a rodeo, but no matter how he tried to shake her off, she hung on.

  Strangled noises crackled from between his lips. She was relieved she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see the pain or horror in his eyes. There had been too much death, and she’d been so close to it herself that she didn’t think she could stand to witness much more. The seconds passed by like minutes.

  Die, you fucking bastard. Just die!

  Finally, the tension went out of his body, and he slumped down. But she didn’t dare release her hold on him. Not yet. What if this was a trick, and as soon as she released the chain, he would start to breathe again? There was no doubt in her mind that he’d kill her, slowly and painfully, a
s though she hadn’t already been through enough.

  Cass dared to release the tension on the chain a fraction. He didn’t move, so she relaxed a tiny amount more. Did she dare hope this was over? Carefully, she uncrossed her ankles and kicked out to unhook the chain from around his neck. She wished more than anything that she could remove the chain from her ankles, knowing it had been a weapon used to take a man’s life, no matter how evil that man might have been, but she had no idea what had happened to the key.

  A cramp seized her calf muscles, and she cried out in pain. Dragging herself away from the body, she rolled into a ball, using her good hand to try to rub out the charley horse. Tears filled her eyes, and she barked out a sob, finally giving in to her misery. She still wasn’t safe. Her rescue had turned out to be only more fighting, and pain, and death.

  At least it wasn’t your death, sweetie.

  She heard Anna’s voice clearly and lifted her head, but the other women hadn’t appeared. She sensed them with her, though, their presences—however imagined they might be—offering her their support.

  Cass owed it to the other women to make it to safety and share their stories. They had families and loved ones who would be missing them, and those people deserved to have closure so they could grieve in peace. Her fight wasn’t over yet, even if the men who’d put her in this situation were dead. She still needed to find help. She wanted to survive.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Did she remember the way they’d come? There were two planes now, both sitting on that small strip of land that had been cleared of trees. Surely there must be something in those planes that could help her. One of the radios must be working, or she might even find a cell phone that would have service, though she imagined it wouldn’t be great out here.

  At the thought of a cell phone, she realized she hadn’t checked the real Magician’s pockets. He might have one on him right now, and here she was, sitting only a matter of feet away, pondering her rescue when it was right at hand.

  The cramp had eased for the moment, so she crawled forward and came to a stop beside his body. She glanced between the two bodies. Two men, lying dead only feet from each other.