Eye Candy

She would’ve called out.

She would’ve called me back, texted me back. She would’ve said something.

The phone was turned off.

Someone else was there.

Someone else turned it off.

I started shaking. I didn’t even know I was until Heather grabbed my arm, reaching around the seat’s divider from behind. She scooted to the edge of her seat and leaned forward, her cheek resting against where my shoulder was by my seat. Her hand gripped my arm. “We’ll find her.”

She’s gone by now.

I couldn’t say that, though. I couldn’t even shake my head. I knew. I knew!

She was gone.

*

Mason pulled into the driveway. He stopped, and I threw my door open. I ran. My feet pounded on the sidewalk, going to the door. My heart was lodged in my throat. It was too scared to keep beating.

The door was locked.

I hit it, then bounced back.

Not even reacting, I dug for my keys.

My pocket—there were still no pockets. Fuck it. Fine. I grabbed under the step for the extra key. I fit the key into the lock.

My hands were shaking now.

The key fell.

I grabbed it again, and shoved it in. The lock moved, and I was inside.

That sound had come from upstairs.

“SAM!”

Mason raced behind me. He probably didn’t want me going without him, or wanted me to stay behind, to let him look. I didn’t care.

Taylor.

She was all that mattered.

She needed me. Only me.

It didn’t make sense, but I knew it. I felt it. I almost thirsted for it.

My feet were a dull sound, stampeding up the stairs, like I wasn’t hearing them, like I wasn’t even there anymore. I was beyond, already searching the doors, looking for Taylor.

I threw open Nate’s door.

Nothing.

His bed was empty.

I tore open the closet—the clothes he’d left behind fell off a hanger. Nothing. I could see every inch of the closet. There was nowhere to hide.

She wasn’t there.

His bathroom next. No. The shower door was transparent; I could see inside, and it was empty.

On to the next room. I was leaving Nate’s when Mason shot past me. He tore into the extra bathroom there—but it was the same. Empty. We didn’t even have a curtain hanging over the tub in there. No one used it. The drawers were too small. A body couldn’t be folded up in them.

I glimpsed someone standing behind me, paused at the top of the stairs, and I whirled around. A scream stuck in my throat. It was Heather. Keep going, Sam. I need you. A voice spoke to me in my head. It was soft, low, soothing.

It wasn’t mine. It was Taylor’s.

Mason opened the hallway closet, but no. Again, no. Always no. It would always be no.

The last door was to Logan’s loft. He locked it sometimes, if we had people over, or if there was a big party going on. That was the only time he locked it. We all had locks on our doors so our stuff wouldn’t get stolen.

I yanked at the door handle. The door didn’t move.

Someone gasped. It might’ve been me. I didn’t care. I whirled around, already feeling Mason behind me, and I stepped aside.

He rammed into the door and it crashed open. It tore from the hinges—a second door, lost. That thought was in the back of my mind, and a part of me, the part that was in the back of my mind, that was too afraid to come forward, started giggling at that. It was funny to her. It wasn’t to me. I was acting on pure blind rage at this moment.

Mason went first, barking at me to stay back.

No. If she was up there, I was too. If he was going there, I would too. I was with both of them. I wasn’t staying behind. But I knew—just at the sight of how Mason’s shoulders sagged—she wasn’t there.

There was one last spot. Mason stopped in the middle of the room. I veered around him. Logan and Taylor used a bathroom that was attached to the far side of the room.

I crashed through the door. She was going to be there. I had visions of her in the bathtub, her throat slashed. Blood dripping down her body, coating it even, and those eyes . . . I shuddered. They’d be glazed over and lifeless.

Nothing.

I stopped in shock.

Absolutely nothing.

The bathtub was spotless. Two towels were folded on the side. A bar of soap next to them. It looked like a hotel. The shower was spotless as well.

Wait . . . what? I had known. It was in my bones. I’d known I would find her here.

I stepped back, stepping into Mason, whose hands came to my shoulders. I shook my head. “I thought she’d be there.”

His fingers tightened. He started to say something, when a blood-curdling scream ripped from beneath us.

Mason and I both tore out of there. I could outrun him in long-distance runs, but not sprinting. He dominated—it’s what he did for a living—but not that day, and not in that house. I ducked around him, pushing forward with a burst of speed I’d never used.

I raced down the loft’s small set of stairs, through the second-floor hallway—Heather was gone. I noted that in the back of my mind, but I kept going. That scream was beneath us. I barely touched the stairs.

Beneath us.

I kept repeating that in my head.

Beneath us on the first floor.

The hallway led to my room with Mason. There was a guest bathroom. Storage closets. Then our room.

No, that voice in my head said. She wasn’t giggling anymore. She wasn’t soothing. She just sounded sad. She added, The basement, Sam.

The basement door was open. I touched down on the stairs, leaping my way down—and there was Heather. She was backed up against the wall, her eyes glued to the bathroom, her hands cupped over her mouth, but she kept screaming. I didn’t think she’d ever stop. Not anymore.

And I knew.

I faltered now, coming to the open door. I reached for the handle to brace myself.

I looked in—that voice in my head said, Right spot, wrong bathroom—and there she was.

She was just like how I knew she would be. Taylor was slumped in the tub, her head propped against the wall, eyes wide open to look at us, like she’d been looking at her killer.

I couldn’t—another gut-wrenching scream. This one wasn’t from Heather. It was me, and that voice, that person who was in the back of my mind, pulled away from me.

It wasn’t safe to be in my body right now.

I crumpled to the floor, still screaming.

And I pulled away.

I passed Mason, who sprinted behind me, his hand automatically reaching to comfort me, but also to steady himself.

I was floating backward.

Away from them.

Up the stairs.

Through the house.

Out the front door.

Past Mason’s Escalade.

All the way down the street.

And then I heard that voice in my head again, but it wasn’t Taylor’s and it wasn’t mine anymore. It wasn’t sad, or soothing, or laughing. It was someone else’s.

He said, Come to me, Samantha.





Chapter 12