Page 21 of Bad Intentions

But I don’t listen. I can’t just stand here and do nothing, so I set the phone down and start tugging at the rope, trying to find a way through the knots to untie the woman’s wrists.

It’s dim, cold, and damp. There’s a puddle on the floor next to the woman. It might be condensation, but judging by the stench, it might be something entirely different.

A loud knock comes from upstairs. Then the door opens and slams shut. Male voices. Radios beeping.

“We’re down here!” I shout as I try to undo the knots, but they won’t give. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise,” I whisper, struggling with the rope, as the woman sniffles repeatedly, her hands brushing mine cold as ice.

And then I hear loud footsteps, several people, a loud voice saying, “Ma’am, please raise your hands and step away. Slowly.”

It’s the police, two officers, holding their guns up.

“I’m just trying to⁠—”

“Ma’am! Step away! Hands raised in the air!”

After this, everything is somewhat hazy. My brain violently pulsates in my head. I recognize one of the men. I rise to my feet and hold my hands up while the two officers approach. One of them gently leads me aside, calls to the other, who radios for backup and the ambulance, then cuts the ropes to free the woman.

Then we are upstairs, and one of the officers sits the woman down on the couch. The other one darts outside and ushers the medical personnel in. I stand at the door, hugging my middle, trying to put together the pieces and remember the chain of events. One officer is already asking me questions, and I try to answer, but two things keep flashing in my mind. The woman’s first question “Where is he? Is he still here?” and the fear in her eyes.

My thoughts are spinning as I try to figure out the whys and the whos. Why did the man lure me to this house? Where is he? What kind of games is he playing? Who is this woman?

I hear a familiar booming voice on the porch, then another officer’s voice.

“At this point, we are looking at kidnapping, assault, and possible abuse,” one says in a low voice. “We identified the victim, but she doesn’t remember much about the man who took her.”

The front door opens, and the chief walks in, stops, and trains his concerned gaze on me. “Hello, Josie.”

I nod, biting my lip. I dreaded this moment more than anything. It’s easy to explain to the police how I ended up in this house. But I feel like I’m being set up.

The chief’s eyes take on a hint of disappointment. “What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?”

14

JOSIE

I’ve never been to a police precinct. There’s a sense of novelty about being in an establishment you only see in fiction or on TV. With it comes a subtle feeling that you might never get out of the mess, and by all definitions, what’s happening right now is a mess.

The police brought the woman to the precinct, too. Apparently, she’s a local. Mallory Blain, forty-three. She was uncertain about where she was, who had taken her, or why. They asked me to keep quiet about what happened for now. She is a victim. The perpetrator has not yet been located, so they are trying to protect her identity.

As I waited back at the house, I heard the cops talking about locating the owner of the house, asking about the renter, the renter’s ID, which could be fake, searching the place for fingerprints and DNA.

Here, at the precinct, they asked me if I wanted to let my grandmother know that I would be there for a while. “Hard no,” I told the chief right away. I don’t need Grandma worrying about me.

I agreed to talk. After all, there’s nothing much I can tell them. I have nothing to hide besides the fact that I witnessed the man being hit by a car only a few days ago. But I’m not telling them about that.

I don’t like the silence weighing on me in the room where I sit with the chief and Officer Miles. Or the constant messages beeping on the chief’s phone. Or the fact that he’s going through the messages on my phone. I want to scream that it’s an invasion of privacy, but I agreed to it. They are the police. They have the right. It’s evidence. They might look through any other messages on my phone, and, oh, man, we all think we talk about innocent things with friends until someone puts a different spin on the simple words they stumble upon.

The chief finally slides my cell phone across the table to the other policeman. “Read those, then send them to the tech team.” He turns his eyes to me. “Okay, Josie. So let’s go through this again. The man messages you for the first time five days ago, saying he is a friend of your mother’s, right?”

I nod.

“Except your mother passed more than two decades ago.”

“Right.”

“He tells you that he has some information about what happened twenty-five years ago.”

The chief ducks his head, like he’s trying to coax a secret out of me. I have none. If anything, I want to know who the man is too.