“Drugged?” I asked, my eyebrows scrunched. “Look, you don’t know what’s going on here, Dalton. And if you did—”
“I understand enough, Char. I understand your boss has some weird cabin in the woods. I understand he was holding Ellie Farmer, the first girl who went missing, like some kind of caged animal. And I understand he turned into something that I definitely don’t understand.” He swallowed hard. “I also understand he might very well have been raping you, and that whatever he’s been dosing you with has kept you unaware it was going on.”
“He wasn’t raping me!” I screamed, slapping my hands against the cage. “I told you, you don’t understand! It’s very dangerous for me to be out here right now, Dalton! You need to bring me back!”
“Is that what he told you?” Dalton took a right onto Main Street. He slid to a halt in front of Town Hall. The sheer amount of cars here shocked me.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “If you think I’ve been drugged, then shouldn’t you bring me to the damn doctor?”
“Dr. Miller is inside. Everyone is,” Dalton said, stepping out and rounding the car to open my door. “After you disappeared, I convinced the mayor to declare a state of emergency. Everything has been on lockdown.”
“How did you find me?” I asked, as he opened the door and helped me out.
“I pinged your cellphone.”
“But my location services—”
“Were turned off. I know.” He had me by the arm now. It felt strange, as though he had never touched me before, as though no man other than Abram ever had. “I figured he might do something like that. That’s why it took me so long.”
The thought of Abram leapt into my mind. He was hurt. He was bleeding. He might die if I didn’t find him. But even if I could manage to get away, I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him. But I had to. I couldn’t just let him die in the woods like an animal.
Even if he was an animal at the moment.
“What are we doing here?” I asked as he pulled me toward Town Hall.
“I told you. We’re in a state of emergency. The mayor’s called a mandatory town meeting to discuss how to deal with the situation.”
“And what situation is that, exactly?” I asked.
He pushed open the double doors, and all uncertainty I had about what he meant washed away like suntan oil at Sports Illustrated beach shoot. The hall was jam-packed. The lights were off, and a movie was playing against the wall.
No, it wasn’t a movie. That was Abram. He was standing there stark naked with his naughty bits blurred out. It was the scene from just a few minutes ago, only I had been cut out, replaced with a huge blur.
“Officer Evans was wearing a vest cam,” Dalton said. “Everything was transmitted to the chief of police. And it’s a good thing. I’m not sure I’d have been able to convince them.”
“I’m going to play this again,” the mayor said from a podium at the end of the room. “But I’ll repeat my initial warning. This subject matter is intense and frightening. It would be best to shield your children’s eyes.”
And with that, Abram morphed into the beast right there on the wall-turned-screen. Gasps, whimpers, oohs, and ahhs filled the room. Someone toward the back shrieked.
Dalton marched toward the stage as the lights turned back on, and the two other police officers came up on either side of me. Their stance made their intentions clear. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Halfway down the aisle, Dalton started speaking, as though whatever he had to say couldn’t wait until he got to the podium.
“We have to keep our wits about us, people,” he said, loud enough for his voice to carry over the chatter of the room. “I know this isn’t a situation any of us ever thought we’d find ourselves in. But the truth is, we’ve all known that something has been plaguing New Haven for quite some time.”
If it wasn’t Abram he had been talking about—if I didn’t know all that I knew—I would probably be swooning right now over his amazing leadership skills and bravery. But that timeline could never exist again. Life wasn’t that simple.
Dalton settled at the podium, looking particularly comfortable up there. “We’ve felt the unease. We’ve sensed the foreboding. We’ve all held our children a little closer, all locked our doors extra tightly.” He pounded his fist on the podium. “And now we know why.”
Pointing to the light-drenched image of Abram on the pull-down screen, he continued. “This thing—this monster—is very real. It’s after our citizens. It’s after our women. How many people does it have to hurt, does it have to kill, before we take action?” He hit the podium again. “There is only one course of action. We have to put an end to this before it goes any further.”
Applause lit up the room, but Dalton continued, shouting over it. “We have to protect our town, protect our citizens, and protect ourselves by whatever means necessary. We have to fight back. We have to kill the beast!”
Chapter 25
I stood there in shock as the chants grew louder.