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“I picked up a scent trail in the forest and followed it to an outlook about a mile from here. The guy stuck around for a while, probably watching the cabin.”
Fuck. It had to be the same guy, the one who’d been there the night of the crash. Was it her guardian? If so, he was very persistent, which made no sense. Eva had left him, sure, and he was probably mad about it, but she was 18, so why go to all the trouble of hunting for her in a forest in winter? No human was that insane.
There was something we were missing.
Something important.
I just wasn’t sure what.
“We need to find this guy,” Tanner said, sipping his coffee. His words were calm enough, but there was an underlying current of violence there, simmering just below the surface.
“And how are we going to do that? He’s likely long gone by now.”
“I know, but I think he’ll be back. I’m going to fix cameras all around the perimeter. If we’re lucky, I’ll catch him on camera. Then I can run his face through my facial recognition program. Once I have an ID, I will find and end the fucker.”
“End who?” Cole asked when he appeared.
“The guy who’s hunting Eva.”
Cole looked worried.
Tanner explained his plan to Cole. We were all in agreement that dealing with whoever was trying to find Eva was our main priority.
Eva
Steam billowed out of the shower while I stripped. I was about to pull my shorts off when I realized I’d left the clean towel on my bed, so I quickly headed back into the bedroom. As my hand touched the towel, the door swung open and Cole walked in.
“I forgot to give—” he began, a pile of clothes in his arms, then he looked at me. Really looked.
We both froze. Me because I stood wearing nothing but a pair of borrowed shorts with the waistband turned over three times, and him because he’d seen all my scars.
I flushed with embarrassment and shame, my arms crossed over my naked chest. No man other than Brent had ever seen me naked.
Before Brent, I’d been self-conscious, like most teenage girls were. Now, it was far more than shyness.
I hated the way I looked. Brent had ruined me. Ugly scars covered my torso, none of them accidental. Cigarette burns. The red, gnarled patch across my back where he threw boiling water over me in a rage, raised lines where he whipped me with a knotted strip of leather until I bled. Thin white lines from his knife. It was a long list.
Brent was a sadist. He enjoyed inflicting pain, and I was his masterpiece. A symphony of exquisite suffering. The louder I screamed, the more his eyes lit up with excitement. The mild-mannered, kind man who had materialized the day Dad died lasted about a year before the sadistic monster he hid came out to play.
The first time Brent hit me shocked me to the core. Like most victims of domestic abuse, I believed him when he said it was a mistake, a loss of control, and that it wouldn’t happen again.
I ignored the red flags, the escalation, and the way he seemed to revel in my fear. Besides, where could I go? I had no family, no friends, nobody to take care of me, other than the devil who hid in plain sight.
In time, I’d learned to remain silent and slip away into the recesses of my mind when he attacked me. It didn’t stop him from hurting me, but it blunted his enjoyment.
It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
I shrank away, edging toward the bathroom, not wanting him to look at me like this. Clouds of steam curled around the door. If I could just get inside and shut the door, then maybe Cole would leave me alone. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the disgust in his eyes, but to my surprise, when I finally found the courage to look up, he just looked sad. And also vengeful.
“Come here, Eva.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so.” The edge of command in his voice was new. Cole was always mild-mannered, kind, a natural nurturer. This version of him was a lot more dominant, and I liked it.
Despite my shame and embarrassment, I crossed the room toward him, still unable to look him in the eye. Surprisingly, it wasn’t my nakedness that bothered me. It was the knowledge that if I got closer, he’d see even more of my scars.
“Look at me, Eva,” he said, lifting my chin. “Tell me who left these marks on you.”
