Chapter Two
Twenty-Nine Days Later
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I peeled my eyelid open, cringing as piercing sunlight poured in.Wha... What’s that noise?
Bang! Bang!
“Miss Hunter? Miss Hunter, open up. I know you’re in there.”
Groaning, I scraped myself off the desk—straightening my aching back. I fell asleep in the office again for the third night in a row. I got out of the chair and made for the front door, clutching my aching neck as I threw it open.
An irate Detective Daniels stood on my welcome mat, arm raised in mid-pound. “Miss Hunter,” he barked. “Do you have any idea what you’ve—?”
“Detective, finally!” I grasped his arm and dragged him inside. “I called the station twelve times a day, every day for the past week. I also went down there a bunch of times but the uniforms wouldn’t let me in to see you. They lied and said you told them to turn me away, but I told them you’d never say that—”
“Miss Hunter!”
“But none of that matters now because you’re here, and I can finally show you this,” I cried, bursting into the office and tugging Daniels stumbling over the threshold. Letting go of him, I raced to the corkboard and threw my arm out. “Look. Look!” Iburst out, making him jump. “I did it. I finally figured out what took Dora.”
“Miss... Hunter...” Whatever Daniels had come here to say died in his throat. Jaw dropping, his eyes widened sweeping the space.
And okay, to the unprepared eye, the room could come across as a little... chaotic.
I had three corkboards set up and covered with articles, printouts, and screenshots from kidnapped or missing message boards. One board for every tip and lead in the past month that I received in regards to her kidnapping—even the tips that didn’t pan out. The only board covered with every detail of her kidnappers, down to artistic renderings of the monsters, and the final board devoted to one single item—the thing I ripped off and found clutched in my grip when I woke up on a bed of shards, wood, and grass. The single trace left behind besides a ruined dining room—
A school patch for a place called Abaddon Academy.
As it was, I ended up filling all three boards to the brim, so I had to tack new information onto the walls. And then that wasn’t enough, so I took down all the photos and wall art, so I could use the free space. And then that wasn’t enough, so I ripped off the drapes, boarded up the windows, and tacked on all the information I got from the Memphis lead.
“Heavens above...”
“Oh, I know, it’s a bit dark in here.” I rushed to the desk and flipped on the lamp. “You woke me up.”
“Woke you up? You— You were sleeping in here?”
“Well, yeah, of course,” I cried. “I told you! I figured it out. I know what took Dora!”
“Miss Hunter—”
“Okay, here it is,” I began, crossing back to the suspect board. “At first, I convinced myself that the monsters weren’t reallymonsters—because how could they be. They had to be people wearing some realistic costume, or who were crazy into body modification. But no matter how hard I tried to gaslight myself, it just didn’t add up.
“When I stabbed that thing, I broke skin—real and living skin. I didn’t stab plastic or fabric, so it couldn’t have been a costume—”
“Miss Hunter—”
“So, then, I looked into body modification.” I tripped across the room, landing on the wall papered with everything I learned about gene-hacking and body implants. “There have been a lot of, rather shocking, advances in this area, but the scorpion monster had a tail. A huge, thick, prehensile tail that stretched as high as the ceiling. No one in the world of body mods has found a way to give humans man-sized scorpion tails, so that was out too.”
“Miss Hunter? Charlotte!”
“No, I know what you’re thinking,” I bleated, whirling on him. “Because I had the same thought too. Maybe the horror of my sister being taken right in front of me made me hallucinate. My brain conjured up monsters because that was easier than facing the truth that Dora was taken by people we know. People we trusted!” My hand flashed out, slapping the lead board. “That’s why I tracked down and interrogated every guy group that Dora and I knew—”
“You did what!”
“—especially any group of guys that had someone strong enough to send me flying out a window with just one hit.” I jabbed the faces pinned to my corkboard. “Guys on the school’s football team—alibis. It was graduation day, so they were all at twenty different graduation parties with their families.” I held up a hand. “Don’t worry. I confirmed that through their texts and social media.”
“That is not what worries me!”
